Foodie miles

It seems like whenever I travel somewhere I come back and say how I ate up the local food and am super psyched to come back to the variety of NYC.

I just spent a few days at a resort in Jamaica where the only good food was the jerk chicken, peas and rice, and plantains they served every day for lunch and dinner. When it was all hot, it was divine--but buffets are tricky.

Anyway, with all this talk of food miles, and competing studies about local food's ability to leave a smaller carbon footprint, I got thinking about foodie miles. What if I calculated the carbon footprint of the trips I've taken to eat the world's treats? Hell, I traveled all the way to Singapore --to see my friends, natch--but basically to eat at hawker centers. I think this gives me an F minus in the personal food miles department.

Michael Pollan wants you to eat food

My latest on the HuffPost, on MP's new book.

Insta-party

For NYE, I threw a last minute insta-party, and it went like this:

(Good friends and a moderately big apartment help, btw. I don't take either of those things for granted, even if it seems that way when I stick them in parentheses).

Stuffed Mushrooms (see Bittman's "How to Cook Everything"): they are very easy and very delicious and make use of pantry staples like bread crumbs, olive oil and grated parmigianno reggiano, which I keep in my freezer.

Stuffed Dates: slice open a date, stuff in a little blue cheese, pop a roasted almond on top. Repeat.

Pigs in Blankets: Mini Applegate Farms cocktail franks, a little biscuit dough, some good mustard.

Use what you have: I had a box of red velvet cake mix thanks to CC, so I bought cream cheese frosting ingredients and got to work the night before the party. I also had lots of leftover Rice Krispies and marshmallows from the Avant Garde Restaurant, so I made rice krispie treats.

Invite a chef: John is an amazing chef and generous to boot, so that meant beautiful creme caramel, a savory cheesecake that I'll call a "sformata," a white bean dip and chocolate truffles. I mean, hot damn.

Invite friends to bring stuff: You might get a cheese plate from Saxelby's, homemade deviled eggs, tons of good champagne, homemade pickled beets and homemade BBQ sauce. Hypothetically speaking.

And voila. Add a TV for watching the ball drop, and heat (my boiler punked out the next day) and you're all set.

In Praise of Food Kitsch

At Xmas dinner, chez B-B, I was served a long-forgotten favorite of mine:

Ruffles Potato Chips w/
Lipton Onion Soup Dip

Even David Lebovitz, a favorite food blogger/tweeter of mine has been tweeting it up about Lipton Onion Soup dip. Apparently he is serving it to guests at is home in France, alors, c'est a la mode, non?

It's insanely off-the-charts delicious. I couldn't stop; honestly, I had to push away.

Goodbye Decade, Hello Sumthing Good

Bring me sumthing goooooood, I say, and by "good" I mean tasty of course, but also bigger than that.

This decade began for me, quite literally, with a wail, and a howl, and a whimper, and a limp. It was not an auspicious beginning.

Foodwise, it began with one of the most delicious--if saddest--meals of my life. A New Year's eve tasting menu at the now defunct Bouley Bakery restaurant. Maybe that food was the augur, telling me that while this decade might kick my arse, it would feed me terribly well. It feels like a long long time ago, and this blog has seen me through a bit more than half of it.

Bring me sumthing good, I say. I'm ready.

Savory Rice Krispie Treats

Although we call it the avant garde restaurant, we've not gone terribly avant garde with the food. UNTIL NOW.

Behold ye: savory rice krispie treats as passed hors d'ouevres. A little snooping on the internets revealed I am not the first person to have this idea. Mainly, I was worried about the marshmallows--would they be so sweet that no amount of savory introductions could balance them out? According to what I read, no, this is not a problem. I stole some ideas, for sure, and settled upon two versions to try today.

I have named them Vaguely Asian Savory Rice Krispie Treats and Crunchy Salty Savory Rice Krispie Treats.

C.S.S.R.K.:

melt 2 T butter in a medium sized saucepan

sprinkle a pinch of turmeric in as it melts

once it's all melted add 2 cups mini marshmallows

stir until they melt

add 1 tsp garlic powder

then 3 cups 365 brand Brown Rice Crisps (or the trad'l Kellogg's Rice Krispies)

then 2 cups crushed salt and pepper potato chips

stir, then press out into a brownie pan, pressing down and flattening

then sprinkle generously with paprika

V.A.S.R.K.:

Same as above but skip the turmeric

once marshmallows and butter are fully melted add one TBSP soy sauce, 1TBSP sesame oil and 1 tsp garlic powder

then 3 cups of the cereal and 3TBSP chopped roasted salted peanuts and two chopped scallions (not the white part)

stir, then press out into a brownie pan, pressing down and flattening

then sprinkle generously with ground ginger

I think these things might rock, in a weird kind of way.

Come Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant next weekend and checkitout for yourself!

post-game update: we went with the V.A.S.R.K. and they were enjoyed by most, if not all. P.L. declared them "gross" but then couldn't stop eating them saying they were "weirdly addictive."

Soda news

You know I always come back to soda.

First things first: my Mama bought me a Soda Stream. Have been meaning to get one for oh-so-long now and am the happy owner of this spaceshipesque contraption. No more recycling of plastic seltzer bottles, a behavior that had been filling me with a lot of guilt. You can mix in flavor packets to your homemade seltzer, but I will not be doing that. That is weird. I will squeeze in a real live lemon.

And: speaking of a local supply of clean water, you might be interested in this op-ed piece from Jared Diamond about big companies--like Coca Cola--and how he doesn't think they are pure evil after all. We could go around the block about that one, I suppose. I myself believe in compassionate capitalism. Did I make that term up? I'll have my research intern check it out. OK, I have not research intern, you got me.

Anyway, it's really interesting to me how companies are getting in on the sustainability game because they damn well have to. Cocal-Cola is made of water, and water is becoming scarce in many parts of the world. Will Coke compete with agriculture for water use?

As Diamond explains: "Coca-Cola’s survival compels it to be deeply concerned with problems of water scarcity, energy, climate change and agriculture. One company goal is to make its plants water-neutral, returning to the environment water in quantities equal to the amount used in beverages and their production. Another goal is to work on the conservation of seven of the world’s river basins, including the Rio Grande, Yangtze, Mekong and Danube — all of them sites of major environmental concerns besides supplying water for Coca-Cola."

Marion Nestle takes him to task on her blog (I love her moxie and smarts and sass. Ahhhh): "We need some critical thinking here. If Diamond gave any thought at all to what Coca-Cola produces – bottled water and sodas – he would surely have to agree that less of both would be good for our own health and that of the planet."

What is your farmy restaurant really serving you?

This piece by Jane Black really caught my eye, especially in the wake of my attendance at a young farmers conference last week at Stone Barns. She examines a restaurant in the DC area called Founding Farmers and how they are riding the local sustainable gravy train--sometimes making good on their promises, and sometimes not so much so.

It made me think about a fascinating workshop I attended at the conference, one about the relationship between farmer and chef, and led by some of the kitchen staff at Blue Hill at Stone Barns--those cooks who are responsible for purchasing and building relationships with farmers. Let me start by saying that those guys are as real deal as it gets (if you ever accidentally step on a pile of money and decide to make it yours, treat yourself to a meal at Blue Hill at Stone Barns). This is not a post in which I expose them for being fraudulent or farm-washers.

That being said: I think a lot of diners there have misconceptions about the experience. Think all the food is grown there and at their Berkshires farm? Think again. A quick look at the math would help you see that they just can't produce enough food on site to feed all of their diners. As a result they are purchasing from an additional 40 farmers or so, give or take. And the seafood? Do you think there is seafood in Westchester? They are flying it in from Nantucket etc. Also flown in on a regular basis? organic but industrial carrots, onions etc. used to make stock.

I think it's a question of, as a diner, removing blinders from your eyes. Just because you want to believe that the tomato on your burger is local and seasonal (because damn, a tomato slice on a burger is a fine thing indeed), just because you want asparagus risotto in January (a perfect dish when done right, no?) ask yourself: are tomatoes in season around here? Allow yourself to see the truth. Sometimes the restaurant is misleading you and sometimes you are contributing to the deception by misleading yourself.

Bits and pieces

The Lunch Lady wishes you a belated Thanksgiving (via wellandgoodnyc.com)

There's lots to love in this Thanksgiving piece by Maira Kalman. I wish it wasn't so much the same familiar people (Pollan, Waters and her egg on a spoon, Canard, Edible Schoolyard, etc.) but I love how Kalman plays with pictures and words. In my next life (I'm pretty sure I still have like 6), I will create pieces like that.

Good for getting all that tryptophan out of your system: sweating and soaking it out at Spa Castle.

Good for a laugh: reading all of Sam Sifton's Thanksgiving advice, dispensed on the NY Times' Diner's Journal. I find this guy hilarious. One gem: "That sounds harsh, I realize, but Thanksgiving isn’t just punk rock and cranberries."

Thanksgiving redux

Thanksgiving was nice--small, casual, and full of ruckus (baby meets cat; cat runs away; baby searches relentlessly for terrified cats. Dog meets cat; cat runs away; dog searches relentlessly for terrified cats).

My first course was a tart I have served for two years running now. It's a riff on one I was served at my friend's house a few years ago. It might not be a perfect replica, but I think it comes close. And it's good, darn good. I started with a pie crust from Nick Malgieri's book "How to Bake." Them I sauteed one red onion in olive oil, with a dash of dried thyme, salt and pepper. So you roll the crust out, then make a bed with the onions. Then fan out one apple, sliced into half moons with the skin still on. I used a winesap, nice and sweet and crisp. Then I fill the circle in the middle with a generous crumbling of blue cheese--I used some Bayley Hazen blue, a little too dried out to eat by itself but perfect for baking. Then brush the crust with a little bit of beaten egg, then pop in a 375 degree oven, bake until crust is brown and cheese is melted and bubbling.

I neglected to take a picture of the SLAMMIN' turkey I made. Family pooh poohed last year's heritage bird (too gamey, too strange) so I went with a farm-raised, happy, hormone-less bird from Dickson Farmstand. I slathered it in Rosemary Maple Butter (holla!) per CC's suggestion, and you'll be shocked to hear that it was a VERY good idea. Even better on a leftover sandwich for lunch today.

Hearth, home

It's the night before Thanksgiving and rather than starting my cooking prep, I'm pensive.

I hit the farmers market on my way home from work, braving the rain and the premature darkness and the last-minute shoppers. I was there buying the finishing touches--not food, per se, but eucalyptus and apple cider, to make my house homey and wintery tomorrow when I welcome my family for our turkey feast.

I'm reminded of Thanksgiving three years ago when, on my way to my family's house on Long Island, I stopped at the house of some friends of mine. They welcomed me in out of the cold, showered me in hugs and kisses and plopped me in a choice seat in front of a roaring fire, placed a mug of hot apple cider in one of my hands and a toasted buttered corn muffin in the other. This, I thought, is hospitality. This is home.

I have a big, comfortable apartment, with bits of me all over it, especially in the open kitchen, where I love to cook meals for people. And it feels like home when there are people here, and I turn on the christmas lights and make them a cocktail and fill their bellies, and plop them in front of the proverbial/metaphorical fireplace. I have learned hospitality from pros.

Is it a home, I find myself wondering, when it's just me here? A friend has a framed piece on her kitchen wall, something about how home is where "you" are. Without a you--even with hot cider and eucalyptus and two cats snuggled at your bum--is it home? Can it be?

Welcome to Fall, F*ckheads!

It's always fall at my desk, winter even. In our office I sit by the window, by the A/C unit, bundled up in wool and hoodies all summer, all fall, all winter. That being said, in the great outdoors, where seasons really exist--even if they are all jumbled and pushed to unnatural extremes by climate change--it is finally fall.

I know this because I saw on the teevee, on a dunkin donuts commercial, that fall flavors have arrived; they even piled all the customers onto a hay-filled tractor and drove them off the farm over to a dunkin donuts so they could really taste fall in all its glory. True story.

I also know it's fall because of this f-ing hilarious piece in McSweeney's about decorative fall gourds (but really it's about so much more than that; I think that in its funny way it is also about xmas sweaters and window kreshes).

Another tell-tale sign the seasons are changing is that we have an office potluck on Wednesday and the theme is apples. I predict the presence of more bacon than apples, but so it goes.

Plus eucalyptus has arrived at the farmers market; I will perform my annual tradition of buying a ginormous bundle and plopping it on my dining room table for the next three months. At which point I'll look out the window (or turn on the teevee) and will see some other telltale clue that it's suddenly spring.

September Diary

I was so busy being where I was, I forgot to blog.

What I've been up to:

• Managing Slow Food USA's Time for Lunch campaign, thrilled by the success of our national day of action--300+ potlucks in all 50 states this past Labor Day!
• Seeing movies, writing about them
• Eating beef heart and oysters at Marlow and Sons
• Stuffing zucchini blossoms with goat cheese and frying them
• Attending New Amsterdam Market, already excited for the next one on October 25th
• Supporting Just Food at their Let us Eat Local benefit, eating pork sliders, gazpacho and grilled cheese and Blue Marble's strawberry ice cream and anything else I could cram in my yapper
• despairing occasionally at the state of the world (read: politics, yo)
• Preserving 70 lbs of heirloom tomatoes

Whatchoo been up to?

Be where you are

One of my favorite concepts (and practices) is that of eating place-based foods. Place-based foods are those that have a deep connection to the land where they grow. That connection is a physical one, as well as a historic one, and it is reflected in the taste, look, feel, and culture of the food.

Last weekend I spent my birthday--a milestone one, they say--on the North Fork of Long Island, and I focused my activities and my eating on place-based traditions.

I went wine-tasting and swirled in my mouth the product of the relatively new grape growing traditions of the East End. On the island only certain varieties grow well, and as a result, the menus are populated by Chardonnays and Merlots, with some Gruners and Rieslings mixed in. You don't go to Long Island to drink Pinot Grigio; be where you are. Drink where you are.

I ate corn. Lots of it. The North Fork's sweet summer corn is outstanding, and extra good when grilled in its husks by your big brother (hypothetically speaking, of course). I ate homemade lobster rolls, made with local lobster--Una's recipe, via Ethan, and outstandingly simple and good. Also, local wild striped bass, more than once, and tomatoes, tomatoes tomatoes (blight be damned). There were no local peaches, because it turns out all those peaches at Union Square all come from Jersey. So, I guess you don't go to Long Island to eat peaches; be where you are. Eat where you are.

And the birthday thing: I think I am meant to be scared by this birthday, by the fact that I haven't figured out my whole life yet, by the fact that I am getting older and nobody lives forever. But instead I walked on the beach, and I rode bikes with my friends, experiencing what it must feel like to be a kid in the suburbs, learning to feel comfortable on a bike, thrilling at the freedom of exploring the neighborhood, tooling around with your buddies, baking in the hot sun.

My birthday mantra: maintain a place-based tradition. Be where you are.

Julie & Julia

6 years ago, after reading an article about it in the NY Times, I checked out a blog called "The Julie/Julia Project."  It was my first time reading a food blog, and I was sucked in from the start.

At the time, I myself was sitting in a cubicle, half in my body, half outside of it--working on theatre projects, writing plays at my computer.  Also, I was reading blogs, many of them, and after beginning with Julie Powell's, most of them were about food.

Tonight I watched the movie version of Julie Powell's food epiphany, how Julia Child--and writing about it--pulled her out from under the metaphorical waves as she (metaphorically) drowned.  It gave me the opportunity to think about the time that's passed since I read her blog, and since I started mine.  

I was on the heels of a break up with a boy, and on the verge of a break up with my life as I knew it.  Since then a lot has changed: I am grateful for what I have figured out since then, and a bit baffled by the things I still haven't. 

For Julie and for Julia both, the journey was one in which they discovered the joy they find in food--and me, too, I suppose.  Why do I cook? At the end of an exhausting Avant Garde Restaurant run, 330 meals later, that joy is the only reason that has any legs. 

In the meantime, my blog hasn't landed me a book deal, but it did help me find my food voice, and maybe helped build the bridge for me from where I was, to where I was headed.

52 Small Bites

The brilliant Amy has a new blog called "52 Bites; a site to help change the way you eat." She, along with everyone else I know, recently moved down South and has been exploring how to eat fresh and local on a budget, in a place that isn't totally obsessed with fresh and local like her old home (Seattle) was.

It's a nuts and bolts guide and breaks down menu planing in a way I find really helpful. I myself go to the farmers market, grab random things that look tasty, then scramble about to turn them into meals. I shop at the supermarket haphazardly and overwhelmed and then do crazy blog-fueled experiments like "Eating down my larder."

Amy is here to help.

As she describes the new venture: "Weekly advice on changing the way you eat over the course of a year. Healthier, cleaner, kinder, better - and without breaking the bank."

Doing things a little bit weird

This summer I learned to ride a bike.  Most regular folks learn to do this in childhood and then spend their days as a youngster, tween, teen etc. tooling around the neighborhood on their hoopties, getting into trouble and feeling the freedom that comes with having their own set of wheels.

What was I waiting for?  It turns out that not only is it easy but it's crazy fun.  I remember I finally tried a mango when I was 21 years old and I couldn't stop kicking myself for waiting so long.  All those years of missed mango eating! Sheesh!

Here I am again, whooping it up on the bike and kicking myself at the same time. 34.5 missed years of bike riding! I might be the stupidest person I know. Or, I guess I just do things a little bit weird.

A BLT is a classic, but because I guess I like to do things a little weird, tonight I made something I'll call:

BLT in a bowl

• Several varieties (different colors, shapes, sizes) of summer tomatoes
  
• Fresh basil leaves
  
• Bacon
  
• Summer corn
  
• oil
  
• baslamic vinegar
  
• salt
  
• pepper
  

Cut up tomatoes and dress with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper

Cook the corn and scrape the kernels from the cob

Rinse and then chiffonade the basil leaves

Fry up thick cut bacon (or, like me, random bacon chunks left over from sliced bacon, sold by Flying Pigs Farm) and slice it up

Toss everything together

Eat with a spoon

Milk and Soda

This news that Coke is marketing fizzy milk is, at first, revolting. I look forward to the future articles debating whether “New Coke” or “Vio” was the more misguided effort on the company’s part. Only time will tell.

And yet.

As a child, I drank something my parents and brother and I called “milk and soda,” in improbable quantities. As I understand it, it was a “Laverne and Shirley” thing (and let us now take a moment to thank Mom and Dad for resisting the urge to put me in J monogrammed sweaters every day of my youth).

This is how you make it:

1. Take a tall glass
2. Fill it about an inch up with Coke, or Diet Coke (Laverne, listen up: Pepsi is not acceptable)
3. Fill the rest of the glass with skim milk

Once, at a friend’s house, her parents tried to make me feel at home by offering me my favorite drink. I took a sip and, horrified, spit it out. It was not Coke, it was seltzer and I was amazed at their stupidity. Had they never SEEN a milk and soda before? I finally understood at that moment (I was 6) that most people had not, as it turns out, seen this drink nor tasted it; I also understood that this was going to be the beginning of having to explain strange things about myself, like my crazy name and the elevator pass I had at school because of my screwy knees.

It was my parents’ way to get me to drink milk, just like I imagine it is Coke’s way to get you to drink milk, though not for the same reason--parents: healthy bones, Coke: milk is cheap right now. It just seems like a lost opportunity on their part. Why not mix the milk with the soda? It tastes so damn good.

TRY IT. You’ll like it.

Preserving the Dying Art of Cooking

My latest on the Huffington Post.  

Most of the comments are from people who somehow think that I don't know how to cook and are berating me for it.  Which is confusing, since, um, I am saying the exact opposite in the post.

What the f-uh? Real food.

In response to those of us encouraging people to learn about where their food comes from, to THINK about their food choices: here cometh the grammatically incorrect, anti-thought advertising campaign from KFC.  "Unthink."

Before I start knocking Starbucks' "real food" campaign, I should actually go in there and try some of their new food, all HFCS-free and whatnot.  Only problem is I can't bear to go buy any of that stuff--scarred by a few unsavory airport meals. 

Hellmann's, too, is getting in on the action, having launched an ad campaign in Canada that touts the localness of their shelf-stable mayonnaise. The website is super creepy, in that you can't tell at first that it's a Hellmann's site.  Apparently a few years ago, they were going for realness, too. Ummm, ok.

I know what's real, thank you very much.  Like my lunch today:

early Long Island summer tomato. check.

greenhouse Long Island basil. check.

Tuscan olive oil.  splash of Katz's wine vinegar. salt. pepper. checkkkkkk.

heaping tbsp Calabro ricotta.

Mix it all up in a bowl.

Almondine baguette.

Voila--le sandwich!