5 Snacks After 10

Foodtripy

2012-01-28T13:25:00.001-05:00

My daughter insisted that I watch the above TED talk by Homero Cato and Ben Roch, owners of the cutting edge Moto in Chicago. These guys specialize in "Foodtrips," the culinary equivalent of dropping a tab of acid. They blow minds with dishes like barbecue sauce made of straw and crab apples and a vegie burger that tastes like beef.

But this is more than a gastronomic gimmickry. These guys aren't bending the time-space continuum just for the hell of it. They're out to save the world one meal at a time by transforming local produce, including plants that we normally don't eat, into delectable dishes.

No more blowing carbon to transport produce half way around the country. Feed lot contamination becomes a thing of the past. And tuna avoids extinction.

It's a revolutionary idea, one that has the potential to transform diets and agriculture. Given climate change, overpopulation and environmental degradation, something like this is probably inevitable. As "traditional" foods dwindle, we will need to get innovative. We could well end up subsisting on grass and straws manipulated to taste good with "real" food an occasional treat.

I have mixed feelings, but it's better than the Soylent Green solution.

The Deen of Diabetes

2012-01-25T11:34:00.000-05:00

So Paula Deen has diabetes. What a shock. I never would have guessed.

I don't want to be unkind. I feel bad for her. It's a terrible disease with potentially devastating and deadly consequences.

That said, Paula's over-the-top, artery-clogging cooking almost surely played a role in her illness. And she isn't just harming herself. She openly encourages her fans to overindulge, to eat that extra cookie, to ignore the experts and pound Crisco and butter until they are immobile on the couch. She got rich and famous off that schtick.

She gets diabetes three years ago and does she announce it? No. She waits -- until there's money to be made. She inks a deal to promote an expensive diabetes drug and her son launches a new show on lighter eating. Then she makes her revelation.

So basically, Paula got rich making people diabetic and now she's going to get richer selling them drugs for their condition while her son expands the Deen franchise hawking a slimmed down version of the very food that made her mother and others sick.

And she's shocked that people aren't more sympathetic? She's so clueless she ought to be in Congress.

A Cheesey Commercial

2011-11-10T22:13:00.001-05:00

Velveeta is one of the most toxic substances on earth, a cheese-like product of unknown provenance.

That said, I have to hand it to Kraft. This commercial is brilliant. I love how it tries to make Velveeta sound like a healthy alternative to fast food. Diabolical in its deception. Whoever did this should make commercials for the Republican party. And who would have thought cheese substitute could be sensual? They're going to move a lot of Velveeta.

Marketing goooooooooold!

Holy Latke Batman!

2011-10-02T11:42:00.001-04:00

About a week ago, I faced a dilemma: I needed a starch for dinner, but I had just two potatoes, not enough for mashed or baked potatoes. It was also not enough for a rather complicated big potato pancake recipe I've been making for a number of years.

Time to think fast. Why not try traditional potato pancakes, aka Latkes? I'd never made them before. I consulted a couple of cookbooks, and they looked amazingly easy and quick. Just shred some potatoes and onion, add breadcrumbs, an egg and salt and pepper and fry in a pan with thin sheen of oil.

It was as easy and quick as it sounded. In about 20 to 25 minutes, I had golden brown potato pancakes on the plate. They were heavenly, better than the big potato Frisbee that I've been laboring to make for years. I especially love the crunch and caramelization from a good roasting on each side. Very, very tasty.

Like so many great dishes, simple and delicious.

I've made them several times since, each time adjusting and each time they come out a little tastier. Here's my recipe:

Heat a large pan to medium high (I put it to 7 on electric range) with a thin film of oil (I use canola).

Shred two to three russet potatoes with a box grater (you can use a food processor, but it's nearly as fast and there's less cleanup with a box grater). Put the shredded potato in a colander and press, squeezing out as much liquid as possible.

Put the shredded potato in a large bowl and shred a onion. We prefer less onion, so I use a small or half a medium. Make this to taste.

Add about 2 tablespoons bread crumbs, preferably homemade, an egg and salt and pepper to taste. Mix thoroughly.

Check oil with a piece of potato. If it sizzles, the pan is ready. Collect half a cup of the mixture (you can make them any size) and drop into the hot pan, pressing down to flatten somewhat. Cook about six to 10 minutes on each side, rotating if necessary to assure even cooking and lowering temperature if they cook too fast.

As they finish, put on paper towels to drain. The pancakes stay hot for a good period of time, so I recommend against covering.

Latkes are traditionally eaten with applesauce. I have not tried it, but I can see how a little sweetness would enhance the flavor.

So the next time you need a quick starch. try potato pancakes. Tasty, delicious and rather fun to make.

"Cheap" Fast Food and Other Myths

2011-09-25T16:11:00.000-04:00

Mark Bittman today eviscerates the myth of "cheap" fast food. In fact, a simple meal at home is cheaper than a McDonald's pig out, he reports.

Why do Americans believe otherwise? The answer is simple: $4.6 billion a year spent by the food industry each year on marketing.

Some say it's "nannyism" to try to do anything about this. But that ignores the power of modern marketing to manipulate consumer attitudes and undermine fact. Marketers have succeeded in planting all manner of untruths into the American mind: cooking is too hard and too time consuming; hyper-processed products are healthy if they contain a small amount of fiber; it's cheaper to eat out than to cook.

As criticism grows, the food industry is trying to adjust. I see them hawking more and more products used to cook instead of pure, stick-it-in-the-microwave processed foods. Take this commercial for Philadelphia Cream Cheese Cooking "Creme" (I love the French touch). Honestly, have you ever seen anything so disgusting?

I love the ending with happy, homey family tucking into their otherwise healthy ingredients coated in cooking goo.

As Bittman writes, cooking a decent meal is cheap and easy. Buy a chicken, not the fancy floorwalker for tree-huggers, but the standard Purdue bird, roast it, mash some potatoes and steam some vegies.

Re-teaching Americans these basic skills will be a struggle. The powers that be will fight back tooth and nail. Soon, they will be telling Americans that there are dangerous levels of bacteria in unprocessed food and to avoid it. Can't you just hear that rolling off Michele Bachman's tongue?

Cook at home? What are you -- a socialist?

Hitting it Past the Ted Williams Chair

2011-09-18T19:24:00.000-04:00

It's been five years since Mark Bittman published his no-knead bread recipe. It intrigued me the moment I read it. Imagine being able to bake artisan quality bread without the specialized oven? Sounds like heaven.

Why I never tried it, I can't say. I'm at a loss to explain my passive resistance. It's not for lack of proof. A friend of mine tried the recipe and raved. I have the key piece of equipment, a Le Creuset dutch oven. Was it foolish pride in all that kneading and rising and measuring and shaping? Maybe.

One reason was that no one in the family much liked rustic bread except me. That, however, has changed in the last few months. My daughter, the bread-o-phobe, has recently acquired a taste for Italian bread. She's actually eating sandwiches, which I thought I'd see the day that Rick Perry admitted global warming real and agreed to march in a gay pride parade.

For whatever reason, I finally tried the recipe today. The result: Wow. Amazing. Incredible. Some of the best bread I've ever had. And so easy.

I made a few minor rookie mistakes. My loaf came out a bit lopsided (my wife is away at a writing conference and has the camera, so I can't take a picture), and my baking time was just a little short, leaving the loaf a tad moist in the middle. Otherwise, not just a home run, but a grand slam 500 footer past the Ted Williams chair in Fenway Park (it marks the longest homer ever hit to right field).

All I can say is, try it. I'm already thinking of different recipes and shapes. The scales have fallen from eyes. It's a whole new world.

Sandwich King Rules

2011-09-04T21:09:00.002-04:00

My wife, daughter and I are devoted viewers of the "Next Food Network Star." Yes, one wonders how much is staged and whether the contestants have signed away their lives and future earnings. But we enjoy it nonethless.

None of the winners of recent years have done much. I've actually seen some of the competitors who didn't win end up with their own shows.

That may be about to change. I needed a break this morning from cleaning up the yard after Irene, so my wife suggested we watch this year's winner, Jeff Mauro, on his new show Sandwich King. It was excellent. He held my attention and I wanted to make the fish and chips that he made, which is saying something because I don't really like fish and chips. The recipe was appealing and easy, and I was especially interested in the cabbage and fennel slaw that he made as a side dish, as well as the homemade tartar sauce. Unfortunately, neither recipe is posted yet.

Jeff was entertaining, interesting and likable. My one criticism was that at times he got too goofy. The faux British accent didn't work and was a borderline painful to watch. I half expected him to turn into a foodie Dick Van Dyke and start singing a bad, over-the-top rendition of chim-chimney-chim-chim-cher-re. Drop it next time, dude.

That said, this guy might just become a big deal. I'd certainly tune again, something I can't say for Arti Party by last year's winner Arti Sequeria, although I liked her very much.

Will all hail the king? Let's see.

Azorean Delight

2011-09-01T21:44:00.007-04:00

The family took a much-needed, too-short vacation last month to Rockport on the North Shore of Massachusetts. It was beautiful, so beautiful that we realized half way through watching "The Proposal" that the town's main drag stood in for the movie's too-cute-too-live Alaskan village.

What would Sarah Palin say?

That part of Massachusetts has a large Portuguese community most of which hails from the Azores, a group of islands about half way between Portugal proper and North America. Azoreans have been coming to southern New England since the whaling period and to this day dominate the area's commercial's fishing industry (what's left of it).

The first night in Rockport, we ventured to a place called the Azorean Restaurant & Bar in nearby Glouester (of "The Perfect Storm" fame). It was outstanding. We had a plate of tapas that included octopus, chorizo sausage, Azorean cheeses, sardines and beef. The only thing missing was the classic Portuguese kale soup.

We keep talking about going to the Azores for a vacation and even bought one of the few guidebooks available on the islands. Tony Bourdain did a great show there a few years ago.

Some day.

An Aussie Eats

2011-08-07T10:51:00.004-04:00

This Aussie and his buddies went around the world in 44 days. Here's what he ate condensed into a one-minute video called "Eat" (if it's slow, turn off the HD). Brilliant.

Check out the other two videos, "Move" and "Learn." Lots of food in Learn as well.

When I see something like this, it restores my faith in humanity.

Pickled Logic

2011-08-06T08:34:00.005-04:00

The New York Times op-ed page had a wonderful piece this week about the history of pickles in America. Reformers and nativists once viewed them as a demon's dinner, unhealthy and dangerous. How, one might ask? Their spicy and sharp flavors made people agitated and emotional, rendering them unfit for democratic society, or so the pickled logic went.

According to the op-ed, food busybodies expressed horror that immigrant mothers fed such an infernal food to their children and even infants. In response, settlement houses, the social services of their day, sought to wean families from their native foods and get them to consume calming dishes like chowder.

Thank God they failed. I love pickles. They are one of my -- indeed America's -- favorite foods. I'm reminded of a classic "All in the Family" episode where Archie nixes the idea of Chinese food at Meatheat and Gloria's wedding, saying he wants something "American, like spaghetti."

A number of years ago, we took a culinary tour of the Lower East Side of Manhattan (throughout the tour, the guide kept saying, "Pretend all these Asian people aren't here and imagine the streets full of Italians, Jews, etc.)" We stopped at a legendary pickle place, one of the last remnants of the Jewish Lower East Side. They had easily a dozen varieties in big plastic barrels. The pickles were sublime, each variety a variation of crisp, brine, dill and garlic. A treat and half.

This story shows how America has changed and stayed the same. We remain hysterical at times about newcomers "failing" to become Americans, but food is no longer a focus. In fact, eating habits are one of the few ethnic characteristics that we encourage and celebrate.

So I guess at least we can be grateful that there's no campaign to ban baba ghanoush and hummus. Progress of a sort.

A SAD Story

2011-07-24T10:26:00.004-04:00

Food writer Mark Bittman has a reasoned, fact-based and intelligent proposal for fighting obesity and diabetes in today's New York Times. He excoriates Big Food for peddling junk to Americans, especially children, dubbing American eating habits they created though marketing and government subsidies of corn and soybeans SAD, the "Standard American Diet."

Because Bittman's proposal is reasoned, fact based and intelligent, it has little to no chance of success.

Bittman's conclusion, which he backs up with copious data, is that soda and processed food are responsible for much if not most of the obesity epidemic. These trends in turn are inflating medical costs that are at the heart of the budget deficit and many of our economic problems, he points out.

His solution: Tax these food items to discourage consumption and use the proceeds to encourage better eating habits and subsidize the production of healthier foods. Sure the processed food industry and the Tea Partyers will scream, but the federal government exists to assure the common good. Reason and common sense will prevail, he writes.

If only it were so. We have a government and a political system so dysfunctional that one political party is about to purposely crash our economy to destroy its political opponents. The GOP has adopted an ideology as rigid and unrealistic as communism, the fantasy in the face of overwhelming countervailing evidence that markets solve all problems, budget reductions create jobs and tax cuts increase tax receipts.

The GOP's descent into un-reason and fairy tale reminds me of the late Soviet Union. Like the Soviets, the GOP is increasingly trapped by a failed ideology. Faced with failure, many Republicans, like the rotting Soviet hierarchy of the early 1980s, insist the solution is more of the same.

I give Bittman credit for trying. But until this fever of un-reason breaks his common sense ideas will go nowhere, and America will keep getting fatter and sicker.

Opening the Barn Door

2011-07-04T09:20:00.003-04:00

No more do I write a post saying that what's most interesting about Connecticut is often hidden than the Hartford Courant runs a piece about preserving historic barns in the state. I've lived her all my life, grew up in a rural town with many old barns, but had no idea Connecticut had such a rich, diverse and historic inventory of barns.

This is a fascinating article that illustrates the depth and diversity of Connecticut's agricultural heritage. Here's a link to the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation's historic barn project referenced in the article.

While the piece laments the loss of barns and farming, I am cautiously optimistic. I see a revival in micro-farming that is producing outstanding local vegetables and fruits, beef, eggs and poultry.

And there's another hidden Connecticut treasure. We have an increasing number of outstanding food producers.

Gripes, Grapes and Hidden Connecticut

2011-06-30T08:22:00.009-04:00

The lead on today's front page New York Times utterly miss-characterizes my native state:

"Think of Connecticut, and what comes to mind are the swells of Greenwich, the exurban good life of Litchfield County, the land of New England steady habits."

Volvos and Ralph Lauren, that's all we are. (sigh). The irony of this story is that the picture accompanying it undermines the lead. It's of the governor standing with mayors of three of the state's biggest cities, which are most certainly not bastions of high end Swedish cars and polo ponies.

This is the second time in less than week that I've been smacked in the face with false Connecticut stereotypes. Over the weekend, I attended a talk by the author Lisa See, and she told the audience how the first time she was going to come to Connecticut, she felt compelled to shop for an clothes specifically for her visit. The clear implication was that she needed to appear in a some sort of yachting outfit.

The joke fell flat.

Yes, parts of Connecticut do fit the image of mansions and bond traders. But much, if not most of the state is very blue collar and ethnic. Cities like New Haven, where I work, look more like Brooklyn than Brookfield. New Haven's schools, for example, enroll immigrants from more than 60 nations. Sorry, no polo ponies where I live. Just a lot of guys who speak fluent Fugitaboutit.

But in one sense this misconception is typical of the Nutmeg state. I've found over the years that most of what makes Connecticut interesting and unique is hidden or not widely known outside of its immediate area.

This is a food blog, so I'll cite as an example New Haven pizza or "apizza" as its locally called. The city has some of the best, oldest and most storied pizza restaurants in America. Ever hear of them? Probably not. It's always New York or Chicago that get all the ink.

The New Haven Register had another example earlier this week. It published an article about the a new book on the history of winemaking in Connecticut. Before Prohibition, there was a significant wine industry the state, which has revived in recent years. Some excellent wines are now produced in the state. Not a total surprise given that grapes are on the state flag.

Vineyards in Connecticut? Who would have thunk?

So the next time you think Connecticut is just people who curl their pinky when they drink tea, think again. If only we could get the Times to listen.

Gochujang: The Yeti of Asian Condiments

2011-06-15T22:25:00.009-04:00

Being a fan of Mark Bittman, I had to try several of his recipes in the New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago.

The Beef Bolgogi was stupendous, tangy and flavorful. I pretty much followed the recipe, although I was a little short of scallions. A thunderstorm forced me to stir fry instead of a grill, but it was still excellent.

The recommended dipping sauce, gochujang, turned out to be as elusive as a live Elvis. Indeed, I can't help wondering if Bittman wasn't playing a joke on readers, like an old salt sending greenhorns in search of a left-handed monkey wrench. I scoured Asian food markets high and low without success, eventually going to one that specialized in Korean food. Even they looked at me like I had two heads.

Ah, gochujang, the Yeti of Asian condiments. It lives, so they say, but no confirmed sightings yet.

I also tried the Korean potato salad. Not successful. After blanching, the shredded potatoes and carrots were dead tasteless. It was like eating string. The dressing made the dish edible, but I wouldn't make it again.

In fairness, I may have overcooked the potatoes and carrots, but I'm skeptical of this one. Maybe the secret travels with the legendary gochujang.

Leftover Strawberry Sauce

2011-06-13T08:26:00.003-04:00

It's strawberry season in Connecticut and the eating is stupendous. There's nothing like in season local strawberries: sweet, succulent and intensely flavorful. They put those tasteless rubber balls from Florida and California to shame.

Eating in season reminds you what makes a particular fruit or vegetable special. Corporate farming has provided us with year-round strawberries, but their taste is faint echo of the real thing. Yes, I buy them sometimes, but less and less. I'd rather wait for the real thing and savor it while it lasts.

With the season lasting three, four, at most five weeks, we gorge ourselves with strawberries this time of year. I hate to waste even a berry.

I was faced with that very prospect this weekend. I had a half basket left over from the previous week. They were on the verge, a little squishy, their favor fading. The solution: make a sauce-jam out of them.

I cleaned the berries, yielding a little under two cups, put them in a pot and crushed them lightly with fork. I added about an eighth of a cup of sugar and about a teaspoon of lemon, and put the heat on medium high. Once the berries released their juices, I turned to low for about 20 minutes.

The result was a not-to-sweet sauce with powerful strawberry flavor. My daughter and wife used most of it on the Norwegian pancakes they made for Sunday breakfast. My daughter finished the last few spoonfuls this morning at breakfast.

A Better Bon Appetit

2011-06-07T08:12:00.006-04:00

My new Bon Appetit magazine arrived in the mail the other day. I'm one of those Gourmet readers who got stuck with Bon Appetite when Gourmet closed a few years ago. The recipes were never as interesting or as good. I missed the lush photography and gauzy prose that made you want to jump in a car or hop on a plane to whatever food destination was profiled that month.

But two issues ago, the magazine suddenly got a lot better. In fact, it became more like Gourmet only more down to earth and less dreamy. The latest is especially good with some fantastic recipes I tried over the weekend.

I strongly recommend this one for a cucumber and tomato salad. A new farm I discovered had cucumbers and another farm I visit was selling pretty good Maine hothouse tomatoes. I topped it off with Greek Feta that I bought from the local Italian food shop. Bellissimo! The dressing actually came out well, which I find is rare.

I tried this pasta recipe from last month's issue. Again, very, very good. The cherry tomatoes were not the best, but they still had great flavor. I love the tip about using pasta water in the sauce. I skimped a little on the cheese, which I recommend against. The cheese is key.

What an irony. They kill off Gourmet and then a year or two later begin turning Bon Appetite into Gourmet. Another example of corporate brilliance.

Apocalypse Now Dinner

2011-05-27T08:19:00.003-04:00

It was the Ride of the Valkyrie earlier this week, you know, the music they played when Col. Kilgore destroyed the village in "Apocalypse Now."

I had 30 minutes to prepare dinner and nothing defrosted. I did have chicken breasts that I'd poached the day before. I've made a recipe with poached chicken breasts, but didn't have most of the ingredients.

It was time to innovate. I felt like a contestant on Food Network's "Chopped."

I put on some rice (21 minutes) and cut broccoli crowns. I set the broccoli to steam for four minutes, about half our usual cooking time (my wife and daughter like broccoli very soft). I then julienned carrots and a red pepper. As I did so, I heated about two tablespoons of canola oil in my big, all-purpose pan.

As the pan heated, I measured about about a quarter cup of chicken broth, a tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine (dry sherry works as well) and a tablespoon of oyster sauce. I then sliced the chicken breasts into thin, approximate one inch squares.

When the pan was very hot, I dumped in all the vegetables. I stir-fried for about four minutes. The broccoli soften too much and started shedding its tops, so I couldn't stir-fry long enough to get a deep char on the vegies.

Once the vegies were soft and a little blackened, I dumped in the liquids, brought to a boil and added the chicken. I stir-fried about a minute, added salt and pepper and served.

Not the best or worst dish I've ever made. All in all, pretty good.

If I did it again, I'd steam the broccoli for a shorter period, maybe two minutes, so I could get vegetables blacker and perhaps add some sliced or minced garlic to the vegetables.

Requiem for a Friend

2011-05-16T21:27:00.007-04:00

I found out about a week ago that Rick Lewis, the man who taught me more about wine than anyone I've known, died in March.

Rick was an amiable South African chemist who ran the Madison Wine Shop in Madison, Ct. Every Saturday, he held court at the back of his store, a huge grin across his face and as many as a dozen bottles of wine open before him ready for tasting. His one rule, an indeed a good one, was that you had to try everything.

What I loved about Rick was his lack of pretension. He firmly believed that a good wine could be had for $15 or less. He wasn't your stereotypical wine snob, looking down his nose at those who lacked his knowledge and expertise. He was the opposite, always eager to educate, always joyful to mint a new oenophile.

My wife and I loved his Rick's Picks newsletter, which was chock-o-blocked with unusual and interesting varieties. He introduced us to Argentine Malbecs, New Zealand whites, French Roses and Austrian dessert wines.

Here is one of the first wines we sampled at a Rick's tasting and still love:

And it's only $7.99, a steal. A little fizzy, it goes great with spicy food. I recall Rick recounting how he drank it for the first time with a spicy meal in Portuguese East Africa, today Mozambique, in about 1946. The label had not changed since, he said.

I will miss Rick tremendously. Here's to you Rick. If there's an afterlife, I hope you get to spend it tasting wine.

Upton Sinclair, Eco-Terrorist

2011-04-27T07:42:00.006-04:00

I'll never forget the putrid filth portrayed in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Even 30-plus years after reading the book, I recall the description of a digit (or was it a limb?) going into the meat grinder and coming out as sausage.

Thank God this is all in the past, I thought when I read the book in high school in the 1970s.

Or not. The Jungle is making a comeback. Eggs that make you sick, hamburger made of pink slime, chicken unfit for human consumption, we read about it every day. If some state legislators have their way, we won't read about it any more. And anyone who exposes those conditions will be arrested and branded a criminal.

The New York Times today reports in an editorial that lawmakers in several agricultural states want to outlaw undercover video of abusive and unsanitary farm practices. Some have even gone so far as to call those who make such videos "eco-terrorists."

So if we know the truth about factory farming, the terrorists win.

I mean really. Is this what we've come to? Do we want to eviscerate the First Amendment to protect agribusinesses' right to poison us? As the editorial rightly points out, the only purpose of these bills is hide production of putrid and unwholesome food.

I guess Upton Sinclair had it all wrong. He was really just an eco-terrorist. Creation of FDA, laws prohibiting adulterated food, government inspections of meat packing plants, all bad ideas.

I'm not sure what to say. Is this really what where we want to go? Make ourselves sick to enrich a tiny group of agribusiness executives?

Sometimes I think we've gone insane.

Wealthy Memories

2011-04-19T22:18:00.004-04:00

My parents came for dinner last weekend, and the discussion turned to Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." I have blogged about this hugely important book before. I find the book especially interesting because my mother is from the part of Iowa Pollan profiles in the first section. She grew up during the 1930s and 1940s on a small, mostly subsistence farm (My grandfather was plumber who owned about 5 acres and periodically farmed another 80 or so he rented).

Pollan contrasted today's monoculture of corn and soybeans with the diversity of my mother's era when Iowa farms grew all sorts of fruits and vegetables and kept a menagerie of farm animals. After describing Pollan's book, I quizzed my mother on what the fruit our family grew when she was a child.

Four varieties of apples, she said. The only type she could remember were Wealthy, which she called a good eating apple. The Internet tells me that Wealthy apples were bred in the 19th century by the famous apple breeder Peter Gideon to survive Minnesota's harsh climate. I'm very curious if they still widely available in Iowa and Minnesota, but came up empty which leads me to suspect they rare today.

Then there were strawberries, huckleberries and currants. My mother didn't much care for the huckleberries, which I have never eaten. All this on five acres where they also grew corn, beans and had a cow, geese, chickens and pigs.

Today, it's all gone. Iowa farms are industrial operations that grow corn, soybeans and hogs for agribusiness. In the space of my mother's lifetime, our agricultural system has been transformed beyond recognition.

Champagne Puttanesca

2011-04-17T10:49:00.008-04:00

I was making a puttanesca sauce last week when I suddenly realized I had no white wine, a key ingredient. The wine adds tang, balancing out the bite and saltiness of anchovies.

Crisis. What can I replace it with? I looked at my various vinegars (we're adding "acid" as they love to say on Food Network), but they were all too powerful.

I opened the fridge and perused. My eyes fell on a bottle of cheap Champagne that had been in there since God knows when. If it's not too sweet, it'll work, I thought. I took out the bottle, opened it and tasted: nice and dry.

I dumped it into the cooked-down onions, anchovies and garlic, brought to a boil and added the hand-crushed tomatoes. It worked brilliantly, even adding an extra tang to the sauce.

Not something I'd recommend doing with Moet, but it worked.

A Salty Tale

2011-04-16T08:59:00.002-04:00

"Lightly Salted" said the package of Roll Gold pretzels. Great. Always a good idea to cut down on salt, even though it's not a problem for me. So I tried them, and they did indeed taste less salty.

A few weeks later, the store was out of those pretzels. I began reading labels to find a replacement and discovered that Synder's Old Tyme had almost half the salt per serving as the "Lightly Salted" Roll Golds, 5 versus 9 percent of the daily recommendation.

What's up with that?

A few weeks later, the "Lightly Salted" Roll Golds were back in the store so I compared labels. The Roll Gold "Lightly Salted" have 9 percent of the daily recommended salt intake per 28 grams and the Synder's Old Tyme 5 percent per 30 grams. So the "regular" Old Tyme pretzels have about half the sodium per serving as the "lightly salted" Roll Gold.

Once again, your federal government working hand in glove with Big Food to fool you.

From now on, I'll be reading food labels with more than a grain of salt.

23 Percent

2011-04-07T20:34:00.002-04:00

That's how much the average American's calorie intake has increased since 1970, according to this fascinating graphic. No wonder we're blowing up like zeppelins. Let's hope we don't all end up like the Graf Zeppelin and blow up over New Jersey.

You can play with a moving bar on the graphic showing what parts of the American diet have increased and decreased over time. The biggest increases: sugar and fat. No surprise there.

I saw a photo not along ago from the early 1950s of a housewife surrounded by the groceries she purchased in a year. What a contrast if we did that today. Instead of eggs, flour, sugar, vegies and meat, she would be encased in fast food, pizzas, frozen dinners, and all manner of processed snacks, desserts, you name it.

A revolution brought to you by Big Food.

Onion Soup Revealed

2011-03-27T12:40:00.005-04:00

I've never been a big fan of French onion soup. The layer of cheese was always too viscous and the onion pieces too thick and the taste too raw oniony.

A few weeks ago, friends served us a homemade version. Wow. What a revelation. The onions were beautifully rendered so that they were sweet but retained a subtle onion flavor. Instead of a brick of cheese, they topped the soup with toasted bread with a thin layer of Swiss cheese. The toast was placed in the bowl and soup ladled onto it, melting the cheese. A spectacular dish.

We asked for the recipe and for the third Sunday in a row, I'm making it for lunch.

Here is the recipe with some tweaks by me.

6 to 8 onions sliced thin

3 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons olive oil (the original called for 4 tablespoons of butter. I'm trying steadily less butter to see how much difference it makes).

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup of all purpose flour

4 cups homemade or low sodium chicken broth

4 cups homemade or low sodium beef broth

Rustic bread such as ciabatta

Slices of Swiss cheese

Melt the butter and heat the olive oil in a large pot over a low-medium heat. Once hot, add the sliced onions. It looks like a lot, but hold the phone. They will reduce by three-quarters or more.

Cover and saute the onions over a low-medium heat (I did a little over 3 on my electric stove. Keep in mind every stove and very pot is different) for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. Do not allow to brown or burn.

Remove the cover, stir in salt and sugar and set temperature to low (A little over 1 on my stove). Saute without the lid for 90 minutes to 2 hours. As you near the end of the saute time, heat the broths in a separate pot.

When the 90 minutes to 2 hours are up, add 1/4 cup flour and stir continuously for 5 minutes. Then add the broths and simmer 45 minutes.

Toast bread, top with a slice of Swiss cheese, place in a bowl and pour in soup.

A fantastic dish and easy, easy, easy to make. It's just as good the second and third days, and it's a great use for old, good quality bread. This is a superb example of making something really fantastic with very simple ingedients.

A huge winner.

Kicking Butz

2011-03-06T15:53:00.010-05:00

Earl Butz, Richard Nixon's secretary of Agriculture, more than any one individual sparked creation of our current corporate-dominated food system.

Food prices spiked in the early 1970s, making them a political issue. I still remember the meat boycott of the early 1970s. Someone organized a nationwide meatless week to protest soaring prices. I remember my family eagerly signing up -- until we actually had to forgo meat for a week. We stuck to it, but it was a pretty bland and joyless week of eating.

In response, Butz introduced policies encouraging farmers to "get big or get out," undermining the family farm and encouraging the planting of commodity crops like corn fence row to fence row. That created the artificial corn and soybean surpluses which fed the explosion of agribusiness and processed food that in turn degraded our diet and jump-started our obesity epidemic.

All in day's work.

That said, like Dr. Frankenstein, Butz probably thought he was doing the right thing only to see his creation turn into a monster.

Fixing what Earl messed up is the goal of young Oregon farmers profiled in a fascinating New York Times article today. There's so much here to unpack. I will try:

YOUNG IDEALISTIC FARMERS: These young people are looking to farm the old fashioned way in rebellion against Butz's Get Huge-commodity crop philosophy, which at least theoretically ought to be the future. Our agricultural system has become so big farm-orientated, they can't find the equipment. They have to buy antique tractors because new ones are too large.

Can we really go back to this? Probably not completely. But any movement in this direction, anything that fights processed food and agribusiness is a good thing.

Even better, here are young people defining success and personal satisfaction in terms other material goods or money. That is a great thing.

LOST KNOWLEDGE: The article talks about how older farmers have forgotten basic skills and techniques. The youngsters have to search out and revive farming methods and knowledge plowed under by agribusiness.

You see the same thing in cooking. Families have forgotten how to cook basic things like mashed potatoes, cookies and pies.

I hate to be cynical, but whether Big Food did it on purpose or not, this serves their interests. If farmers don't know to farm, they are more dependent on agribusiness. If people don't how to cook, they buy mashed potatoes in a bag.

THE GRANGE: This group of young farmers has breathed new life into the local Grange as part of their effort to re-energize and reform farming.

The Grange was founded in the 19th century by small farmers fighting railroad and other monopolists who were threatening their way of life. It was key cog in the Populist Movement that helped lead the fight against moneyed power during the first Gilded Age.

How appropriate that these farmers are reviving the Grange as we try to fight our way of the second Gilded Age.

CORVALIS, OREGON: The farmers are near this town. I've never been there, but one of my friends when I lived in Reno almost 30 years ago had gone to college there and never tired of talking about what a special place it was. I'm happy to see it still is.

Hot Toddy in the Old Town

2011-03-05T18:41:00.006-05:00

What is a hot toddy anyway? The words conjure up southern gentlemen in seersucker sipping drinks on a veranda with Spanish moss-bedecked trees in the background. Or an elderly tippler assuring all that her ample intake is "strictly for medicinal purposes."

That medicinal purposes, it turns out, isn't bunk after all. My wife is suffering through a cold and having entered the coughing stage needed cough medicine. She sent me into the night for something with honey. I returned Robitussin. No good she said. Plus, I read the label. Your standard corporate witch's brew.

On the advice of Facebook friends, she decided try a home remedy, the fabled hot toddy. I returned the Robitussin and bought the key ingredient, honey. After reading several online recipes, she settled on on this one:

Heat 1 cup hot water and mix in 1 shot (she used brandy) with 1 tablespoon honey. Cut a slice of lemon and squeeze the rest into the mixture. Drop the lemon slice into the liquid. Cool a little, but be sure to drink hot.

It worked. She barely coughed all night. And I must say, having taken a nip, it was mighty tasty as well.

Apple of My Eye

2011-03-04T07:36:00.002-05:00

I love apples. They've been one of my favorite foods since I was a kid. I used to eat an apple-cut-up-and-peeled each night before going to sleep. Part of my ritual was to drop the plastic bowl on the floor, producing a loud bang. With that, my parents knew I was going to sleep.

But apples -- like so much in our society -- have been commodified down to a few varieties chosen not for taste, but storage life and ease of production and transportation. As a result, one of the most diverse foods on earth has been reduced to only a dozen or fewer commonly available varieties.

The taste of even those has deteriorated over time. I remember the Red Delicious from the 1970s. They were outstanding, sweet and tasty. Over time, their appearance became ever more uniform and appealing -- bright red skin, perfectly proportioned shape -- but their taste all but vanished. Today, I find them inedible. They are a metaphor for so much in America today: Looks beautiful, but lacks substance and integrity.

So it was with immense interest and pleasure that I read an article in yesterday's New York Times about Creighton Lee Calhoun Jr. who has dedicated his life to saving and reviving antique apple varieties. It's fascinating and I strongly recommend apple lovers read it.

I recently read a book my father gave me called "Cornered" about the stealth monopolization of most of our economy by a few big corporations. The author questions the fetish of "efficiency," arguing that the most "efficient" approach often leads to job destruction, dangerous over- dependence on one or two sources and loss of variety and choice.

Apples are an excellent example of the perils of "efficiency.". According to the Times article, there were 16,000 varieties of apples in the late 19th century in the United States. Today, there are 3,000 only a handful of which are widely available. Are we better off?

Obviously, we're not going back to 1895, nor would we want to. And de-centralizing apple production would mean higher costs. But it would also mean more variety, better taste and more jobs, especially the type that have real meaning and worth for those doing them and society at large.

Mouthwashing our Taste Buds

2011-02-27T10:51:00.005-05:00

A great column today on a new study linking diet soda to an increased risk of stroke.

The author makes the larger point that consumers, doctors and diet gurus avoid the core problem: We are addicted to sweetened drinks. Instead of suggesting that overweight people drink water or unsweetened beverages like tea, they tell them to switch to diet soda, an unholy concoction of chemicals and artificial coloring.

The author writes:

"The proliferation of diet soda cuts to the core of what's wrong with the Western diet. The Western approach is to remove the most obvious dangers from an unhealthy habit — in this case, removing the 12 teaspoons of sugar per can of fizzy water laced with acids, colors and flavors of uncertain origin — so that we can continue that habit in denial of other dangers.
"The underlying problem is that we are addicted to sugar; beverages without a sweetener now seem bland. For the first million years or so of pre-human and human existence, water was adequate to quench our thirst. But apparently no longer."

Let me be clear: I am not anti-sugar or even anti-sugary drinks, although I confine my consumption to stuff made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. I love Foxon Park Soda, which still uses sugar and is ironically much less sweet than big brand sodas. But everything in moderation. All you drink doesn't have to be sweet.

Yet another example of how Big Food has mouthwashed our taste buds. Fight the power. Drink unsweetened beverages!

How to Boil an Egg

2011-02-21T13:08:00.002-05:00

Sounds easy. It's actually pretty tricky. I've been perfecting my technique for years.

My wife loves egg salad so I hard-boil a lot of eggs. She's often had problems shelling my hard-boiled eggs: the shards stick to the white.

So I checked some cookbooks and found a tip. Don't put the eggs in water and boil. Instead, bring the water to a simmer and lower the eggs into the water. The first time I tried it I made the mistake of dropping the ovals into the water. Bombs away! You guessed it. They cracked, bleeding white and clouding the water with rubbery wisps.

I tried again, this time using a small soup ladle to lower the eggs into the simmering water. This worked perfectly. After about 13 minutes (my wife likes her eggs pretty hard), they were perfect. And the shell no longer stuck.

I was egg-static.

"It's Our Secret"

2011-02-04T09:03:00.004-05:00

Mmmm! Doesn't that look good!

Lewis Black was in a rare form a few nights ago on the Taco Bell meat lawsuit. As he says, when an old Italian lady tells you what's in her homemade marinara is a secret, that's okay. But when a billion dollar food conglomerate says the contents of of its "beef" are classified, that's a problem.

Watch the whole thing. Hilarious.

That said, I'm somewhat skeptical of this lawsuit because it was brought by class action lawyers. Those are the guys who send you occasional post cards telling you riches await if you just sign on as a plaintiff to their lawsuit. When ka-ching time comes, they get tens of millions, and you get a check for 50 cents.

Still, what these lawyers allege -- just 36 percent of the "meat" in a Taco Bell taco is meat -- is disturbing. Disturbing, but not surprising. I mean, let's get real guys. It's Taco Hell. What do you expect?

The Food Manifesto

2011-02-02T20:45:00.005-05:00

I was deeply disappointed to read Mark Bittman's farewell "Minimalist" column last week, but consoled that he would begin a new column focused on government food policy, agricultural subsidies, agribusiness, obesity and the politics of food -- the high cost of cheap food, if you will.

His inaugural column in today's Times hit it out of the park. In 600 or 700 words, he sums up the problems with our food system and offers common sense solutions.

Only one problem. This system has made certain companies -- ConAgra, Cargill, ADM -- fabulously wealthy and powerful. And they will fight a Stalingrad-like, scorched earth battle to defend government policies and subsidies that have made them richer than Midas.

I found it ironic that today's Times also had a story about the FDA denying approval for a anti-obesity drug, prompting some experts to warn "that the action could further discourage, or even kill, efforts by pharmaceutical companies to develop medicines for obesity, one of the nation’s largest health problems."

Let me get this straight. First, federal policies encourage agribusiness to flood America with cheap, unhealthy, fattening processed food, helping create an obesity epidemic. The solution to this crisis isn't to change the policies that created it -- heavens no. The solution is to have a second set of corporations create drugs to "treat" obesity. So pharmaceutical companies get to make a fortune "curing" the obesity crisis that the food industry created -- all at government expense (Medicare and Medicaid would be huge buyers of such drugs). Everybody wins -- except you and me.

This is capitalism? Sounds more like corporate socialism to me. When the tea partiers start to complain about stuff like this, I'll believe they are a genuine movement instead of a bunch of shills and dupes.

Baking Fool

2011-02-01T15:57:00.008-05:00

Yet another snow day today, so I spent the morning baking. I started with the potato rosemary bread above. The potato imparts a silky smooth texture, while the rosemary gives a cool kick, just right for a midwinter's day.

Here's the recipe:

2 3/4 cups flour
1/4 cup mashed potato
1 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary or to taste
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1 to 1 1/4 cups warm water.

Mix the dry ingredients, add mashed potato, water and olive oil and form into a ball. Kneed for about 10 minutes adjusting flour so the dough is tacky, but not sticky. Once the dough is elastic and smooth, form into a ball, put into an oiled bowl, cover and let rise until doubled, an hour to 90 minutes.

Next, remove the dough onto a lightly floured counter and punch down. Shape dough as best you can into a rectangle and using the back of your hand press it out to about half inch thickness retaining the rectangular shape as much as possible. Then roll the dough into a loaf and put in an oiled pan. Let rise until the dough crests or nearly crests over the top of the pan, an hour to 90 minutes.

Just before baking, paint about a tablespoon of olive oil on the top. Bake 30 to 35 minutes in a preheated 400 degree F oven.

As the bread rose, I made spice muffins. Not too sweet, but exploding with flavor. It's like a spice party in your mouth. And good for you. My wife eats them for breakfast:

This recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything."

1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup of sugar or to taste
1/4 to 1/2 cup raisins (organic if possible. Makes a difference) or to taste
1/4 to 1/2 cup unsalted sunflower seeds (toasted or raw) or to taste
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of ground clove
1 cup of 1 percent milk or full milk if you prefer
1 egg
3 tablespoons of canola oil or other fat. If using meltedbutter, cool before adding so as not to cook egg

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Mix the dry ingredients. Add canola oil and egg to milk and whisk until well combined. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in liquid. Carefully fold the dry ingredients into the liquid, rotating bowl as you go. Do not over mix. You want it lumpy and just hydrated.

Grease a 12 cup muffin tin and dollop in about 1/4 cup of dough into each cup handling the mixture as little as possible. Put in oven for 20 minutes. Cool on a rack.

After the muffins came out, I figured what the heck, let's keep going. I need bagels too. Chewy, dense and flavorful. The raisins suffuse the roundels with a sweetness that compliments the cinnamon kick. I eat one every morning for breakfast:

Here's a link to my recipe for cinnamon raisin bagels.

For all you Zappa fans, you guessed right. This was my inspiration for this post's title.

Citrus Pies

2011-01-26T11:27:00.007-05:00

We are in a deep freeze up here in Connecticut. The temperature has barely peaked above freezing since New Year's, and we've been inundated with snow. More than a foot fell about two weeks ago, and it's still here, plus another three or four inches. They're predicting six to 10 more today.

For all you global warming deniers, sadly no (FYI, this newspaper is the most conservative in Britain). In fact, colder, snowier winters in places like New England and the UK are in line with global warming scenarios.

So how to liven the spirits in the midst of whiteout? How about a blast of citrus! Lemons and key limes evoke swaying palm trees, balmy temperatures, sunglasses and bikinis on the beach.

With this in mind, I made a key lime and a lemon meringue pie in the last week. A bag of key limes was just $1.99 in the supermarket. It took the entire bag to get the required 1/3rd of a cup of juice. I had to resqueeze the entire lot coaxing out every last drop.

The result was excellent, although I over-whipped the meringue. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture.

Pictured above is my attempt at lemon meringue pie, the first I've ever made. Not as good. I used a regular pie crust and in spite of weighing it down with beans, it lifted off the pie plate during the pre-bake. The crust was okay, but turned stale quickly. I'd do a graham cracker next time.

Both recipes were from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything," but formulas for both pies are pretty standard and any good food website will have them.

For both pies, I was confounded as to what qualifies as "stiff" or "nearly stiff" egg whites. Both times I went too far.

This video answered my questions. Should have watched before I whipped. Duh!

Rise, Rise, Rise, Let it Rise

2011-01-20T10:42:00.006-05:00

This is what I should have titled this post.

For all you other children of the 1970s, here is the inspiration. Bachman-Turner Overdrive throwing it into fifth.

A Grain of Salt

2011-01-20T10:11:00.008-05:00

Wal-Mart is announcing today that over the next five years it will reduce sodium and transfat in foods it sells as well as lower prices for healthier foods and open more stores in low income areas.

I take it all with a grain of salt. These are at best baby steps, and five years is a long time.

The New York Times article correctly points out that reducing sodium is the biggest challenge because it alters taste. I can personally attest to that. Over the last year, we have significantly reduced our salt intake. For example, I now buy low salt crackers and unsalted peanuts. At first, they seemed tasteless. But over time, I found that one's taste buds adjust and you start to actually taste what you are eating. The wheat flavor of the crackers and the natural taste of peanuts were a revelation. If I eat a regular cracker now, all I taste is salt.

Which is why Big Food uses mountains of the stuff. Dump in enough sodium and asphalt will taste good.

I'm glad Wal-Mart has agreed to make its food healthier, but we are still just eating at the corners of the problem. The best way to reduce sodium and transfat is to cook at home so you control what goes into what you eat. It's also cheaper. I'm skeptical whether Con-Agra or Wal-Mart's business models, which depend on selling value-added, highly processed food, can be part of that solution.

But Rome wasn't built in a day. As incremental as this is, it's still a step forward. Let's hope this is only the start.

Let it Rise

2011-01-18T08:40:00.005-05:00

I've been tinkering with my bagel recipe. My basic formula works, but I've grown increasingly dissatisfied with the flavor and texture.

So I decided to let my dough rise before forming into bagels. I figured two hours, but after about 90 minutes the mass had doubled in size and threatened to rip the plastic wrap from the bowl. I punched it down, cut it into pieces and formed bagels. I was going to make them then and there except that a TV show I wanted to watch was about to start. So I spritzed the tops with spray oil, covered with plastic wrap and stuck the rounds into the fridge.

As I've written before, I'm not crazy about the overnight retard (or should I say, developmental disable) in many bagel recipes. It makes the bagels too airy for my taste. But an hour or two? I figured that might produce a less dense but still chewy interior and more taste.

After about two hours, I took the bagels out of the fridge, did a boil and shoved them in the oven. I also put a pan of water on a rack at the top of the oven to encourage a crispier crust.

Oddly, the bagels took longer to bake, perhaps because they were cold when they went into the boil, about 25 to 30 minutes instead of the usual 20.

The result was superior. The bagels had a hard crust as opposed to relatively soft outside from my earlier recipe. They had better flavor and a lighter, but still chewy inside.

In sum: Let the dough rise until it doubles and then retard in the fridge for about two hours. I suspect a slightly longer retard -- say three hours -- might produce and an even better bagel. The key, at least to my taste, is producing more flavor while not allowing the insides to get too fluffy.

Sandwich Innovation

2011-01-16T08:54:00.003-05:00

My daughter, confronting a somewhat empty fridge, decided last week to make herself a sandwich. Sounds like no big deal, except that she doesn't eat sandwiches. With a few exceptions -- garlic bread, very good French bread, crispy pizza crust -- she's not a bread eater.

Rummaging around the kitchen, she found Italian bread and buttered and toasted it. She then mixed leftover roast chicken with scallions, salt and pepper and spread it on the bread. Finally, she shaved Peccorino Romano cheese and layered the windowpane slices onto the chicken mixture.

She gave me a bite. It was excellent.

Julie and Julia Revisited

2011-01-14T09:53:00.007-05:00

I loved this movie. All three of us did. So of course we watched when it was on last night. It was like ordering delicious dish you've had before. Just as tasty, although missing the delight of discovery.

On second viewing, I was struck by the stark contrasts between Julie and Julia, contrasts that illustrate how society has changed in the last 60 years. Julia's ambition is to cook and write. Her goal is to excel, to impart the knowledge she has acquired and to please those who eat her food. A $250 advance excites her. Simply holding the finished book in her hands is a moment of profound happiness and satisfaction. She laughs at the idea of being on TV.

Julie clearly has a passion for food, but her goal from the start is "success," which in today's America means fame and money. Julia Child's cookbook is a vessel into which she pours all her dreams, ambitions and anxieties. Her project is less an end in and of itself than a means for self-expression, self-fulfillment and -- I don't want to be too harsh, but let's be honest -- self-aggrandizement. In spite of her insecurities and meltdowns, she believes she's special. If her husband told her she should be on TV, she would dismiss it, but more in the manner of "Deep down, I agree, so please telling me over and over."

Her husband observes that blogging is all about her, her, her and laments how the project has come to consume and define their lives. Paul, by contrast, takes pleasure and pride in her wife's commitment to excellence -- an excellence that is a form of love he partakes of every day.

The movie glosses over these differences, wanting to portray both women on parallel journeys of self discovery. But Julia and Julie are actually on different paths. Julia's goal is to master an art. Julie's is to be famous.

I'm being a little unfair. Both women are products of their times. I still think this is a great movie, and I admire Julie for cooking all the recipes in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." But the film also unwittingly highlights how our society has gone from extolling mastery of a subject, skill or craft to extolling the use of such things to acquire fame and money.

Lentils and Rice

2011-01-11T13:42:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, I made the lentils and rice recipe accompanying Mark Bittman's recent New York Times op-ed. It was, at best, a modest success.

The recipe has shortcomings, beginning with the instruction to use "a large saucepan." Scratch that. You need a big pot. I started with a medium-to-large saucepan, and soon realized it was too small. The vegies and pancetta didn't brown enough because there wasn't enough cooking surface.

I thought I'd get away with the smaller saucepan until I added the lentils. They with the other contents filled the vessel more than halfway. I knew the lentils would double in size, exploding the lid off the saucepan. I had no choice but to transfer to a large pot, costing me significant flavor.

Another problem was Bittman's vague instructions on heat levels. I guessed a low boil and covered. I figured 30 minutes, adding a cup of white rice (I'm not a brown rice fan. Tastes like straw to me) after 10 minutes. A half hour passed and I tasted: a little crunchy, although most of the liquid had been absorbed. In short, the heat was too high.

I lowered the temperature, added a cup of water and cooked another 10 minutes. Still a touch hard, so I repeated. Another 10 minutes and it was done.

The result was not bad, if a little bland. I went too easy on the salt on the assumption the pancetta would provide seasoning. It didn't, although that may be because I had to transfer to another cooking vessel. I would add salt and try bacon next time.

On the upside, the yield was huge, easily seven to eight servings, it reheats well and it's filling. If you are looking for a cheap, nutritious lunch, this is your ticket.

In sum: use a larger pot, add a generous amount of salt and simmer instead of boil.

Stirring the Pot

2011-01-10T11:19:00.007-05:00

How many times has this happened to you? You have a pot. You need to stir. But you also need to chop, peel or bash. Or the cat wants in. Or the kids are fighting in the family room. What's a cook to do?

Here's your solution: the Autonomous Stirrer. Check out this video. I love the stirring music (sorry, couldn't resist the pun) more appropriate for a moon landing or a Lombardi-era Packers tribute film.

I saw this advertised on TV the other night and was a agog. Could they really be serious? Does anyone really this? Plus, the thing looks like the lunar lander, only creepier. Its rhythmic, automatic oscillation was Hal9000ish (I'm sorry Chris, but I can't let you stop stirring now. This sauce is too important for me to let you intervene).

That said, I don't make a lot of sauces, except tomato ones that require little stirring. And the reviews are actually pretty positive.

So who knows, if you make a lot of sauces, this gadget may be for you.

Devilishly Delicious

2011-01-05T10:13:00.004-05:00

Breakfast has always been a struggle for my daughter. She has to have it. We insist. But she just doesn't like traditional breakfast foods.

Over the years, I have fed her everything from baked potatoes (nuked in the microwave) to rice with soy sauce to spaghetti (one of her favorites any time of day). None of them have been a big hit.

Which brings me to Eggs in Purgatory. Sounds ominous. Are they eggs that have sinned too much to go to heaven, but not enough not to go to hell? How could an egg sin? Shattering on impact? Having a too runny or too hard a yoke?

None of the above. Eggs in Purgatory is an Italian-American dish consisting of hand-crushed canned tomatoes, onions, salt, red pepper flakes, eggs and Peccorino Romano or Parmesan cheese. This is classic Italian-American cooking: simple, cheap and delicious.

I'd never made it until Thanksgiving eve when we needed a snack. I pulled out a recipe, threw it together and gave it to my daughter. She loved it. Couldn't get enough of it. Demanded more.

I agree. It's a great dish, eggs poached in a tangy tomato sauce with a little cheese on top. If St. Peter tasted this, he'd go right to heaven.

Since then, it has become her preferred breakfast. She eats it most mornings before school, scarfing down every bite.

Here's the recipe:

A tablespoon or two of olive oil
A quarter of a medium onion chopped into small to medium pieces
About 3/4rds of a cup of hand-crushed canned tomatoes (I recommend imported Italian)
A pinch of salt and red pepper flakes
Two eggs
Peccorino Romano or Parmesan cheese

Heat the oil in a small pan on medium low to medium, depending on your stove. When hot, saute onions until soft, but not brown -- about four minutes. Add tomatoes and simmer for 10 minutes. Crack eggs into the tomatoes, turn down heat slightly and cover for three and a half to four minutes depending on how soft you like your yokes. Remove from the heat, grate on cheese and serve.

200 Posts

2011-01-05T10:10:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was my 200th post since starting this blog two years ago. Thank you to my loyal readers, few though you may be.

Yes You Can

2011-01-04T10:05:00.005-05:00

If the average Americans spends 35 hours a week watching TV, he or she has time to cook.

That's the message of Mark Bittman's Sunday New York Times op-ed in which he dismantles the standard excuses for not cooking (no time, too expensive, too much bother). To illustrate his point, he provides three simple recipes (see links in a box on the left side of the article) that can serve as the basis for an endless variety of quickly prepared dishes.

Who tells Americans they have no time to cook? Big Food. It's a common theme in their advertising. We'll do for you! In doing so, they addict consumers to overpriced, over-salted, fatty food containing a lab's worth of unpronounceable chemicals.

Yes you can cook at home. It's cheaper, healthier and tastes better.

Blackout Cardamon Bread

2011-01-01T09:45:00.006-05:00

I read somewhere that culinary innovations often result from accidents or mistakes. I had just such an experience last week.

At about 9:30 last Sunday night, in the midst of the worst blizzard in recent memory, our power went out. With the wind gusting up to 50 miles an hour, it was clear that the electricity wasn't coming back on any time soon.

What to do with the cardamon bread that I'd lovingly mixed, kneaded, braided, allowed to rise and was about to put into the preheated oven? Lost cause, I figured, casualty of the storm.

Then it hit me. It was all of 25 degrees outside, well below freezing. Put the dough outside and see what happens. So I packaged the loaf in plastic wrap and tin foil, opened the back door and tossed the bread into the snow.

There it sat for the next 18 hours. Yes, that's how long it took to get power back. With our furnce disabled, the temperature inside the house plunged to 47 degrees. We wrapped ourselves in triple layers of clothing and fled under the blankets in a losing battle to stay warm. After multiple calls to the utility and a plea to the First Selectman's office, power was finally restored around 3 p.m.

With the house slowly reheating, I retrieved the cardamon bread, now buried in snow. Amazingly, it was not entirely frozen. I heated the oven and put in the half-thawed bread.

The result: the best loaf I've ever made. The bread was fluffier, but still pleasantly dense with a richer, deeper flavor. My guess is retarding the rise made all the difference.

Clearly, freezing or putting the dough in the fridge overnight develops greater flavor and texture. I will have to try both methods. At least the blackout was good for something.

Steve-o Goes Vegan

2010-10-11T09:29:00.003-04:00

The New York Times had a story this Sunday about Steve-o of Jackass fame's new-found healthy lifestyle. A little hard to take from a guy who once shoved a hook through his check and threw himself into the ocean as shark bait.

Steve-o has not only forsworn drugs and alcohol, he's gone vegan. I can understand giving up substance abuse, but also forgoing all animal products, including eggs and cheese? Seems a little over the top, but I guess that's what Steve-o is all about. Maybe in Jackass III he'll consume a vegan feast and then try not to go to the bathroom for a week.

Seriously Steve-o, I hope you stay sober. But lighten up, dude, and have a slice of cheese. Plus, you'll need that steak for your eye after your latest stunt.

Hang' em High

2010-10-10T10:52:00.005-04:00

This summer, I discovered hanger steak. My butcher pointed to sinewy, marbled slabs that looked like they'd been hacked off the carcass with wild swings of a dull machete. Fantastic, he said.

I was skeptical, but decided to give it try. Boy, was he right. Two turns on a very hot grill transforms ugly duckling cut into a swan of steak: succulent, tender and tasty.

I improvised a rub that works beautifully: salt, pepper, minced garlic and chopped basil. Paint the cuts with olive oil and rub into the meat. No need to marinate. You can apply right before grilling.

FYI, the cuts tend to be thin so they cook quickly, about three minutes a side for rare, about a minute longer for medium rare. As always, use your judgment. Rest 5 minutes, 10 if possible, before serving (I wrap in tin foil to keep it warm).

We had what was probably our last hanger steak grill of the year last night. Superb.

LaChoy Makes Chinese Food . . . .

2010-10-06T08:39:00.005-04:00

My family recently visited the newly opened Museum of Chinese in America in New York City. It's excellent, chronicling the history of the Chinese in America from the California Gold Rush through the exclusion era and into today.

One of the more interesting sections was on Chinese food in America. For most of American history, Chinese couldn't own land and were formally or informally excluded from many businesses and professions. Restaurants, along with laundries, were one of the few businesses open to them.

Of course, the food they served often had only tenuous connections to China. Chop Suey, for example, was invented in the United States. Chinese restaurants inevitably catered to the western preconceptions of the "exotic" and "mysterious" East: women in silk dresses embroidered with dragons, pagoda lanterns, smiling, obsequious wait staffs.

And then there was Chinese cooking at home, pioneered by companies like LaChoy, founded in the 1920s by a white man and a Korean, but hey, is America. Their products included gut-wrenching chow mein in a can and frozen egg rolls.

The museum had a particularly frightening chop suey recipe from the 1950s or 1960s like the one pictured above calling for sauteing hamburger and vegetables in butter and then adding noodles. It's as if someone irradiated Chinese food to produce grotesque mutations, the culinary equivalent of a cow with three heads and one eye.

Let's not forget the marketing. I'm old enough to remember this LaChoy "Swing American!" commercial from the late 1960s. Watching it, I can't decide whether to heave and cringe. Which is worse, the food or the stereotyping, borderline racism? Artifacts like these show how far we've come in the last 40 years.

As with so much, the 1970s were the turning point for Chinese Americans and Chinese cuisine in America. As barriers fell and stereotypes waned, people, at least on the coasts, became open to more authentic Chinese food. The days of "ancient Chinese secret" are, thank God, gone (I remember this commercial too).

What the Heck is This?

2010-09-21T08:46:00.007-04:00

That's what my family and I said.

Last Sunday, we took a spontaneous trip to Chinatown in New York. It was a beautiful day and we hadn't been to the city in ages, so we just decided to up and go.

Chinatown's sidewalk produce stands, little more than plywood on sawhorses, are always interesting and fun. You see all sorts of Asian fruit and vegies -- bitter melon, Asian pears, lychees -- that never make it into the local supermarket. We kept passing stands selling the exotic fruit pictured above, which we'd never seen before. It looked like something from an original Star Trek episode. The fruit is erotically enticing, but Kirk and the crew discover its deadly properties when an expendable eats one and keels over.

This thing looked so interesting that we had to buy it. The woman who sold it to me said it was a Dragon fruit grown in Florida. They used to come from Vietnam, she said. There is a market in Florida because Haitians also eat them. Tastes like kiwi, she said.

That's pretty much in line with what I read online. I even found a site devoted entirely to this otherworldly oval.

A few nights ago, my wife, daughter and I decided to give it a try. The vendor told me to peel the fruit like a banana, but the website I link to above advised cutting it half and scooping out the contents. I opted to split it down the middle with my chef's knife. It looked amazing:

But looks can be deceiving. The flesh had almost no taste. It was like eating a flavorless kiwi. As wife observed, how can something that promises so much deliver so little? Final verdict: The dragon fruit is a drag. We wouldn't try it again.

The next night, we watched the final episode of Top Chef on demand and one of the contestants used dragon fruit rinds as bowls. That's probably the best use of these fruit. It looks so cool, but tastes so bland.

Corn Sugar?

2010-09-17T08:42:00.005-04:00

It's not high fructose corn syrup. It's corn sugar.

That's what the corn lobby wants you to say from now on. Of course, changing the name wipes away any and all concerns about the product. I mean, it's just sugar dude. What's the big deal? Have another bowl of Corn Pops.

As with everything in America today, it's all about marketing and manipulation. With enough money and a smart ad campaign, you can get people to eat plastic. Look no further than Glenn Beck who has convinced a large chunk of America that Jesus hated the poor, the president is a Nazi and Martin Luther King was all about tax cuts for the rich.

Truth be told, the jury's still out on whether high fructose corn syrup is bad for you. But it is a fact that the spread of high fructose corn syrup into the American diet correlates with the obesity epidemic. The more high fructose corn syrup we consume, the fatter we get.

Even if the substance itself is benign, its cheapness encourages overuse as part of food makers' quest to make their products sweeter and saltier so you will eat more -- making you fatter. And why is this stuff so cheap? Because you and I subsidize it in the form of federal incentives to grow too much corn. Who does that help? No one . . . except giant corporations like ADM and Cargill. In today's America, their interests trump all others.

They may try to call it corn sugar, but it will always be high fructose corny syrup to me.

No Toilet Paper Man

2010-09-07T20:39:00.006-04:00

My wife and I watched the "No Impact Man" documentary a week or so ago on the Green Channel. You remember this guy, the one who made his poor wife live without toilet paper for a year. Steven Colbert had him on and zapped him by running an empty microwave.

To sum up, this guy decided to try to live for a year without any impact on the environment or causing any greenhouse gases to be emitted. He went so far as to shut off the electricity in his Manhattan apartment, eschew the elevator and force his wife to give up toilet paper. They never say what she did about tampons and female sanitary supplies. I suspect that she put her foot down on that one and, really, who can blame her? You only want to live like great grandma so much.

Here's a link to the New York Times story that made him famous. I remember reading it and wanting to park an idling Hummer outside his building.

Which is not to say that I am anti-green. Exactly the opposite. I am frustrated and maddened by the wholesale waste of energy in this country, the cavalier consumption of resources that Americans view as their birthright. To consume without regard for waste or overkill is to be an American, or so it seems.

But to me, No Impact Man hinders instead of helps. He was so extreme, so over the top, that he plays right into the right wing caricature of the tree-hugging hippie who wants everyone to live on sprouts and dive peddle cars to work. Serious Limbaugh bait, the kind of person Rush lives to make fun of, undermining any serious consideration of the inevitable big changes we must make. He' s just a nut. Let's go to the mall in our SUV.

This is a food blog and I'm getting to it. I found No Impact Man's food choices particularly extreme and ludicrous. To stop using olive oil because it wasn't local was absurd given that this nectar has been a trade good for more than 3,000 years, since the time of Homer and beyond. He is in effect suggesting we should back-peddle into prehistory.

His attempt at using African pots to create a primitive fridge is equally absurd. Refrigeration is one of man's greatest inventions, and no one is ever going to give it up. If he wanted to make a point, he could have used an old-fashioned ice box and hauled ice up the stairs of his apartment every week. He didn't even bother to do that, resorting to taking ice from a neighbor for a cooler to keep his daughter's milk cool. And the point was . . . ?

The key moment in the movie for me came when he is talking to a community gardener who let him help cultivate his plot in Manhattan. The rotund ex-hippie notes that No Impact Man's wife makes her living working for Businessweek, a magazine dedicated to glorifying "American corporate capitalism," the very thing that has created the excess he is rebelling against. No Impact Man is rendered speechless. What could he say? The former flower child had all but undermined his entire project in a single sentence.

The movie confirmed my initial reaction: No Impact Man's stunt was about self-aggrandizement, thirst for fame, selling book and making a movie. What he did had no impact beyond making him a celebrity and earning him some cash. So in the end, it wasn't really about the environment or saving the earth or making a point. It was about him.

How much more mainstream American can you get?

Tasmanian Tuna Pasta

2010-09-04T10:34:00.005-04:00

Every now and then, I tune in to The Cooking Channel. Overall, I like what I see. It's a wonkier version of its sister Food Channel, with less emphasis on personality, more on food and travel. The food tends to outshine the hosts, the opposite of Food Channel.

Which is as it should be, although I do generally like Food Channel. I've thought more than once that The Cooking Channel's sophistication, mellowness and elevation of cuisine over personality may doom it, at least for American audiences.

A few weeks ago, I watched an affable, low key Australian named Bill Granger do a show on cooking in Tasmania. I never got to "Tasie" as the Australians call it during my trip Down Under more than 20 years ago, but I always heard wonderful things about it. The place looked stunning, enjoying some of the cleanest air and water in the world, Bill informed us. He ate albacore, which I've never had, and apples, which he said are especially plentiful in Tasmania with many local varieties.

One dish looked especially good, quick and easy, Tuna with cherry tomatoes and penne pasta. I decided last week to give it a try.

The final verdict. Not bad, but it needs some work. He calls for a hot pan, leading me to crank the burner all the way up. I thought it was a little too hot and would put it at 8 instead of 10 next time. I would also consider mincing instead of slivering the garlic. It would better distribute the flavor and spar the diner biting into a large piece of garlic.

As usual, I cut the garlic in half, using one instead of two cloves. Obviously, this depends on your taste. I also used a quarter instead of a half cup of olive oil. I thought a half cup would make the dish too oily, although it did turn out a little dry. Next time, I'd add a little more.

The recipe does not mention seasoning the tuna. I would do that next time. The fish turned out well, but it really needed a little salt and pepper. I'd also consider adding a fifth or sixth anchovy. There was surprising little anchovy flavor in the final product.

I'd rate it a 6 or 7 out of 10. It definitely needed something. A little experimentation and this could be an excellent dish.

Fat Bastard

2010-09-02T08:32:00.006-04:00

"The Full Monty" was on TV the other night. My wife and I love the movie. It's just as funny and sensitive and entertaining as it was the first time we saw it in 1997 in the theater.

A major storyline is Dave's deep anxiety about this weight. It provides one of the best lines in the movie. One of the lads peers at Gerald's wife's anti-wrinkle cream and muses whether it would work on men as well, prompting Dave to caustically observe that there's no such thing as "anti-fat bastard cream."

What is striking 13 years on is that by today's standards Dave really isn't that fat. He's got a moderate food baby barely protruding over his belt, far from the Buddha bellys so common today. When he sheds his shirt, he doesn't even have the line - the visible border between the belly and the rest of the torso. He wouldn't even be considered that overweight these days. Just a little husky.

It's disturbing to see how the definition of "fat" has been dumbed down - or up - in just over a dozen years.

Tasty Seafood Cliche

2010-08-31T08:27:00.006-04:00

You know the place. You see them on any American coastline from the Alaska panhandle to the northern tip of Maine. The classic, almost cliched seafood restaurant.

All have the same basic decor: dark wood paneling, model ships, nautical and fishing paraphernalia from ship tubes to nets strewn about the dining room or hung on walls and ceilings. The only way you know where are you are local touches like lobster traps in Maine, oyster tongs in New Orleans and South Carolina or something salmon-related in the Pacific northwest.

The food? Too big portions with too much butter, breading and sour cream. The taste typically ranges from decent to mediocre to awful.

Boothbay Harbor in Maine where my family went on vacation earlier this month had more than its share of such venerable establishments. We decided to try a typical exemplar called Brown's Wharf.

To be honest, our expectations were pretty low. We were tired and very hungry, still trying to shake a bad food experience in Portland a few nights before (let's just say that we violated most of Tony Boudain's rules and paid the price).

We were pleasantly surprised. The dishes were particularly well done versions of the classic seafood restaurant fare with some surprises. I especially loved this arugula salad with a blueberry vinaigrette. I'd never had Maine blueberries before, and they really are a world apart: intense flavor, sweet and fresh. They were in season. I ate very leaf.

Then it was on to the entree, which my wife also had: haddock with risotto. I feared the risotto would be too heavy, but the chef had a light touch. Delicious, but way too much food.

My daughter loved it as well. We indulged her with a kids favorite, a classic shrimp cocktail with tangy cocktail sauce.

We liked the place so much that we returned a second night. This time, they had an interesting variation, a lobster salad in a popover. Again excellent. It worked very well. The salad was tasty without too much mayonnaise and the popover was fresh and light.

So if you are in Boothbay Harbor and have a hankering for the kind seafood your grandparents loved, check out Brown's Wharf.

Kneading Local Grain

2010-08-26T08:17:00.003-04:00

Here is a great piece in yesterday's New York Times food section about the rebirth of local grain growing in Maine and other parts of New England. Apparently, the Skowhegan area of central Maine (home to "The Beans of Egypt Maine," for those of you who remember the 1980s novel) used to be major grain-producing region. Today, it's making a comeback thanks to growing demand for locally produced and organic food.

Being an ardent bread baker, I'm intrigued. I wonder if locally grown grain really does taste different, actually does produce a superior loaf.

The story talks about the need to produce more food locally as the current centralized system of huge industrial farms is unsustainable. I'd like to believe that's so, but I'm not so sure. Of course, prices would be higher if we were produce most of our grain in New England instead of import it from the west and midwest.

But that raises another question. Would we be better off all around - health-wise, environmentally, taste and pleasure (so French, I know) - to eat more locally and pay more? Probably. Will Americans go for that? Unlikely.

As my mother, a mid-westerner who loves France and spent years in Europe, likes to say, the French live to eat, but the Americans eat to live.

Tony's Dolce Vita

2010-08-25T08:20:00.005-04:00

Tony Bourdain last week aired one of his best "No Reservations" episodes yet. The traveling chef visited Rome for the first time in his life. Explaining to the camera that he forever viewed the Eternal City through the lenses of 1960s Italian cinema, the entire episode, with the exception of some food shots, was shot in black and white.

The result was striking, some of the most visually interesting and beautiful TV I've ever seen. Tony was decked out in Italian chic, casual, stylish slacks and shirt open at the collar, his salt and pepper hair wild, yet controlled, somewhat like a Ferrari rounding a corner at 90 miles an hour. All he needed was a pair of classic black 1960s Ray-Bans and he would have been a latter day Marcello Mastroianni sampling the delights of La Dolce Vita.

And of course there was the food. It looked stupendous, everything from handmade pastas to shrimp barbecued on the beach. I wanted to get in a plane the minute the episode ended.

Tony's show keeps getting better and better. His episode earlier this season looking back 10 years to when Kitchen Confidential first came out was superb. It's a book that inspired me to get more serious about food and eating and whose dining-out rules I have found to be spot on predictors of quality and taste.

It was fascinating to watch Tony go from giddy with his new found fame and fortune to ambivalent to the point of wanting out. In those days, it looked like his future outside the kitchen, if he had one, was in writing. It turned out, somewhat unexpectedly, to be TV. Through it all, he appeared to be pretty much the same guy we saw in 2000 footage slinging steaks and ordering his kitchen brigade into battle.

It occurs to me that Tony is one of the few recent celebrities who has, at least so far, earned his fame and success, steadily improved what he does and kept his integrity intact. In a world where "The Situation" can earn $5 million a year and Kate Gosselin gets rich exploiting her children, that's no small feat.

Of course, it could all be a front. Tomorrow, we could find out that Tony has sold his soul to ADM to hype the goodness of high fructose corn syrup. Let's hope not. Media personalities who actually strive to do more than just make money, who seek to enlighten their audiences instead of pander to their prejudices and preconceived notions are as rare as gold today.

Keep up the good work Tony. I hope you're around for a long time.

Bad Seafood Restaurant Names

2010-08-22T09:03:00.004-04:00

File this under "What Not to Name Your Seafood Restaurant." We just got back from a week in Maine where there's a seafood and/or lobster shack every 100 yards. Driving through Brunswick, Maine, I actually saw a joint called "Something's Fishy." How unappetizing. Why not just call it, "This Place Stinks of Rotting Fish"?

Ironically, the place actually gets pretty good reviews. Counter-marketing anyone?

I wish I'd grabbed a photo, but alas I was driving, and the place was in my field of vision for but a few seconds.

That wasn't the only poorly named seafood emporium we saw. How does "The Muddy Rudder" strike you? Believe it or not, it's a fine dining establishment also near Bath. It looks from its website like a fine establishment, but, really, what an odd name.

Much more on Maine eats to come.

Heaven in a Bowl

2010-07-20T08:27:00.006-04:00

This is one of my daughter's favorites (she took the picture above), perfect for a hot summer evening. It's relatively quick and easy, and you can use sub-par strawberries, you know, the ones from Florida and California that you can all but bounce off the floor.

The credit: April 2008 edition of Bon Appetite Magazine. Here goes: Shell a pound of strawberries and cut in halves to quarters, depending on size. Put in a bowl with a teaspoon of cinnamon and a quarter to a half cup of sugar depending on taste (we go more toward a half, although the recipe calls for a quarter). Mix.

Heat a large, heavy pan on high and add two tablespoons of olive oil. When hot, add strawberries and saute for about two minutes or until the juices start thickening. Add a teaspoon of orange extract or zest. Return the strawberries to the bowl in which they were mixed (be sure to use Pyrex) and put in freezer for 10 minutes. Remove and serve over vanilla ice cream and/or strawberry sorbet.

FYI, the 10 minutes is on the money. Too long and the sauce isn't hot enough to just start melting the ice cream and the sorbet. Too short and it melts them too fast.

Heaven in a bowl.

Wild Raspberries

2010-07-18T08:52:00.004-04:00

It's wild raspberry season in Connecticut. We have a bunch of bushes in the wood at the edge of our property. This year, two plants took root next to the house I decided to let them grow at least until they bear. See one below.

The raspberries are small and little seedy and tart, but delicious nonetheless. My daughter especially loves them.

More Bagel Pics

2010-07-14T23:37:00.006-04:00

I downloaded more bagel photos and thought them post worthy. Above is the finished product. Below is the rope with the tapered ends I described in my previous post followed by well-shaped exemplar.

Salt Bomb

2010-07-13T08:29:00.003-04:00

About a year ago, I found in TJ Maxx of all places one of the best cookbooks I've ever used, "500 Chinese Recipes." As the name implies, it contains 500 recipes, although not just Chinese. Many are Thai, Filipino and other Asian food.

I have tried numerous recipes and most are excellent. Even the non-excellent are at least decent.

I had a hankering for shrimp, plus the green beans in my garden were coming in, so I decided to try a new recipe called "Long Beans with Prawns." It looked luscious: shrimp, ginger, garlic, lemon grass, lime, etc.

I followed the recipe, marinating the shrimp, stir frying them in ginger, garlic etc. The final step called for 1/2 a cup of soy sauce dumped into the mixture and cooked for about two minutes. It hit me that it might be a little salty, but I forged forward. I should have thought again.

The end result was tasty (looks great in the picture above, doesn't it?) , but the saltiness of the soy blew out all the other flavors and left the whole family panting like parched dogs on a broiling day in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Our tongues were all but hanging out the rest of the night as we quaffed glass after glass of water.

Would I make this again? Absolutely. But next time, I'd simmer the shrimp shells for about 15 or 20 minutes to make a stock and dump that with a tablespoon or two of soy sauce into the pan for final cook. I'll have to try it, but my guess is you'd get a superb dish.

Here's the recipe with my variation:

Shell and devein a pound to a pound and a half of medium shrimp, reserving the shells. Marinate an hour or two in 2 tablespoons fish sauce, the juice of two limes, two crush garlic cloves and lemon grass stick finely sliced. Put shells in a pot, barely cover with water and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer about 15 to 2o minutes.

If you like softer green beans, steam four to five minutes.

When the shrimp is ready, heat about two tablespoons of oil in a very hot pan and add one minced garlic clove and about a half inch of finely sliced fresh ginger. When it begins to color, add shrimp and cook until just done, about a minute to two minutes. Remove the shrimp.

Add another two table spoons of oil and half a thinly sliced onion. When the onion has begun to caramelize, add green beans, half a cup of the reserved shrimp stock and one to two tablespoons of soy sauce. Cook for about two minutes, add shrimp, toss and serve.

Bagel Lessons

2010-07-11T10:22:00.005-04:00

I've been making bagels every week for more than a month, experimenting with variations of my basic recipe. I've hit on a cinnamon raisin variety that is especially good. More on that later.

A few findings:

Vegetable oil or other fat is unnecessary in the dough. Many recipes call for a tablespoon or so, but I think it's perfectly fine without it. You want nice lean dough.
Proofing overnight -- another staple of many bagel recipes -- makes the insides airy, which I personally don't like. To me, a good bagel is chewy and dense. If you lighter bagels, good ahead and proof, but if not, you can boil and bake them after a 40-minute rise (20 minutes as dough balls, another 20 after forming into bagels).
Peter Reinhart in his "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" insists that barley malt is key to a good bagel. He recommends putting it in the dough instead of sugar. I've tried sugar and the barley malt and personally think that the sugar is a little better. Where the barley malt does make a difference is in the boil. A tablespoon to a tablespoon and half in the water gives the bagel outsides a nice glaze and slightly sweet, malty taste. So use the barley malt, but put it in your boiling water.
Tapering the ends of the dough is key to shaping a bagel that's even all the way around. Equally important is a vigorous rub and back and fourth on the counter to seal the ends. Otherwise, they can separate during boiling. The bagel still tastes good, but looks awful funny. And don't worry about one end of the bagels looking flat. They regain their shape during proofing and boiling.

So here's the recipe for cinnamon raisin bagels :

Mix four cups flour, two teaspoons yeast, one and half teaspoons salt, one and half teaspoons cinnamon, one tablespoon sugar, and about quarter to a half cup of raisins. Add a cup and half to three quarters of warm water and stir into a ball. Knead for about 10 minutes until smooth, but not sticky. Cut into eight pieces, shape into balls and cover and proof for 15 to 20 minutes.

After proofing, roll the dough balls into ropes about two hand lengths long and tapered at the end. Wrap around three fingers and press the ends into the counter, briefly, but vigorously rocking back and fourth. Place on oiled baking tins (I put down tin foil). Cover and proof 15 to 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Put a tablespoon to a tablespoon and half of barley malt into a pot filled with water and bring to a boil. Once the bagels have proofed, boil a minute on each side, return to tins and bake about 20 minutes.

I personally freeze them (they freeze very well) and take one out each morning for breakfast. Enjoy!

Reader's Note

2010-07-11T10:13:00.002-04:00

Until now, I have been religious about listing only recipes found in the Internet. I've concluded that this is too limiting. It keeps me from blogging about too much of my cooking and baking.

I have therefore decided to begin listing recipes not on the Internet, while being scrupulous about naming their source. This seems fair to me.

Hopefully, this make 5 Snacks After 10 a better and more interesting blog.

Joe Camel Foods

2010-07-08T21:00:00.004-04:00

Remember Joe Camel? He was the ubiquitous, too-cool-for-school cartoon character that Camel used to market cigarettes to children. It was hugely successful. Studies showed that Joe Camel was one of the most recognized images among kids. Brilliant marketing, in an evil scientist kind of way.

Thankfully, the tobacco settlement of the 1990s banned cigarette marketing to kids (you'd think that corporations would consider such a thing immoral. Ha!) and sent Joe Camel back to the desert.

Libertarians and conservatives who attack the tobacco agreement truly puzzle me. I can respect their commitment to free speech and freedom in general, but using cartoon characters to hook kids on a product known to cause cancer and other deadly illnesses? You think that's okay? To me, it's like Rand Paul opposing the Civil Rights Act because he believes in the personal right to discriminate. I can understand it on a theoretical level, but practically speaking it's plum loco -- and unspeakably cruel.

Which brings me to today's news that the Obama administration is considering revolutionary new regulations that would effectively prohibit the marketing of many junk foods to kids. Okay, I'll acknowledge the principled libertarian stand. But I mean really. Trying to get kids to eat the equivalent of candy bars for breakfast or snacks with enough fat to kill a platoon of Marines? I'm sorry, but a 5-year-old can't make an informed decision. End of story.

While I'm heartened by the Obama administration's bold attempt to fight insidious marketing of junk to America's kids, I'm pessimistic that it will ever become a reality. I hope I'm wrong.

Mayo-nnaise

2010-07-02T08:47:00.008-04:00

Funny how food evokes certain memories or thoughts. When I see mayonnaise, I often can't help but think of Lou Gossett, Jr. in "Officer and a Gentleman" barking "Mayo-Nnaise" at the selfish Zack Mayo, Richard Gere's character.

I love how the word rolls off Gossett's tongue, especially the emphasis on the second part, conveying irritation and contempt with just the tiniest dash of affection. Great movie.

But seriously folks, what's in mayonnaise? I had only a vague idea until last weekend when a minor crisis forced my wife and I to find out. We were having family over for dinner and suddenly realized that the mayonnaise I'd bought for the potato salad contained soy, a no-no for one of our guests. I considered running to health food store to buy a non-soy variety when it hit my wife: why not try to make our own?

My wife had seen it done old school. The mother of an old friend would painstakingly drip oil into an egg and furiously whisk, ever so slowly creating the emulsion that is mayonnaise. Luckily, God created food processors, one of which we have.

We pulled out our trusty Mark Bittman "How to Cook Everything" and found a recipe. I will respect the copyright, but it's incredibly simply: an egg, oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and dry mustard. You put the egg in the food processor, turn it on and pour the oil in as thin a stream as possible.

We tried olive oil the first time, but the taste of the oil was overpowering, even a little bitter. We threw it out (heck, it's just an egg and some oil) and tried again with canola oil. This was fantastic: light, fluffy and tasty. It took all of 10 minutes, the best mayonnaise I've ever had. See below:

So kick Big Food in the butt and make your own mayonnaise. It's easy, easy, easy if you a have a food processor. Even more important, experiment. Find out what you like, not what the food industry trains you to like.

First Tomato

2010-07-01T08:30:00.004-04:00

Above is the first tomato from our garden. Summer is officially here.

We had a disappointing tomato crop last year as the garden store mislabeled the plants and I ended up with all cherries. They were good, but nothing like those luscious globes of goodness that are one of summer's greatest pleasures.

I may have overdone it this year to compensate. I have six Jet Star (a nice variety, easy to grow, good size, but not too big, delicious), one heirloom and one cherry. The cherry is already huge. The first tomato, pictured above, is an heirloom.

Can't wait for fresh mozzarella, basil and tomatoes! Soon, very soon.

Midge Day

2010-06-19T18:05:00.002-04:00

New Haven's most infamous gangster, Salvatore "Midge Renault" Annunziato disappeared 31 years ago today. He got into a car with a fellow mobster and was never seen or heard from again.

Midge was the real deal, a made member of the Genovese crime family, a vicious thug with a heart of gold who kept his vow of silence to the end. He remains a legend in New Haven among those who knew him, which was just about everyone.

I was obsessed with Midge for years and tried unsuccessfully to sell a book about him and the history of the mob in New Haven. A year ago, Paul Bass at the New Haven Independent web newspaper was gracious enough to give me the opportunity to publish a five-part series about Midge and the Mafia in New Haven. You can read it here.

Yes, this a food blog so what about Midge and food? In accordance with the stereotype, he loved to eat. No surprise seeing that he stood 5'3", but weighed nearly 200 pounds. One cop who tailed him continuously in the late 1960s told me that he ate pizza every day. And he loved pickled egg plant, according to relatives.

He also almost certainly loved shrimp and clams, a Connecticut delicacy, as he once ran a place called "Bosmo's Shrimp and Clam Bar" in New Haven's Fair Haven section. Bosmo was an alias he used.

Bosmo's was in the ally between a restaurant owed by his brother and the next building. One person I spoke with worked there and recalled Midge and one of his brothers taking turns beating a man in the clam bar. Midge would smack him and then his brother would stand him up and smack him again and on and on. Midge was not a guy you crossed.

Rest in peace Midge, wherever you are.

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

2010-06-13T10:57:00.002-04:00

We rented this movie last night. It's been years since I've seen it, and I'd forgotten what a great movie it is. I would rank it, after "Big Night," as my favorite food movie of all time. You're famished after watching it.

The opening scenes of Old Chu preparing Sunday dinner are priceless. I especially love the part where he blows into the duck and hangs it in a slow cooker fashioned from a metal drum (although that may be later in the movie). The knife work is a thing of beauty. The part where he slices the vegetable with the precision of a computer-operated machine, lays it flat and then juliennes it is sublime. Anyone who has ever worked with a knife knows the skill and practice required. And then there's his pinching of the dumplings. Looks easy, but I've made Chinese dumplings and what those hands do so easily and effortlessly is extraordinarily difficult.

This movie, of course, is about much more than food. It uses cooking and eating to say important things about love, life, desire, marriage and family. As Old Chu observes in a drunken conversation with his old friend, "Eat, drink, man,woman, what else is there in life?" or words to that affect.

A delight from beginning to end. Now I'm hungry.

Making Coffee Cake Coffee Cake

2010-06-10T08:00:00.008-04:00

That sticky, sweet brown crumble on top and inside is what makes coffee cake coffee cake.

So what exactly is it? I'd never even thought about that until last weekend when my daughter decided she wanted to try coffee cake muffins for breakfast. We made a batch using a Mark Bittman recipe (see picture above for the result). I'm going to respect the copyright, but based on flavor, the crumble contents are clearly standard: some combination of brown sugar, cinnamon and melted butter. You stir some into the batter and sprinkle the rest on top. Wow is it good.

My daughter, who generally does not like anything bready, decided she wasn't much on the muffins, but I thought they were delicious. I'm enjoying one each day this week for lunch.

A wonderful flavor revealed. As with so many great tastes, it's surprising simple and easy to make.

Hooray for the Blueberr-ay!

2010-06-09T08:12:00.004-04:00

I love blueberries. They are one of my favorite foods. So of course I was excited when they were 2 pints for $4 this past weekend. A low price for produce almost always means tasty. Makes sense. It's simple economics: big, quality supply translates into low price.

The berries are indeed excellent, sweet, subtle and succulent. I love a bowl with breakfast.

But what to do with two pints? It's too many to eat plain, so I made this blueberry cake from Gourmet. I love this recipe. The cake comes out moist, airy and buttery, laced with ribbons of sweet berries. The recipe is somewhat counter-intuitive. The cake is really going to push through that layer of blueberry syrup? But it works brilliantly if you follow all the steps closely. One recommendation: Use good butter, either organic or locally produced. You will taste the difference.

I made the cake pictured above Saturday, and it was gone by last night. A great, great desert.

Earthen Oven Part Deux

2010-06-06T09:30:00.009-04:00

I've been watching the Green Channel (also known as the Ed Begley Jr. Channel) every now and then, specifically Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" in which he chronicles people's attempts to do everything from lose weight to live like a Muslim for -- you guessed it -- 30 days. The show is highly entertaining and a rare look into how Americans really live, all but nonexistent on more mainstream television.

One episode followed an out-of-shape dad in his early 30s who embarks on an "age reversal" regimen. The program called for exercise and better eating. Fine. But then he added steroids and human growth hormone administered by a ghoulish middle-aged doctor who looked like he smeared half a can of black shoe polish into his hair and mustache every morning. I won't spoil it, but things awry. What a surprise.

The other night, I watched another episode which to my surprise took place at The Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, site of the mud bread oven I wrote about in my previous post. A couple from the Bronx, Vito, a tattooed Italian bouncer and Johari, his black wife-girlfriend, who is a party planner (see picture above), live on the commune for 30 days.

Food is, of course, a major issue. Poor Vito, who has arms the size of tree trunks, has to live without meat on the vegetarian/vegan commune. He's reduced to shooting rabbits with a pellet gun. Later, he visits a farm that sells grass-fed beef which he tries to roast over a campfire. His fire is clearly not hot enough, and the result looks unappetizingly raw.

If this show were on Fox, there would be screaming matches and non-stop, over-the-top mutual contempt. Red vs. Blue, Real Common Sense Americans against Lilly-Livered Commie Pinko Nazis. But the show isn't like that all. Sure the couple get annoyed, but in the end, they have a positive experience and, in spite of their initial doubts, come away with some real lessons: use less energy, eat more locally produced food, take more public transportation.

The commune people, meanwhile, are far more tolerant and much less militant than their stereotype. They're not happy Vito's eating meat, but hey if that's what he wants to do, it's his thing.

TV that reflects reality, makes us think and shows people compromising and learning from each other instead of reinforcing prejudices and set narratives. What a concept.

Nutty Crunchy Bread Oven

2010-05-14T12:36:00.003-04:00

An outdoor bread oven is my White Whale. I dream of it, I pursue it, but I'm unlikely to ever attain it. Too expensive.

The father of a friend of my daughter got around that by building one. The guy's a plumber and really knew what he was doing. He had a concrete pad laid and then did all the masonry work himself. He even built a form to hold the arced bricks inside the oven in place while the concrete dried. Very, very cool.

So build it yourself, you say. Not. I struggle to put a nail into a board straight. A handyman, I am not.

That said, this so-called "Cob oven" looks intriguing. According to the post, it cost all of $20 to build. Why? Because it's mostly made of mud, straw and empty beer bottles.

I'm tempted to give it a try, but I fear I'd end up like Richard Dreyfus in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

The people who built this are part of The Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, an eco-commune in Missouri. They build most everything out of straw bales and mud. A little nutty, crunchy for me.

But I'm being too harsh. Different strokes for different folks. It occurs to me that such communities are the 21st century equivalent of the Amish or other religious communities that earlier in our history chose to cut themselves off from the world and live purer, more spiritual, less materialistic lives. In that sense, they are part of a great American tradition and I salute them. I salute anyone who chooses even in modest ways to live on their own terms, valuing other things over money and material goods.

Plus, the bread and pizza looks fantastic.

Food Movie Pairings

2010-05-13T08:25:00.009-04:00

The New York Times food section had a great article yesterday on pairing movies and drinks. I especially loved the Knob Creek bourbon with the film noir classic "Out of the Past," a movie so convoluted that you feel hammered by end whether you're drinking or not. Still a very good movie by the way, Robert Mitchum at his pouty, macho best, slouching his way to doom.

It made me think of pairing food with some of my favorite movies. Here's my cinematic menu:

The Godfather: Homemade marinara and spaghetti and homemade wine with cannolis for dessert. Leave the gun locked up. Enough said because you never ever let anyone outside the family know what you're thinking.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Skewered coconut-encrusted chicken and mead. A silly dish that recalls both the coconuts used to simulate horse hoofs and the African (or European) swallow paired with a medieval alcoholic beverage. For the starch, some type of potato that looks like the mud in honor of the scene where Michael Palin and Terry Jones are playing in the mud (I'm being oppressed! I'm being oppressed! Now you see the violence inherent in the system!).

Pulp Fiction: Sugar pops, milk shake with whiskey and a steak bloody as hell. Love Eric Stolz blithely eating the cereal as Vincent frantically calls for help with the ODing Uma Thurman. And who can forget Jackrabbit Slim's. Vincent is right. A $5 shake needs a shot of whiskey. Drink up Peggy Sue.

Shoot the Piano Player: Steak Frites, red wine, braised beets. A somewhat obscure French movie that I've always loved. A concert pianist haunted by his wife's suicide and his criminal siblings gives up his career to play in dive bars only to fall in love -- with tragic consequences. Like the food, straightforward, delicious and a little bloody.

The Tin Drum: Sardines, crackers and boiled potatoes. The great German novel of World War II and its aftermath, the story of Oskar the dwarf who refuses to grow up in order to escape complicity for the Nazi regime and its crimes. His mother dies from eating too much eel (hence the sardines). She is conceived in a potato field when her German mother hides in her skirts her Polish father who is fleeing the German police. You do the math. You might throw in some wurst and kraut, red or regular, as this is very, very German.

Any ideas or suggestions? Please comment.

It's Constant. It's Gorgeous. It's Beautiful.

2010-05-06T08:22:00.004-04:00

That was Gemma Matsuyama's response to the New York Times when asked how often she thinks about food.

Gemma is profiled in today's Times. Daughter of a Japanese father and an Italian mother, she grew up here, in Japan and in Italy. Yes, she speaks all three languages. What with both Italians and Japanese being passionate eaters, it's no surprise that she's food-struck.

Gemma's great love: starch, be it bread, pasta or pastry. Right now, she's working as a baker in New York City.

Here's a link to the story. A wonderful piece about someone deeply committed to good food.

Freedom is not Free

2010-05-04T08:30:00.008-04:00

Since my last post seems to have received a lot of attention, I'm going to expand a little.

Conservatives love to say "Freedom is not free." When they say that, they are usually referring to military action or service. And they are right. Freedom is not easy. It takes work.

Which brings me back to food. The same people who wax poetically about freedom not being free tend to be vigorous defenders of the worst processed food and most pernicious food marketing. Freedom of speech, enterprise and choice, they say.

But they never mention individual responsibility -- that pesky part about freedom not being free. Sure you have the right to eat whatever you want, but with that right comes the responsibility to make good choices. It's not easy. You have navigate the blizzard of Big Food propaganda. You need to learn to cook so you are not dependent on others for preparation and content of your meals. It's work, but work that brings you freedom.

So wouldn't you think that conservatives and libertarians, who extol the individual above all else, who make a cult of self improvement, would urge people to question, to think, to gather information so they can make informed decisions on what to eat?

Crickets.

In fact, media conservatives and libertarians tend to do the opposite. They urge people to shut down their brains when it comes to food. Trust Big Food. Just eat it.

If you really believe in freedom, you should expect, indeed demand, that people accept the responsibilities that come with it. That means questioning what's in McNuggets and whether they really are good for your children. Sure McDonald's has a right to sell you crap. But as a free individual, you have the responsibility to decide for yourself if you eat it.

I'd love to see Rush shove the Big Mac away from his face long enough to say that.

Freedom

2010-05-03T08:15:00.008-04:00

What is freedom? One of my college professors, after giving a long series of possible answers, concluded by saying that maybe freedom is just another word for noth'n left to lose. Sing it Janice.

I ask this because much of the debate over food and food policy centers on freedom. Conservatives-libertarians say it's "nanny state-ism" for the government to try to get people to eat better. As free individuals, we have the right to eat what we want.

The standard liberal response is that everyone pays the price of poor nutrition in the form of bigger outlays for Medicare and Medicaid and higher private insurance rates, so the government needs to act. They don't completely shy away from the nanny state argument, saying that government has a responsibility to assure the common good.

It seems to me that both these arguments miss that mark. Why? Because personal freedom when it comes to eating has telescoped drastically in the last 20 to 30 years.

You can't exercise freedom without choice and accurate information. The food industrial complex -- with a huge assist from the federal government -- has largely taken away both. Most of what we eat is pre-determined by marketing so slick and pervasive that we don't even perceive it.

Choice? Well how can you have choice when virtually every restaurant in America uses hamburger from the same handful of companies, all of it raised and processed on giant feed lots? It all tastes the same.

As my mother likes to say, you don't know what you like, you like what you know.

Libertarians need to concede that incredibly sophisticated marketing and over-concentration of the food industry undermine individual choice and freedom, problems the government helped create and only it can undo.

Liberals should stop sounding like they want to micromanage people's diets, decreeing what is good and bad, and instead frame their policies as using government to restore food freedom and choice to Americans.

Too Busy to Cook? Bulldust

2010-05-02T00:43:00.005-04:00

Well, maybe not dust.

At a recent conference, Mark Ruhlman made an excellent point that he reiterated in a column on the Huffington Post. It's horse hockey (he used much stronger language) to say people "don't have time" to cook. As one of the panelists in the clip says, how much time do people spend a day watching TV? They can't forgo 30 or 45 minutes of boob tube time and devote it to preparing a simple, nutritious and tasty meal?

It's a matter of priorities, as the boring, but dependable husband says in "The Big Chill."

Right on Mark. You Ruhl man.

Brownies and Chocolate Sauce

2010-04-30T07:57:00.005-04:00

I've been experimenting with homemade brownies. I tried a batch using olive oil (trying to reduce the saturated fat) and the result was disappointing. I then turned to the Bible, Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything," but his were too cakey. Here's his recipe on the Internet. The version I used had two ounces of semi-sweetened chocolate and about half a quarter cup of sugar.

The solution seemed simple. Cut the number of eggs from two to one (the fewer the eggs, the chewier). I tried that yesterday, and the batch turned out excellent, much better than out of a box.

Which brings me to a thought: It's all about your taste. What you like. When big food companies make mixes, they impose a particular taste on you. If you cook yourself, if you bake yourself, you can adjust, tweak, experiment and find just the right combination that sends your taste buds into overdrive. This is where family recipes come from. This is why cooking and baking on your own is about more than just health. It's about pleasure. And personal freedom. Find out what you really like, not what Duncan Hines wants you to like.

Back to the kitchen. My daughter decided she wanted chocolate sauce. So we melted over a very low heat two ounces semi sweet chocolate and with two tablespoons butter with sugar and a touch of salt. Unfortunately, we put in too much sugar (our recipe called for unsweetened chocolate and we used semi-sweet), so it was a little too sweet. Still outstanding over ice cream. A truly decadent dessert (see above).

Louisiana Dream'n

2010-04-29T08:28:00.008-04:00

After reading this article, I really want to go to New Orleans and eat. The Vietnamese food sounds especially mouth-watering.

The parts of the article about Emeril Lagasse are especially interesting since no one says New Orleans more than him (Ironic since he's from Fall River, Mass.). Yes, Emeril is so overexposed, he's verging on self-parody, but against all odds his original restaurants are still turning out fantastic food, the article says.

My only real encounter with Louisiana food was a weekend day nearly 20 years ago when my editor at the Norwich Bulletin sent me to cover a Cajun festival just over the border in Rhode Island. I'll never forget the music or the food. I had red beans and rice (so simple, but so good) and crayfish for the first time.

Among the musicians performing that day was Dewey Balfa, who I later learned is one of the giants of Cajun music. I interviewed him, and he used an expression I'd never heard and I've never forgotten. He complained that the younger generation of musicians only cared about "bringing home George." The phrase stumped me. What does that mean, I asked. "Make money," as in dollar bills, i.e. George Washington, he explained.

He told me that the essence of Cajun music was sadness, specifically the sadness of the Cajun people being forcibly removed from Acadia in modern day Nova Scotia after New France fell to the British in 1763.

Here's a video of Balfa, who died about a year after I interviewed him. Here's another video with a little background about him. There's just something about this music that sends shivers up my spine. It lights up my soul the moment I hear it.

Given this article and the amazing Treme on HBO, Louisiana's on my mind.

It's the Goverment, Stupid

2010-04-28T08:21:00.004-04:00

Jamie Oliver finished up his "Food Revolution" last week with a shining revelation: federal government policy is a major cause -- if not the major cause -- of obesity in America. He's absolutely spot on.

In the final show, Jamie returns to Huntington after learning that the schools will introduce "processed food" Fridays to eat away at the mountain of culinary crap in storage. Once there, he learns that the schools have already placed huge orders of chicken nuggets, frozen pizza and other garbage for next year. Why? It's cheap. And why is it cheap? The government subsidizes it.

You can't completely blame the long-suffering school food chief, who looks decidedly uncomfortable in this last episode. Like the rest of America, I'm sure Huntington is struggling to make ends meet. She has to do what she has to do. Cheap food is almost a necessity.

But of course, it's artificially cheap because of government subsidies (i.e., your tax dollars) that encourage massive overproduction of corn and other products while providing not a penny to vegetable and fruit growers. It's insane if you think about it.

In the end, Jamie's show provided a powerful insight: tackling obesity and bad eating habits requires far more than a few cooking lessons. Solving this problem means sweeping changes in government policy that will hurt a lot of very, very powerful economic interests, specifically huge agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill whose business models are built on feeding America crap. Think of it as the food equivalent of Goldman Sachs making a fortune by betting against America. In order for them to win, we have to lose.

Jamie did a great job. I can only hope that he doesn't give up and more shows follow.

Shad-alicious

2010-04-27T08:18:00.004-04:00

American Shad. It's the official state of Connecticut fish. Really. Here's proof.

It's also delicious. Imagine crossing arctic char with mackerel but removing the latter's powerful pungency. The fish thrives in the Connecticut river.

In the early 1990s, when I lived in Chester (pictured above is the ferry between Chester and Hadlyme) right on the river, the shad were so copious that they kicked up whitecaps. In recent years, runs have been much reduced.

Unfortunately, shad season is short, only a week or two. If you see it, you buy it because it's fresh and won't last. I bought three pieces last weekend and broiled them. Salt, pepper and some lemon after it's done. Superb.

Another way to cook shad is in a pan on the stove. You don't need olive oil or butter. As you cook, the fish releases its oil in which it then cooks. A couple of minutes on each side and finish in a hot oven.

If you're in Connecticut in the spring and shad is on the menu, order it. You won't regret it.

Worst. Sandwich. Ever

2010-04-23T08:29:00.005-04:00

Nate Silver, if you have not heard of him, is one of the nation's foremost pollsters, a man who can slice and dice numbers by the micron. He is a hipper, smarter, more thoughtful Internet incarnation of Gallup and other mainstream pollsters. For anyone interested in politics, his website Fivethirtyeight.com (the total number of electoral votes) is a must read.

Last week, Silver directed his formidable analytical powers toward KFC's infamous Double Down. Silver's question was, just how bad for you is the Double Down? He crunched the nutritional numbers, focusing on fat, sodium and other bad stuff, and compared the Double Down to virtually every other fast food sandwich on the market. By one measure -- a bite-by-bite comparison -- the Double Down came out as the most unhealthy sandwich in fast food nation.

Check it out.

As long as I'm on the Double Down (who can put it down, it's just so delicious to criticize), I'd note that many critics, while decrying its unhealthiness, report that it tastes pretty good. Steven Colbert, for example, calls the sandwich "psychotic," but nonetheless pronounces it tasty. Check out the video.

I would point out this: Of course it tastes good. The flavoring industry could make a rubber tire taste good. They could turn rabbit droppings into a delectable treat that has consumers screaming for more. All the flavor is artificial, chemically restored after being leeched away by processing.

The Double Down isn't a triumph of cooking. It's a triumph of chemistry.

Jiffy Pop Potatoes

2010-04-22T08:23:00.004-04:00

My aunt June visited from Iowa last weekend (first time we've seen her in years) and came for dinner. She does not eat garlic, which presents something of a challenge. I settled on a Gourmet recipe, pancetta chicken, leaving out the garlic.

And the starch? Jiffy Pop potatoes. I gave them that name because the tin foil they cook in puffs up just like in the old commercial. Remember this?

You can do them in the over or the grill. Here's the recipe:

Preheat grill or oven to 450 degrees (you can do as low as 400, but the potatoes will take longer) and place the oven rack as close as possible to the heat source (upper or lower coil works).

Cut five to six potatoes (any kind will do, peeling is optional) into bite-sized cubes. Mix with about a tablespoon of chopped rosemary (fresh is best, but dried will do), enough olive oil to coat, salt and pepper to taste.

Now, tear off four sheets of tin foil big enough to hold your potatoes. Put two sheets on the counter and dump your potatoes onto them. Cap with the two remaining sheets and pinch the edges tightly shut making a package. You need to double side the tin foil or its too fragile and will tear (I learned this the hard way).

Put the package on the grill or the oven rack right below or above the heat source. If grilling, cook about 10 minutes, turn and then cook another 10 minutes (about 20 minutes total). The oven takes longer, 15 to 20 minutes a side depending on the temperature. As they grill, the tin foil will puff up (hence the name Jiffy Pop Potatoes).

When you think they are done, puncture a small hole in the foil and taste. If the potatoes are still a little hard, cover the hole with a small piece of foil and return to the oven or grill.

When done, cut open foil, put in a large plate or shallow bowl and serve.

Food, Inc.

2010-04-20T08:36:00.002-04:00

PBS will air the documentary "Food, Inc." tomorrow night. Here is an article about the movie and a trailer. If you care about food, check it out.

Caution: Don't eat while watching.

Follow the Farm

2010-04-17T17:30:00.003-04:00

I was at the New Haven farmer's market today and bought potatoes for dinner tomorrow night from Stone Gardens Farm in Shelton. In season, they have great peppers, corn and other vegies. They also raise chickens and beef. I still haven't tried one of their birds (pricey), but will eventually.

The guy manning the booth mentioned that the farm now has a Facebook page and plans to post pictures throughout the growing season documenting the progress of its crops. It's pretty cool. A great way to meet your food and the people who produce it.

Stone Gardens is a CSA farm. No, not the Confederate States of America. They don't shovel manure about the Confederacy being about "freedom" and "state's rights" while leaving out that pesky little old slavery thing (Virginia and Mississippi governors please take note).

CSA is "community supported agriculture." Consumers buy shares in a farm and receive a weekly supply of produce. They get local, seasaonal food, and the farmer gets a guaranteed cash flow. The drawbacks: You share in the risk as well as the reward. If it's a bad year, you're not going to get as much. And you have to be prepared to eat seasonally. That means lots of greens early in the season and at other times perhaps more of certain things than you like or can eat.

But of course this is the way food used to be, even as recently as my childhood. Asparagus, for example, used to be in the stores a week or two instead of year round. A few things, like cherries, are still like that. The upside is that you are eating foods at the peak of their nutritional value and flavor. To really get full value, you probably need to learn to pickle and perhaps even can, which of course used to be common. My Iowa grandmother was constantly canning.

The Hartford Courant did a great piece last week about the explosion of CSAs in Connecticut.

Could everyone eat like this? Probably not. But the more they do the better. The benefits are huge, everything from a better diet to preserving agricultural land to making non-industrial, local farming profitable to reconnecting people with the process of producing food.

That said, it is a commitment and I haven't taken the plunge yet. Maybe next year.

Limeade to the Rescue

2010-04-16T08:11:00.004-04:00

I was out of lemonade this morning. Lately, I've been breaking down and buying a Diet Coke for lunch when I run out of homemade lemonade or oolong tea (I know, Eleanor, I know).

Then I recalled that I had three limes left over from the Ruth Reichl Asian stir fry I made last weekend. Why not make limeade?

Unfortunately, two of my three limes were hard as stones and produced little juice. I still managed to coax out a quarter cup. I added about a quarter cup of syrup and a cup of water. The result was tart and refreshing.

Take that Coca-Cola.

Fight the Power, Cook at Home: On a different subject, here is a link to a great article by chef and food critic Micheal Ruhlman. His message: Cooking with crappy products, like powdered whatchamacallit, is better than not cooking at all.

I especially like his point about giant food companies discouraging people from cooking. It's too hard. You have no time. Untrue, he rightly says.

Want to hit back at corporate America? Cook your own meals. There's nothing that Big Food fears more.

Ja to Lefsa

2010-04-15T08:27:00.009-04:00

My wife and daughter took a trip to eastern Connecticut this week (school vacation) and stopped at the Scandinavian store in Mystic where she bought one of her favorite foods: Lefsa (also spelled "Lefse").

It's simple stuff, basically a Norwegian potato and flour flat bread. She prefers the hard tack variety pictured above that you reconstitute by dampening and wrapping in a towel until it softens. You then add a filling -- butter, sugar, Cinnamon, jam, maple syrup are all good -- roll it up, cut it into rounds and it's time to eat.

I never ate -- let alone heard of -- lefsa until I met my wife. It's delicious, a simple snack or desert. My daughter also likes it.

For some, lefsa is more than just a food. It's a way of life. Below is a book, "The Last Word on Lefse," that mother-in-law lent me.

It includes recipes, pictures of specialized lefse-making equipment such as beveled rolling pins, the story of the world's largest lefse and other lefse lore. It even has songs with titles like "Oh Ya You Betcha." Sarah Palin ought to love that one. Sung to the melody of "Deep in the Heart of Texas," here's the lyrics:

The lefse's round with spots of brown
Oh yah you betcha, uff da
The lutefisk is such a risk
Oh yah you betcha, uff da
The pickled herring is so daring
Oh yah you betcha, uff da
My belly hurts from all those burps
Oh yah you betcha, uff da

How can you not love something that inspires lyrics like that?

McItalys, McArabias and Shrimp Burgers

2010-04-14T08:45:00.007-04:00

I ran across this January Mark Bittman post on the McItaly, McDonald's lame attempt to tailor a sandwich to the Italian palate. What makes it Italian? Why the artichoke spread and Asigao cheese.

The post led me to another page featuring dozens of other McDonald's country-specific products. There's the Asian ebi (shrimp) burger:

Malaysia's "Double Prosperity Burger":

and the Saudi Arabia's McArabia:

I have confess, this one doesn' t look so bad, although that meat looks awful slimy. One hundred lashes if you don't love it.

I confess a grudging admiration for McDonald's imagination and energy in subverting and dumbing down local food traditions. I'm Lov'n it!

Huff Post Goes Foodie

2010-04-13T08:35:00.003-04:00

The Big Bang that is the Huffington Post (It never stops expanding) has launched a food page. I browsed it yesterday and came away impressed. There are posts about KFC's new demon "chicken-wich," the Double Down, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and an interview with "The Omnivore's Dilemma" author Michael Pollan. An excellent start.

It's not surprising that the Huff Post would add food to its ever expanding subject pages. Food in America is more than just sustenance. What has happened to our diets, to our food supply is one of the most shining examples of all that's gone wrong with our country. Instead of eating what we really like, instead making our own choices, we are drowning in corporate marketing and industrialized food. As in so many things, change will only come to our food system when corporate power is tamed and individual choice and will are restored.

Enough preaching for one day.

Sriracha!

2010-04-12T08:09:00.004-04:00

I made a quasi-Thai stir fry last night from Ruth Reichl's recent memoir "Garlic and Sapphires." My wife read the book (I'm next) and suggested I make the recipe on page 70. It was excellent.

The recipe recommended adding a dash or more of Sriracha hot sauce at the end. Anyone who's been to a fair number of Asian restaurants has seen it on tables with salt, pepper and other condiments. It's the red stuff in the plastic squirt bottle with the roaster on the front, sort of an Asian hot ketchup.

I'd never tried it, although I love the bottle's design and melange of languages (Vietnamese, Chinese, English).

I'm not a huge chili head, but I decided to give it a try. It was outstanding, really bringing the somewhat vinegary dish together, a very nice balance of hot and sweet.

So if you like a little heat, the next time you see Sriracha on the table, put a squirt or two on your food. Really, really good.

Unthink

2010-04-11T10:37:00.011-04:00

Pictured above is the Double Down, KFC's new sandwich. It consists of two deep-fried chicken breasts, cheese, two bacon strips and sauce. That's right. A breadless sandwich.

I know this sounds like a joke (I honestly thought it was when Saturday Night Live mentioned it last night), but I swear to God, it's true. Here's an article in which a Kentucky Fried Chicken marketing executive touts this bunless wonder as "legendary."

So how do you get people to eat something that's so obviously bad for them? You make a commercial that tells you to "unthink." I'm not making this up. Check out the ad. The unspoken message is pretty clear. Yea, this thing is a coronary train wreck. You know it. I know it. But you need to "unthink."

Maybe for the next commercial they could have James Brown singing from the grave only change the lyrics to "Say it loud! I'm ignorant and I'm proud!"

YEAAA!

But what to do with all those extra buns? Donate them to the homeless, according to the KFC press release. So next time you see a homeless person with matted hair and a 1970s snorkel coat chewing on a soft fast food bun, thank KFC. And thank you for choosing the Double Down.

Double down is the perfect name for this monstrosity. That's precisely what Kentucky Fried Chicken is doing, doubling down on obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Let them eat dreck.

Steve Irwin's Revenge

2010-04-09T08:12:00.005-04:00

Looks horrible, doesn't it? But looks can be deceiving.

What is it? Skate. Every now and then, my fish monger has skate wings. Yes, they look pre-historic, but they also always look very fresh. They remind me of the Croc Hunter, Steve Irwin, even though I know it was a different devil-like underwater flyer that killed him.

"He's a beauty, eh?"

Several weeks ago, I put aside any concern about appearance and decided to give skate a try. Maybe I'd avenge Steve by eating the evolutionary cousin of the fish that sent him to the great croc hunt in the sky.

The store cleaned the fish for me, removing the cartilage and leaving four long fillets. Even though the fillets were relatively thin, they were firm. Instead of flakes, the flesh consisted of lines up and down the length of the wing.

Different. I decided on a simple saute. I melted about a tablespoon of butter with a tablespoon of olive oil over a medium heat. After salting and peppering the wings, I dusted them in flour and put them in the pre-heated pan.

The fillets cooked well, but curled at the edges. On my second cooking, I laid a pot lid on the top to force the flesh into the hot butter and oil. This worked well, although it took off a little of the flour.

After about five minutes, I flipped the fillets. After another five minutes, I checked and the meat was still underdone, the surface a little too soft. Concerned, they would fall apart, I carefully flipped them again, but they held together well. In a couple of minutes, the flour browned and I had a really nice crust. I turned a final time, seared a crust on the last side and served.

I've done this recipe twice and found that you really do need to turn the fillets twice. Don't worry. They stay together as long as you're careful.

The taste: outstanding. The flesh was firm, but tender with a unique taste. The first time I made them, I laid out lemon, but my wife and I quickly concluded it was unnecessary. Salt, pepper, flour, plus a little butter and olive oil was all the skate needed.

One caution. Be careful not to overcook. The second time I made the fillets, they came out slightly overcooked and a little stringy, although still delicious.

A final note. My fish guy gave me too much so I froze some. It froze beautifully, losing virtually none of its taste and texture after a week-plus the freezer.

Get Cracking

2010-04-08T08:04:00.005-04:00

How many times has this happened to you? You have an egg. You crack it on the lip of the bowl, piercing the yoke and/or shell bits tumble into the bowl with the egg. What's more annoying than fishing tiny shards out of slippery egg white or having to throw out an egg you planned to separate because of a punctured yoke?

Anthony Bourdain has the solution. His "No Reservations" show this week was all about technique. He and his famous and not-so-famous guests demonstrated basic techniques for everything from roasted chicken to spaghetti to . . . cracking an egg.

How to avoid the egg-tastrophe that I described above? Easy, says Jacques Pepin. Crack the egg on a flat surface, the counter for example, not the bowl lip. You don't break the yoke. And because your egg is away from the bowl, shell fragments won't fall in.

I tried this last night while making bread pudding. It worked brilliantly. The shells came apart easily and there was no struggle to keep pieces out of the mixture.

Yes, there is a better way to crack an egg. Who knew?

Net Neturality in Danger

2010-04-07T08:26:00.002-04:00

Like this blog and the idea that anyone can start one that everyone can view for free? Enjoy surfing the net without restriction? Love free and easy access for just $20 a month?

Get ready to kiss it all good bye -- if you don't act.

The Internet as we know it depends on "net neutrality," the FCC policy that requires Internet providers to treat all content equally. They can't, for example, compel YouTube to pay them fees, make you pay for different levels of access to content or slow or block sites they don't like or aren't paying them.

Big media corporations hate net neutrality and want to destroy it so they can make you pay a lot more for Internet and force you to look at just their sites or ones that pay them. Unfortunately, Comcast yesterday won a catastrophic ruling from a federal appeals court significantly curbing the FCC's authority to enforce net neutrality.

Passivity has become a core American characteristic in the last two decades. Americans just stood aside as the tax code was tilted toward the rich, regulations that protected them were gutted and they were, at the very least, misled into a disastrous war. Indeed, passivity is what Fox News, for all its Sturm and Drang, seeks to breed: all that stuff about the country going to hell, Iraq being a disaster, Bush letting New Orleans drown, the need for health care and other reform? It's all lies. So you don't have to do anything. Just be passive.

We can't be passive on this one. If we are, we'll lose one of the few things that still works for ordinary people in this country, that allows for free speech and expression, that is controlled and shaped by individuals instead of huge, rapacious corporations. So don't sit on your hands. Write your federal and state representatives and the White House, do everything you can to save net neutrality.

Otherwise this blog and millions of others will go dark, destroyed by the same greedheads who have done so much damage to our country in the last 20 years.

Counting Calories

2010-04-06T08:27:00.008-04:00

One part of the recently passed health care bill that's getting a lot of attention is the requirement that chain restaurants prominently list their food's calorie content. This article quotes a representative of the ueber-conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute decrying the requirement as nanny state-ism run amok. People should take responsibility for themselves, he says.

I am not totally without sympathy for that argument. I take a very dim view, for example, of McDonald's-made-me-fat lawsuits.

But that attitude fails to recognize the monumental influence, power and sophistication of modern marketing. McDonald's advertising budget is bigger than the GDP of many small nations. What chance does the individual consumer have against that?

Personal freedom means making your own decisions. That requires information. But if all the information you have is spin and lies from food companies, can you really exercise free choice? You think you are making a personal choice, but actually you are being manipulated by giant corporations seeking to sell you crap.

When cutting edge advertising was putting a Burma Shave sign on every roadside barn in America, you could make the libertarian argument that everyone should be responsible for themselves. But that ad did not seek to manipulate, to twist reality, as modern advertising does. It just says "Burma Shave."America's eating habits, which are largely shaped by marketing and advertising, are catastrophic. The only way to improve them is to even the playing field by countering all the misinformation, and the only entity that can do that is government.

So, I support listing calories on menus. Doing so increases, not decreases, freedom by providing diners with the information they need to decide what they want to eat -- not what Big Food wants them to eat.

Paprika Chicken and Oven Rice

2010-04-04T22:12:00.002-04:00

We had friends over for dinner this weekend, and I prepared two of our old standbys, recipes I've been making since 1998 when I first read them in the New York Times Magazine: paprika chicken and oven rice.

In those days, there was much less food writing in the Times. The recipe at the back of the magazine was the paper's culinary cat's meow.

Today, the magazine recipes are often impossibly eccentric, requiring unusual, esoteric equipment and ingredients (12 spice powder and a milk press? What the heck are those?). For practical cooking, the Wednesday food section is the star.

Back to the recipes. Both are easy and perfect for guests because the prep is done long before they arrive. so you can socialize while dinner cooks. In spite of the relatively large amount paprika ( a tablespoon), this dish is not spicy. I'm not sure why, but suspect that the sour cream absorbs much of the heat.

A couple of notes on the chicken rice. Olive oil works just as well as butter. And I find three cups of chicken stock overpowers the rice, as well as turning it an unappetizing nut brown. I use two cups of stock and a cup of water.

A wonderful dish, especially on a cold winter's night, that we never tire of. It also makes for great leftovers.

Crate Art

2010-04-02T08:59:00.013-04:00

I recently discovered crate art, labels that growers affixed to produce boxes from the late 19th century until the 1960s. As distribution went nationwide, wholesalers and later the government needed to track the origin of fruits and vegetables. What started as a practical necessity turned into an art form, with intricate, colorful, eye-catching lithographs of perfect produce and perfectly fruited plains.

I love these labels because in contrast to most food marketing today, which almost always hawks highly processed products, they aim to make simple, unprocessed fruits and vegetables desirable, delectable, exotic, even sexy.

Crate labels all but disappeared in the 1960s as growers moved from crates to boxes and more practical if less aesthetically pleasing methods of tracking produce developed.

Here and here are websites that sell antique produce labels. Take a browse. They are fascinating. Some examples:

I have a weakness for labels from Redlands, California because my great grandparents lived there:

Inevitably, America's history of racism is reflected in label art, ranging from mildly politically incorrect . . .

to outright racist.

The Year of Eating Dangerously

2010-04-01T08:34:00.003-04:00

This blog is getting a lot of attention in the wake of Jamie Oliver's horrifying window into school lunches. This teacher is eating the lunches at her school for a year complete with gut-wrenching photos. Blech! If this doesn't make you demand some culinary perestroika , I don't what will.

I long ago gave up on school lunches. The food is horrifying. And disgustingly standardized. My part of Connecticut makes the best pizza in America, but the schools serve card board topped with ketchup probably baked six months before in Fargo, North Dakota, frozen and shipped nationwide.

I bake a batch of skinless chicken thighs every weekend, varying the recipes, and give my daughter one plus a salad and a container of pineapple rings. Here's a photo of this week's Asian-marinated chicken thighs:

Here's the recipe: Remove skins from five to six thighs. Whisk together one tablespoon each of soy sauce and Chinese cooking wine or sherry plus one teaspoon each of sugar and sesame oil. Marinate thighs for half an hour. Bake at 400 degrees F for 48 minutes (an odd time, but I've baked this many, many times and I find they come out perfectly).

Bagels 2.0

2010-03-30T08:20:00.009-04:00

I tried bagels again last weekend, this time using malt syrup (pictured above), which my recipe says is vital to successful homemade. The result: marginally better, but still disappointing, although my wife said she tasted no difference.

It's making me question my recipe. I did a little surfing and found recipes here, here and here that are far less involved than the one I've been using. They require only a short rise and no overnight retardation (I hope Sarah Palin doesn't read this blog).

Given the bagel's humble origins, one would expect making them to be relatively quick and simple. If you're a baker in the shtetl, you're going to want your everyday stuff to be cheap and fast.

I'm going to have to experiment.

SoNo So Good

2010-03-29T07:57:00.005-04:00

Every week at the Wooster Square farmer's market in New Haven, SoNo Baking Company and Cafe sells the most amazing pastries and breads. The Norwalk bakery makes the only French bread in the area that actually tastes like the stuff in France. And I LOVE the chocolate bundles -- croissants with chuncks of bitter sweet chocolate in the middle. My daughter always demands an apple pizza -- puffed pastry with glazed apple slices on top.

Amazing stuff. And now you can try to make it yourself. The Hartford Courant ran a great piece last week about SoNo founder and owner John Barricelli's just published book, "The SoNo Baking Company Cookbook."

I immediately recognized John from the photographs. He's in Wooster Square every Sunday, a friendly bundle of energy trying to keep up with the steady stream of customers.

He had mentioned Martha Stewart to me once during one of our brief conversations, but I didn't know he'd actually worked with her. I also had no idea he labored under the slave master herself, the legendary Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsly. I'm guessing that working for Leona was Ranger School for cooks. If you made it through, you could survive anything.

I have not looked at John's book, but I will have to now. No matter what, if you are in Norwalk or in Wooster Square on a Saturday morning, check out SoNo. Truly some of the best bread and pastry I've ever eaten.

And John, PLEASE, open a bakery in New Haven.

No We Can't

2010-03-28T09:18:00.009-04:00

I have mixed feelings about Jamie Oliver. There is something deeply annoying about his elf-like enthusiasm. I thought his "Naked Chef" show was bizarre. The husky, off-camera, Hal 2000-like female voice asking Jamie questions was positively pornographic: "Jamie, tell us what you're going to do now with that cucumber."

On the other hand, he really can cook. I've tried some of his recipes, and they are very good.

So it was with some skepticism that my wife and I watched the first two episodes of "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" in which he sets out to tackle obesity and bad eating habits in America's fattest town, Huntington, West Virginia.

I have to say, it was compelling TV. Jamie gets powerful push back from just about everyone, the local radio host, who says they're not going to sit around eating lettuce, the school cooks, the skeptical bureaucrat in charge of school lunches.

Speaking of bureaucracy, I was horrified by the rigid, nonsensical rules that constrained the content of school lunches threatening to tie down Jamie like Gulliver in "Gulliver's Travels." I mean really, two starches with every meal? Who eats like that? Who came up with that?

What struck me more than anything was not just the resistance to change when it was clearly and desperately needed, but the outright, aggressive hostility to it. Everyone knows that Huntington has a serious problem, but most reacted with barely contained fury when Jamie tried to do something about it.

In a sentence: No we can't.

And that seems to be the attitude of a large slice of America about just about everything. We have become the can't-do nation. We can't change our eating habits. We can't solve our health care problem. We can't switch to alternative energy. And on and on and on.

What I found particularly ironic was the mind-numbing bureaucracy that the people of Huntington accept, indeed vigorously defend, in their school lunch program. Excuse me for making assumptions, but I think it's fair to assume that Huntington has more than its fair share of teapartyers who decry government bureaucracy.

And I thought charity begins at home.

I will be interested to see how Jamie fairs in the coming weeks, but I'm not optimistic.