Suvianda has stepped up their dessert game

-in a big way.
Cheesecake with coffee whipped cream and a chocolate covered strawberry. It's not Stella, but it's baller. (I can describe food as "baller" now that I'm not doing this for a grade.)

Spotted in Downtown San Jose

Hawaiian Walk-Inn, 7th and Santa Clara



Carrot and bell pepper palm tree in the produce section of Suvianda today.
(There's a mirror behind it.)

curry sweet potato fries

these sound so good..i hope i get a chance to make them soon.

http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d159/drawnnotions/?action=view¤t=IMG_0003.jpg

(found at "food and you" @blogspot)

New Orleans Food Culture

(photos taken by Michael Huen)
I think an appropriate last entry would concern my favorite foodcentric city-New Orleans. I had a chance to visit New Orleans in 2007 for an alternative spring break trip. We went to help with the recovery effort about 18 months after the hurricane and I had a really awesome, yet frustrating experience.

One of the most memorable parts of the trip was the food. From the beignets (French doughnuts) at cafe du monde to the giant muffaletta sandwiches to fried everything. The way that the people of the greater New Orleans area showed their appreciation to us was through food. I was with a group of people who were gutting a house that hadn't been touched since days before the hurricane. The family had fled to Houston and had not been able to return. During our lunch breaks, we would eat MREs, "meals ready to eat," provided by a Christian charity and the army. They were gross, but fascinating. There were thousands of calories in these inventive meals(not to mention utensils and condiments) that were packed into a small container. By some magical chemical reaction, you could heat the food up with water in the flameless ration heater--crazy.

After a few days we decided we couldn't eat another MRE. On our lunch break, we found a little mom and pop diner on the side of a road. We all had our volunteer t-shirts on and I'm sure we were looking the worse for wear. I didn't expect to find anything vegetarian on the whole trip so I was looking for the grilled cheese on every menu. On this menu, I order fried pickles. They really do fry everything in the south. We were treated so well at this place--at first we attributed it to southern hospitality but we sooned realized that people were thanking us in the best way they knew how, through hearty food.
After a table near us had left, the waitress came over and told us that the woman who was sitting there had paid for our lunch--all six of us. Then, the owner came over and said he wanted to show us something. (above) He led us to the back and showed us the fresh seafood catch from that very morning. He said he was going to cook some up for us, we waited and he came over with a giant plate of fresh seafood. The staff gave us hugs as we left and thanked us for coming, it was totally surreal.
We relayed our experience to the rest of the group when we got back that night and everyone was really surprised at the generosity.

The next day, the entire group was out to lunch (all 18 of us.) Once again, awesome staff and service at an out-of-the-way place. A woman came in to pick up her lunch to go, after she left, the waitress came up to say that she had paid for part of our bill. We were pretty taken aback. We were treated with so much kindness and it almost always had something to do with food.

I think this experience sort of sparked my curiosity and fascination with food culture. I love to read about what food means to people as far as their cultural identity-especially in the south. I was reminded of all of this recently by a February 2nd article entitled New Orleans: Eating its Way to Recovery (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28935341/)by F. Brinley Bruton. Bruton describes New Orleans food culture thus,

If my family were totally honest we would admit that food is our religion. It’s our most important pastime, our biggest obsession and greatest source of pleasure and strife. Food was the biggest reason our disparate clan put down roots in New Orleans, a place that has transformed food, drink and generally carrying on into high art.

Oh New Orleans, where else can you find this combination of French, Native American, Caribbean, Spanish and African cuisine, all melded together with distinctly American fare? I would love to live there, to study there. In fact, most people don't know that nothing would make me happier than living in the south and cooking all day, maybe running an apiary and living in an old house. On the other hand, my practicality kicks in when I think of southern cooking. It is so unhealthy! It's all white bread--literally, sandwiches are made of entire loaves of white bread stuffed with fried seafood. Oil, breading, creamy sauces...these are the essence of southern cooking. I have not yet resolved my desire for a healthier America and my love for comfort food and heart-killing southern food. Maybe someday...

update.

I'm finishing up my blog entries before I have to turn it in tomorrow. This means that the page is going to look different for a little while. I've had a good time writing these entries, so I'll probably keep it up after tomorrow. I might not write again for awhile though, finals are over May 20th and then I'll have all summer to write to my heart's content...

Nopales (no-pall-ehs)

Nopales, or cactus pads (leaves), have been at the top of my Wanted Foods List for awhile. They are right above cooking with banana leaves. They always have fresh nopales at Suvianda for super cheap and they carry jars of nopalitos as well. As far as I understand, diced and cooked nopales are called nopalitos (the -ito again...)

I talked to some of the cooks at work and they recommended sauteing nopales, I tried a couple of ways of cooking them today. I boiled and sauteed some cleaned, de-thorned, and chopped nopales. I made a chipotle pepper sauce by putting 2 chipotle peppers, fresh red pepper, garlic, salt, pepper, and tomato in the food processor. Then I served them with black beans and sauteed red peppers and onions and avocado.

After reading about nopales a little bit, I think they are a fairly neutral food that people traditionally pair with more flavorful food, like spicy chipotle sauce.
The texture is a lot like a sauteed green bell pepper but they are a little bit sour.

The thorns made me a little nervous, but they keep tongs near the nopales in the grocery store and I just had to kind of knock and scrape the thorns off with a big knife. The leaves ooze a mucous type of liquid after they've been cut.

So they mystery is gone, nopales are not too difficult to work with. I might pair them with some eggs someday (the popular juevos con nopales), but I can't eat eggs right now because I'm so sick of them from Easter weekend.

Nutritionally, the nopales are pretty good for you. They have dietary fiber, a low glycemic index, low carbs, and a good amount of Vitamin A and C and minerals.

Where does my food come from?

I try to be fairly conscious of where my food is coming from--both for environmental and taste reasons. I spent a few days taking down the origins of some of the common foods that I eat.

What I learned is that it's really difficult to track where your food comes from, especially if it's processed in any way. It took a really long time to figure out where my Honey Nut Cheerios are from. In the end, I think they're from somewhere in Illinois, but I'm not sure. Basically, everything that's owned by General Mills just has the corporate headquarters for General Mills on the back, not where the ingredients came from or where it was made.

I was pretty disappointed in Berkeley Farms. I buy a lot of BF products and I kind of assumed they were all from this part of California--I guess it was the Berkeley name that sort of distracted me from really checking the labels. In reality, the products are from several places, and my favorite milk, "Over the Moon" fat free milk is actually processed in Texas. Even though I love the Over the Moon, I think I might make the switch back to Clover Stornetta, their products all come from the same area in California.

As far as produce, about half of them had a sticker with the area of origin on it. Many did not--pears, oranges, tomatoes, potatoes, etc., I never know where they come from if they aren't from the farmers market.

Overall, I think I do pretty well in getting my food from California, but I realized that a lot of my food comes from Central and South America as well. I think that a lot of my produce is from Mexico because I shop at Suvianda most of the year. Luckily, it's almost prime farmers market season so I can do better at eating local.

It's Good Karma-

Vegan Cafe.


This post is long overdue. I've been eating at Good Karma since I moved to San Jose. They showed me how much can be done with tofu. I have to admit that I haven't eaten there often in the past few years-ever since they moved from 7th and Santa Clara to 1st Street.

When I moved to SJ 5 years ago (can't believe it's been that long!), Good Karma was owned by a nice older Vietnamese couple. I used to go there after work and eat dinner for five dollars when I was a poor volunteer and that was as much as I could spend on dinner.

GK is owned by some hip younger white guy(s)? now and it's got a new location and style to match. They have live music and art shows and they used to have bingo nights. The food is pretty much the same and the prices are still great but I just haven't had the same loyalty since the switchover.

We had some GK again tonight though and it was like old times. I had tofu scramble and Thai curry. John had spicy basil tofu and tofu in black bean sauce.

I need to get back soon and get some peppery turkey (that used to be my favorite on sandwiches) and try the Jamaican jerk tofu and spicy roasted red pepper hummus.

We tried the tofu chocolate mousse pie. I've been wanting to try this since I saw Jessica eating it once. It's really good--and I definitely think I could make it myself.

¿Qué es eso?

Actually, I probably said "Que es ese?" which is "Who is that?"

I was trying to ask "what is that?" I wanted to try some new pastries at Suvianda, but I've had some I didn't like in the past so I was trying to figure out what I was buying ahead of time. I tried to ask the lady at the bakery in Spanish, and then she answered me in English.
She said "bread."

So yeah, I knew I was buying bread-like items, but my criteria for today was to buy the ones that didn't have any sprinkles or filling.

I chose this one because I thought it looked like a pig.

I knew I wasn't imagining that they were all shaped like pigs so I asked the girls at the check-out aisle. I think they said it's called "puerquito," which makes sense, puerco=pork=pig, puerco+ito= little pig. The little piggy that came from the market tastes like gingerbread and molasses. I like it.

This one just looked flaky and delicious, like it has a nice egg wash on it, and it was tasty and light.


And this one I was just curious about.
It tastes like a very fluffy scone and slightly lemony.

The check-out girls said it was empanada, but that's not what it is. They were just basing that on the description that I gave them that it was triangular. The empanadas looked good though. Those are just the stuffed pastries with sweetened fillings. (The Mexican version.) They can be filled with pretty much anything though, kind of like a samosa in other cultures.

Betty Crock(er)

In my Thought Control in Contemporary Society class we recently read a chapter called Working up an Appetite by Naomi Aronson from a book entitled A Woman's Conflict: The Special Relationship Between Women and Food.

Aronson points out that Betty Crocker was an image created by General Mills in the 1920's to appeal to women.

Betty Crocker represents the highest development of the feminine principle that social engineering has to offer. The name "Betty" was chosen because "this is one of the most familiar and somehow the most companionable of family nicknames." Her personality was designed by consulting psychologists. Betty Crocker was to represent the giving impulse, the source of sustenance, 'the mother figure to whom normal men and women turn all their lives to find the springs of confidence."
A well-known commercial artist was hired to giver her a face. The portrait was designed to appeal to all European ethnic groups: her brow and skull were Nordic, her eyes Irish, her nose classic Roman. As General Mills exclaimed, "the perfect composite of the twentieth-century woman."

(Reminds me of Mad Men!)
The overall message of the article was that it was the time in American history that women became consumers rather than producers. Up until that point, women were relatively self-sufficient when it came to providing for their families and they had a position in the household that was complementary to their husbands work on the farm. After this point they became consumerized and more dependent on their husbands for money.

I've been meaning to start making my own bread for about a year, but this article motivated me to become a bread maker. (Aronson explains further about the bread connection.) I hope that it will become something that I do regularly, but for now I'm just pleased that I created one semi-successful loaf of honey wheat.

Two for one Vegetable? Can't Beet That!

I'm trying to make a dent in my ongoing list of new foods to try. Mercados Suvianda on 6th and Santa Clara in downtown SJ has provided all of the following new food experiences. They carry specialty items to cater to Latin American clientele and they also have many Asian foods.

Beets
I have had beets before, but I've never made them myself. I boiled some beets, let them cool and sliced them. We ate them with avocado slices and a homemade yoghurt sauce (also a first), it tasted awesome but it looked kind of ugly. Also, I learned that you can eat the greens on the beets as well. I might try this soon because I saw some good looking beets at the farmers market.

Flan
Seems strange that I've never had flan since I see it all the time. I'm not a huge fan but I'm glad I tried it. It's just not my type of dessert, I'd rather have something more complex and less gelatinous.



Key Limes
I've wanted to try these for years, ever since I read about them in the Consuming Passions book about southern cooking. Author Micheal Lee West had never had a fresh key lime because they are so hard to find. Suvianda sells them by the bag once in awhile and sells them separately right now. I had to take advantage of the opportunity to use real key limes so I used them to make key lime pie. These little guys are great, they have the taste and smell of lime candy, but sour, of course. I guess the artificial flavor is based on key limes rather than Persian limes (the ones you usually see in the grocery store.)



Asian Pear (known by several names, like apple pear and papple)
I think of this one as a snooty fruity because it often comes with its own little net wrapper to protect it. It was expensive--probably close to $3.00. I really enjoyed it, it's like an extremely juicy apple with the flavor of a pear. I was afraid it was going to be a bad experience like the grapple, but I would eat this again.

Manila Mango
Awesome! It's a smaller mango with the texture of an avocado and a yellow skin. It's not fibrous like a regular mango so no need to floss afterward. I am a manila mango convert.

Farmers Market

I had a little bit of time to check out the new farmers market today and I was pretty pleased with it. It was mostly strawberries and root vegetables for sale, which makes sense for the season in California. There were some stands with prepared food and vendors selling tea, olives, bags, handmade soaps, and the like.

I didn't get any strawberries because they're 99 cents a package at Suvianda right now, but I will definitely be trying the organic strawberries next week. I bought some spinach but I'd like to see some mixed greens and tomatoes in the future. For the first day and the hot weather, I think it had a good turn out and was really well organized. I'm looking forward to more variety in the weeks ahead. The organizers were cleaning up when I got off of work tonight and they did a great job, you'd never know they were there.

I hope the San Jose State community takes advantage of this. In my ethnographic methods class last semester we had to interview students and faculty about their health and it was a recurring theme that people wanted fresh and local produce options. It's hard to get the word out though so I'm wondering what's being done. I haven't seen or heard anything on campus yet.

right out the front door...

-The San Pedro Square farmers market will be back next Friday.
-The corrected press release follows:

City Hall Farmer's Market 3-7:30pm Starts Tues 4/21/09

The Tuesday Market provides a full-city sustainable marketplace that uses Earth Day as a jumping off point to promote greener lifestyle messages like living/working/buying local, eating organic, building/using renewable resources, and supporting green businesses.

Partners include City of San Jose Environmental Services Department, Metro Newspapers, San Jose State University, the San Jose Downtown Association, the San Jose Downtown Residents Association and other stakeholders

This is an opportunity to adopt new practices and improve the quality of our environment for a sustainable San Jose. We encourage you to walk, take convenient VTA Public Transit, or ride your bike to our free bike-parking area. If you must drive, we have two-hour parking validation for shoppers only.

The Tuesday Market is a "ZERO WASTE" event. Please bring your own reusable shopping bag or basket.

Tuesday Market is located on 5th St. between San Fernando Street and City Hall Plaza, and will be held every Tuesday from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. beginning April 21, 2009.

9 - week pilot program through June 16

full 20 - week program through September 1

Nap(a)

As in, I needed a three hour nap after a day in Napa. Today's field trip can be described many ways, but I'll just go with "interesting." Overall, it was a fun day, but 95 degree weather, bus rides, loud/bad music, and wine drinking is a disastrous mix.

The many stories from between and after the vineyards, i.e., the bus rides, shouldn't be repeated in a food blog. Let's just say I was really glad that I had Roxy on the trip, a fellow anthropology student and co-worker. I think we felt like the only students who were going to make it back to San Jose with any shred of dignity.

Nevertheless, there were many highlights to my day. The itinerary was pretty straightforward. The wine class met at 7:45. As a reward for getting the highest grade on the midterm I got a mimosa on the bus ride out of San Jose...at 8:30 in the morning...after 2 hours of sleep. It took about two hours by bus to get to our first winery, Mumm Napa. After Mumm, we headed to Bell Wine Cellars, where we had lunch delivered from a local grocery store/deli. Then, we finished our day at Rutherford Hill.

Mumm was okay, they specialize in sparkling wine and Carlos Santana has a wine with them. I thought it was funny that they sell Carlos Santana stuff in the winery store, so if you need some Santana bongos...



Bell was the really impressive part of the day. Owner and hands-on winemaker Anthony Bell gave our group a thorough tour of the place, from the vines to the barreling process. Originally from South Africa, Bell grew up on a vineyard and had also made wine in Europe before he moved to America. He was really passionate and honest about his work and I probably learned more from listening to him speak than I've learned in class all semester. So, if you see some Bell on a shelf or a menu, you can feel good that there's a humble and hardworking guy behind the label.



At Bell we also got to go into the wine bottling truck. This is not how I imagined that wine is bottled. This truck is like the equivalent of a blood mobile or a book mobile, it pulls up and does it's business for the day. They fill the bottles, cork them, and label them right in this fairly small truck right in front of the building.

Our last stop, Rutherford Hill, was most impressive for it's caves. That's where we did most of the tasting. They do a great port and chocolate covered blueberry combo during their tasting.

Napa was actually not what I expected, but I would definitely like to go back someday. I think I always imagined it to have vineyards sort of hidden in the hills but in reality the wineries are right next to each other, Opus One and Mondavi are right across the street from each other. It's just like neighborhoods upon neighborhoods of grapes, I even saw some homes that opted for grapes instead of grass.

A couple of final thoughts, 1) I think all of the money is in growing your own oak forests for barrels rather than in wine-making, and 2) I think I should get an A in this class for making it through this bus ride, which can be briefly sampled here:

Burgundy, France

One of my classes this semester is Wine Appreciation in the Hospitality and Recreation Management department. It's got to be one of the funner classes in the CSU system (besides surfing and the one where you camp in national parks) and I've actually learned quite a bit about wine. We do blind tastings on 2-3 new wines every week and learn how to describe what we're smelling and tasting.

We had to do a group project about geographic locations and the wines they produce. I was in the Burgundy group and I was hoping to include a photo of Ron Burgundy in the PowerPoint but it didn't work out. I did learn a lot about burgundy though.

One of the more challenging aspects of the project was pairing food with the burgundy. We chose to do vegetarian pairings and that made it more difficult. With the white burgundy (Chardonnay) we did mushroom quiche and with the red burgundy (Pinot Noir) we did French pasta salad as the food was supposed to match the region. I made the pasta salad before class and it was kind of nerve-racking. It consisted of rotini pasta, french shallots, french baby green beans, french goat cheese (see the theme?), roasted bell peppers, toasted hazelnuts, and a dijon vinaigrette.

I chose this salad mainly because I thought the goat cheese would be complementary and because Dijon is the capital of Burgundy, hence the vinaigrette. I thought it tasted awesome but I don't think our sommelier-lecturer was much of a fan, although I think he's just a meat-guy and wasn't into the idea of vegetarian wine pairing. Tomorrow the class is going to Napa Valley for a day-long field trip so it will probably be back-to-back wine entries.

I thought this was kind of cool, I accidentally dropped the remote on my wine glass this weekend and it broke in the perfect spot (and showed me that I need to vacuum between the chairs.)

The Real Dirt on Farmer John

I finally got around to watching The Real Dirt on Farmer John a couple of weeks ago, which I've been meaning to do since about 2005. It seems to be the documentary of choice among organic foodies. It's about a man in Northern Illinois who attempts to run the family farm after his father dies. Farmer John differs from his father because he goes to college and meets some freethinkers in the '70s, which sparks his interest in community based agriculture and organic farming. He goes into debt like most Midwestern farmers during the farm crisis of the '80s and quits farming a couple of times throughout the film. It's interesting that so much of his life is recorded. His mom started taping when he was young and he kept it up which led to a pretty complete story.

The essence of the film is that Farmer John lives a double life. He's a dedicated farmer who runs one of the most successful community supported agriculture (CSA) programs in America, but he also writes, films, acts, supports artists, and apparently likes to play dress up.



This definitely separates him from his more conservative farmer neighbors who think he is a satan-worshipper. Overall, the film is more of an homage to his awesome mother than anything. It provides a good introduction to how CSA works and I guess the moral is that it's okay to be different, although that sounds really cheesy. (Organic cheesy.)

Belated Easter, Continued

In order to kill two birds (quails?) with one stone, I decided to throw some new food into the mix for our Easter brunch turned dinner. I've been eyeing these quail eggs at the store for awhile so we made a kind of Eggs Florentine dish with quail eggs, spinach, bread crumbs, and Hollandaise sauce. This was also my first experience making Hollandaise sauce and I was curious as to whether it's named after Holland. The answer is "probably," it's a French sauce that mimics a Dutch sauce. I think the quail eggs taste just like regular eggs. They worked really well in this dish because we halved the ingredients and were using a small casserole dish so the size was perfect.

We also learned how to make bacon. It's pretty easy but I probably won't be making much bacon in the future. John is proud of his new skill.



Today, we finished our week-late Easter with some fruit salad, toast, and deviled eggs. I tried an Alton Brown recipe this year that called for caper juice and extra cracked pepper. Pretty good--worth the wait!

Spotted in Downtown San Jose

Caterers or just Simon and Garfunkel fans?

Belated Easter Foods

I had to postpone Easter for a week because of midterms last Monday, but we're making up for it with some good food this weekend.

I wanted to try dyeing Easter eggs with natural colors rather than the coloring tablets that I've always used. I didn't read the instructions beforehand though and hard boiled the eggs ahead of time. I was supposed to boil the eggs with the natural coloring and vinegar. I decided to try it anyway, using food I had around the house for color. For orange/yellow I used cumin, orange peels, and chamomile tea.



For pink, I used a couple of tablespoons of red wine, 3 smashed blueberries, leftover tomato pieces, and red onion skins. I probably looked like a weirdo at the grocery store putting skins in the bag with the onion. oh well..



For yellow/green, I just boiled some spinach.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working. I hope it's just because of my own error-not boiling the eggs with the coloring. The eggs are still in the fridge right now soaking in their dyes, but they seem to be just accumulating a colored film, rather than being dyed. I'm glad I tried though, I'll attempt again the next time I boil some eggs.

Here's the link I used with suggestions on dyeing eggs naturally.

http://chemistry.about.com/od/holidayhowtos/a/eastereggdyes.htm

BEST DAY EVER

After drinking Yuban brand coffee for a week I had my favorite Jeremiah's Pick Dark Roast Breakfast Blend back in house today. Little did I know this would be the beginning of the most awesome day ever. The first emails I read today while I was drinking my coffee were the following:

1. I was accepted to University College Dublin for the 09-10 school year.
2. I got my financial aid for next year.
3. Photos of a border collie puppy.

When I got back from the computer lab there was a notice on my door marked urgent. I thought I was being evicted on my celebration day, but it turns out that the gods are smiling down on me because...

"The City of San Jose and San Jose State University have elected to hold a Farmer's Market on all of 5th street, every Tuesday, beginning April 21st, through September 1, 2009, from 12:00 noon, to 8:00 pm."

This is directly in front of my door. I can literally walk outside on Tuesdays and have farmers there with fresh food. It's too good to be true. I will probably go twice on these days, once before class to have a good choice, and once before they close up to get deals because they don't like to bring food back to the farm from the market. I'm going to be swimming in strawberries and tomatoes and greens and melons and avocados...

What a fantastic day, this was exactly the lift I needed. This week started off terribly but the last two days have really been reinvigorating. Perfect timing! I'm going to go have an Arcade Fire dance party with myself and get ready for work, which can't deter my good mood today. From now on, at every table I wait on, I can remind myself that I will have next year to study and not work, for once.

update.

we're in the last four weeks of school so i want to crawl under a rock and emerge in june. Lots of stuff due 'til the end so the blog posts are going to be even more sporadic. there might be 3 a day...or none.

some food that caught my eye:

tripartite strawberry, apostrophe jelly bean, and yin yang almond.

Fry Bread: Simple, yet Complex

In the class that I'm writing this blog for, I had to do a cultural traditions presentation. I made a PowerPoint and did my research on a food that I've always enjoyed but had never really thought about before--fry bread. For those who've never had it, fry bread is a Native American food that is exactly what it sounds like, fried bread. Its contemporary version still has simple ingredients, some variation of flour, salt, baking powder, water, and shortening.

I learned a lot from researching fry bread, but there were two points that really made me think. This first is that fry bread is controversial to some. It's not a traditional food in the way that one would consider the products of hunting and gathering or early agriculture to be. Native Americans developed fry bread as a survival mechanism. After they were moved to reservations and had to live off of government rations because they didn't have their hunting and growing areas, they used the products given by the government to create a calorie dense food. Lard, flour, sugar, and water made fry bread, and since then this food has evolved into a source of pride, and really, is a very beloved food that tastes good. It's become a food that is sold at pow-wows, county fairs, rodeos, and the like.

It is also the only universal food among Native Americans, because it was the one thing that they all shared no matter what their traditional ways were, they were all forced into a dependent state that resulted in eating rations. In recent years, a woman named Suzan Shown Harjo of the Morning Star Institute made the point,"Just because it was a food that was forced on us, doesn't mean we have to keep eating it." Harjo believes that fry bread magnifies the poor diet and sedentary lifestyle of many Native Americans, exasperating health problems like diabetes with its 27 grams of fat and 700 calories per plate.

Although I understand Harjo's point, I don't think she will win many people over with her anti-fry bread campaign. For most people in my generation, and probably the 3 generations before me, it is the only "traditional" native food that we know. This brings me to my second point, that it is probably a waning tradition as well. I know that my siblings don't know how to make fry bread, and my mom rarely makes it. In a reflection on fry bread I had done before doing research I wrote:

"If I ever do have a meaningful conversation with my grandma, I’d like to ask her how to make Fry bread, but I think it might be one of those things that you have to learn how to do after years of helping and observation."

On frybreadlove.org, Annie Humphrey writes about how she learned how to make fry bread and sort of backed up my thoughts on how most people learn and pass it on,

"She didn't speak English to us and so I was instructed to follow gramma around the kitchen and watch her every move...from choosing the right bowl to mix up the dough to placing the finished bread into a bed of paper towels.”

So I didn't learn from my grandma (above), instead I learned the 21st century way, by researching on the internet. That's sort of a trend for me, I've learned how to cook from TV, the internet, and cookbooks. Fry bread is finicky--it's so easy to mess up, so I read a lot of suggestions before I tried it. I practiced on a Saturday before I made it for the class and I was pleased that it turned out well. It kind of freaked me out at first because I'd never fried anything before and putting dough in hot oil reminded me of how making fried chicken can scar your arms.(One of the tidbits I've picked up in reading about southern cooking.)

Anyway, we ate the fry bread with a breakfast of eggs, tomatoes, and sauteed spinach and then again ate it with a dinner of Southwestern Vegetable Soup (Bittman's recipe is one of the best vegetarian soups, in my opinion.) Fry bread also goes well with honey or "indian tacos."



If you're feeling adventurous and want to try some "native" cuisine, this is a pretty excellent recipe for newbies. Enjoy!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fry-Bread-I/Detail.aspx

Making Popcorn: A Jolly Time?

I was perusing the snack aisle at the grocery store recently when I came across a bag of popcorn kernels. It occurred to me that I don't know what to do with a bag of kernels because we had a popcorn maker when I was a kid and more recently I've only had microwave popcorn.

Feeling motivated by the origin of the kernels in question (Jolly Time Popcorn, Sioux City, Iowa), I bought them and have been waiting for a good night for popcorn. Tonight seemed perfect--dinner is digested, temperature is cool, and internet TV is watchable. I watched some demonstrations of popcorn making on YouTube and felt pretty confident I had it figured out. How hard can it be? It's just heat and kernels.

So I heated 3 tablespoons of oil in a pot and put in 3 test kernels that would indicate when the oil was ready, à la the YouTube example. I stood over the pot waiting for signs of life when the first kernel popped right out of the pot. I was still peering in when the second kernel shot straight at my eye with some traces of oil. My immediate reaction was "Man down! Popcorn night is off!" I was sure that I looked like Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight but it turns out I'm just a huge baby who's terrified of cooking with hot oil and projectile-inclined food. I labored on and the popcorn was done in about 2 minutes. I was much more comfortable after the lid was on the pot. I think I should get one of those glass lids so I can peer in from behind a barrier. In all seriousness, I don't think I'll ever make microwave popcorn again. This is actually really easy, it takes about the same amount of time as the microwave and it tastes better.

I only ate a couple of handfuls of popcorn and I have a giant bowl left so I'm thinking about making some popcorn balls. I found a popcorn ball recipe that calls for honey instead of corn syrup. (I will find any excuse to cook with honey- I keep a five pound container of honey at all times).

The popcorn and popcorn balls brought back a couple of memories for me. When I was in middle school the janitor used to have a little side business going where he'd sell popcorn balls in the cafeteria. I think his wife made them, I just remember that they were the only thing I'd eat for lunch sometimes because the food was terrible and the school wasn't exactly vegetarian-friendly. They would always give me the bread ends with some nasty looking peanut butter and jelly as the vegetarian option-and even then they were rude about it.

The other memory was that when we were kids, my siblings and I and various members of our posse would sell bags of popcorn at our lemonade stand. Seems like an odd choice now, it was like 100 degrees outside and we were peddling stale popcorn. Maybe it was to make people want more lemonade...

Anyway, now that I've mastered popcorn and pretzels, it looks like I'm ready to start my own carnival. The only buzzkill to my new snack skills is that it makes me feel guilty based on what I've been learning in another nutrition class. Regular popcorn is pretty healthy, providing dietary fiber, protein, and iron-but adding salt or buying it at the movie theatre is a no-no. (A small movie-theatre popcorn has as much fat as 3 Big Macs. I know of at least one friend who won't care for this fact because they stop at the movie theatre to pick up popcorn.:)

The sodium thing is also really interesting. I didn't know that ideally people should consume about a 1/2 teaspoon of salt a day and no more than 1 tsp. I put that much salt in my coffee everyday! No, that's not true, but that just seems like a very small amount of salt versus what people are actually consuming. Popcorn also has a high glycemic index, so it's one of those foods that will give you the ol' food coma feeling. Speaking of food coma...

Move Over Auntie Anne

In addition to eating too much celebratory food last weekend, I also learned how to make pretzels. They were awesome, and I've never even really liked pretzels. They are also a lot of work though. Basically, I had to make the dough, let it rise, cut it into 8 pieces and make those into 24 inch ropes. I created the pretzel shape by making a U, crossing the ends and bringing them back down. Then I boiled them in baking soda and water, brushed them with egg yolks and baked. I did not realize, however, that the maintenance man had installed a new smoke detector in the hallway next to the kitchen. I was quickly introduced to it while the egg yolk burned on the parchment paper, the detector is working well.
So the pretzel making is quite an ordeal, but it's definitely something I would make again and freeze for later. I used Alton Brown's recipe, which always makes me happy--the man is a genius.

Some interesting facts about Pretzels
Pretzels originated in medieval Europe. It is believed that the shape is supposed to look like praying hands or arms crossed over the chest. In Germany, pretzels were traditionally eaten on Good Friday by Catholics. They were a convenient food because the Catholics were forbidden from eating eggs, lard, dairy products, and meat during Lent. Children would look for hidden pretzels on Easter morning, like an egg hunt today.
Pennsylvania is the pretzel capital of America because of the large population with German heritage, the so-called "Pennsylvania Dutch" of Southeastern PA began the American pretzel tradition.

Anniversary Weekend

I feel like this title could be longer, "Anniversary Weekend for a couple who have evolved from people who didn't cook to people whose relationship is based around cooking together." Or maybe not...

John and I had our third anniversary last weekend and celebrated true to form--we ate and drank some good food. We also both got each other cookbooks as gifts. (Go figure!) I got "500 Cupcakes" which has recipes like Eggplant Caviar Muffins and Rhubarb and Ginger Cupcakes along with some more conventional ones. I got John, How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. Bittman has never let us down with How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, so it should be good. He is a food journalist who I respect as much as any chef, you can check out his column in The New York Times and he's also in Spain: On the Road Again on PBS.org.

Saturday we tried a new downtown eatery- the Silk Road Bistro. The name is a clever reflection of the variety of food they offer, Indian, Mediterranean, and Pakistani. I had a samosa, naan, basmati rice, and some vegetable balls..that's the easiest way to describe them, they were like meatballs except they were made out of veggies, and they were excellent. They contained the best paneer I've ever had and it's worth going back just for the sauce. I'm not sure what was in it, but it was spicy and garlicky. This dish is called malai kofta on the menu, described as "mixed vegetable patties, cooked in a creamy gravy sauce." When I go back, I'd like to try their spicy chili naan and their paneer wrap.

Sunday we went back to the place where we had our first date, Trial's Pub. The beer was better than the food, but it was good beer so that's not a terrible thing. We had some Hoegaarden and Stella Artois and had a curry chips appetizer. I love these curry chips. I got the vegetable curry dinner because the Mediterranean plate isn't in season yet. John's dinner was better than mine, he got a shepherd's pie, which to me just seems like meaty gravy with mashed potatoes and cheese on top. I did a little research on shepherd's pie because I was curious about its origins. I figured it was just a peasant food that has retained popularity. That's pretty accurate, its origins are traced back to when potatoes became an affordable crop for the poor. Traditionally, the meat is leftovers that are turned into the base for the pie while the mashed potatoes become the crust.



Finally, we drank good wine all weekend. Saturday, we had some 7 Deadly Zins and Sunday we had Franciscan Cabernet. Good tip--you can get the 2005 Franciscan Cab at Target for $11.99-that's a steal for this caliber of wine. I'm going to get a couple of bottles and save them, it will be excellent through 2013. For dessert, John brought some cheesecake down from North Beach. Stella Pastry and Caffe on Columbus has the best cheesecake I've ever had. It's an event to eat this cheesecake. (It is a party in your mouth!) Saturday we split a piece of blueberry cheesecake and Sunday we had chocolate cheesecake with strawberries.
All in all, good eats and good company.

Coming of Age with Samoas

The title is for anthropology people--it doesn't really make sense but I couldn't resist. (Wiki Coming of Age in Samoa.)
Anyway, the other day I was thinking about how frustrating it is that Girl Scout cookies are only available for a limited time each year, and if you don't know a girl scout, you might miss out on the heavenly cookies completely. Sure enough, other people had the same idea- if you google "homemade girl scout cookie recipes" you'll find several options to keep the deliciousness going year round. I tried one by the woman who runs the "Baking Bites" website:

http://bakingbites.com/2009/02/homemade-girl-scout-cookies-samoas-bars/#comments

She has come up with an awesome recipe for Caramel deLites (or Samoas, depending on where you're from.) I tried the Samoa Bars recipe because they are less time consuming than the cookie recipe and they are amazing!

I still think it's a little strange that they chose to name the cookie after the Pacific island of Samoa, but I get it because Samoa exports coconut products. I guess Vettaikaranpudurs didn't have the same ring to it. (Vettaikaranpudur is the largest coconut producing region in India, which is the third largest coconut producing country after Indonesia and the Phillipines.)

(Dad, these bars are in the mail for you. Happy Birthday!)

The Margaritic Revolution

I meant to write a blog tonight, but I made margaritas instead.
(Spring break, whoooo!)

I'm going to salvage this by relaying the history of margaritas via Wikipedia, though you can find the same information from the website of a Texas couple who love margaritas.
http://www.margaritatexas.com/aboutus.php

Although the margarita garnered national fame as the Drink of the Month in Esquire in 1953, stories of its origins vary.
It may have originated from one of the following, (but I'd like to think that it's been around much longer among people who appreciate tequila and limes):

--created in the 1930s or 40s in Tijuana by bartenders for Rita Hayworth, whose real name was Margarita Cansino.
--created in 1936 by Daniel Negrete for his sister-in-law, Margarita
--created in Ciudad Juarez in 1942 by bartender Pancho Morales as he struggled to remember what was in a drink called a Magnolia
--created in Galveston, Texas in 1948 by bartender Santos Cruz for singer Peggy Lee
--created in Mexico City by a bartender at a restaurant called Los Dos Republicas for a friend of the owner
--created in Acapulco in 1948 by bartender Margaret Sames based on her interactions with famous people

We may never know who made the first margarita, but it was probably several people in different places around the same time, kind of like the Neolithic Revolution. (I tried to bring this back to relevancy.)
Coincidentally, I just finished Still Life with Woodpecker by one of my favorite fiction writers, Tom Robbins. Here is his characteristically bold take on the subject of beverage origins,

"Champagne was discovered by a Catholic monk," said Bernard. "Took one swallow and burst out of his cellar yelling, 'I'm drinking stars, I'm drinking stars!' Tequila was invented by a bunch of brooding Indians. Into human sacrifice and pyramids. Somewhere between champagne and tequila is the secret history of Mexico, just as somewhere between beef jerky and Hostess Twinkies is the secret history of America."

My Margarita Recipe:
1 pressed lime
1/2 pressed lemon
Splash of OJ or 1/4 pressed orange or splash of Triple Sec
Pinch of sugar or extra OJ
Tequila (amount varies)
Salt optional
--Blend or Stir with ice and enjoy


Spanish lesson for the day: Margarita translates to "daisy"

Irish Cooking with a California Twist

A couple of weeks ago I was reading the online version of my hometown newspaper, the Sioux City Journal (SCJ). Usually, I'm only checking the website to troll the wedding announcements looking for people from high school. On this day I checked out the food section and was pleasantly surprised that they featured a vegetarian option for St. Patrick's Day cooking. The recipe was for colcannon and was written by Cindy Sutter of the Scripps Howard News Service, adapted from something she had seen Rachael Ray make and then printed in the SCJ.

The one thing that was lost in translation is what the dish actually is. I was under the impression that it was a meal. This is not the case. When I attempted to make it on Saturday, sous chef John figured out 5 minutes before it was done that it's not a meal, it's a side dish. That threw a damper on dinner. Basically, colcannon is fancy mashed potatoes. Our version had cabbage, half and half, russet potatoes, salt, pepper, thyme, shallots, nutmeg and veggie stock. We ate it with some organic sour batard, a relatively authentic way to eat this peasant dish.

Still perturbed that I made a side dish for dinner, I ignored the leftovers in the fridge until today. Alright, it's St. Patrick's Day, let's redeem the colcannon. On John's advice, I made the colcannon into patties and put them in a hot pan with oil. This made some nice colcannon cakes that I topped with goat cheese. Adding a California twist to bland Irish food was necessary. Once again, I took John's advice and tried the Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo. MMM MMM good! I rounded out the meal with some organic eggs and it was definitely tasty.

Lesson learned: do some research before making unfamiliar food.

Sidenote...
For SiouxCityans, the SCJ has an article today about the organic farming movement in the area. Let's check this out, eh?
http://siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2009/03/17/news/top/5ae92097c49465c48625757b005413ed.txt

Edit: John wants me to point out that he's not a soy-loving know-it-all, he would have preferred deer meat and am I usually right about all things food related.

Fast Times and Slow Food

In the foreword to Carlo Petrini's book Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair, Alice Waters writes:

"When my friends and I opened the doors of our new restaurant Chez Panisse in 1971, we thought of ourselves as agents of seduction whose mission it was to change the way people ate. We were reacting against the uniformity and blandness of the food of the day. We soon discovered that the best-tasting food came from local farmers, ranchers, foragers, and fishermen who were committed to sound and sustainable practices. Years later, meeting Carlo Petrini for the fist time, I realized that we had been a Slow Food restaurant from the start. Like Carlo, we were trying to connect pleasure and politics--by delighting our customers we could get them to pay attention to the politics of food.
Carlo Petrini is the founder of the Slow Food movement and an astonishing visionary. Unlike me, he grew up in a part of the world with a deeply traditional way of eating and living, where he learned an abiding love for the simple, life-affirming pleasures of the table. When he saw this way of eating in Italy start to disappear, he decided to do something about it. Slow Food began as an ad hoc protest against fast-food restaurants in Rome, but it has grown into an international movement built on the principles he sets forth in these pages."

Although I agree with Alice Waters in her praise of Petrini and appreciate her devotion to the Slow Food movement, I was really disappointed in her appearance on 60 Minutes on Sunday night.



I think she had an opportunity to make Slow Food seem more accessible, responsible, and fun, but instead she came across as out of touch with reality. Because I really do support the tenets of Slow Food, I was hoping that she would use the cooking segment to show that anyone can cook meals that are both nutritious and easy. On the contrary, she made an elaborate breakfast which included cooking an egg in the open fire hearth that she has in her kitchen.



If this show of opulence wasn't enough to convince people that Slow Food and eating organic are elitist markers, then the food prices and Waters' rejection of frozen vegetables is enough of a turn-off. My worry is that this segment will likely repulse most Americans--people who don't live in the Bay Area and don't have access to farmer's markets year round.

In the segment, the camera crew also follows Waters as she walks through the Slow Food Festival that was held in San Francisco last summer. I wanted to go to the festival until I realized that tickets for the food pavilion were $45-65.00. With so many Americans struggling to pay bills it seemed untimely to air Alice Waters, owner of a restaurant that charges $60-125.00 for dinner this week, implying that people are buying sneakers instead of good food,

"We make decisions everyday about what we're going to eat," Waters said. "And some people want to buy Nike shoes - two pairs, and other people want to eat Bronx grapes, and nourish themselves. I pay a little extra, but this is what I want to do."

This is definitely true for some people but I think that for most people the choices on the quality of food they consume are much more complex. I guess my point is that rather than being repulsed by frozen vegetables, maybe Alice Waters should realize that it is the best and slowest that some people can eat. Frozen vegetables are actually pretty healthy, often flash frozen at their prime and they can retain great flavor. If you're living in an area where a fresh variety of produce isn't available year round, frozen green beans are the best alternative to canned or pickled for example.

My philosophy is that everyone should do the best that they can. In my day-to-day life, it is often impossible to eat entirely in accordance with a slow food lifestyle, so i can't imagine having a family, a more fixed income, a full-time job, or a harsher climate.
So kudos to anyone who tries!



Thanks Dawn

Adventures in Pasta Making

My Christmas gift to myself this year was a pasta maker. It's a purchase I feel good about because I eat a ton of pasta, and now I know where all of the ingredients came from. Also, I can make pasta in bulk and have it on hand for a 10 minute dinner anytime. I was a little apprehensive at first because I've never made pasta before, but it could not be easier. I got my pasta maker on overstock.com for $36.00 with shipping, which is a pretty good deal for the quality. I've come to the conclusion that it's just a grown up version of the Play-Doh Fun Factory.




Making pasta really is a lot like playing with Play-Doh. Using the flour bowl technique to mix up the ingredients is probably the funnest way to go and it feels more authentic. Basically, you mix your flour (or flours if you're doing whole wheat pasta) with a pinch of salt. Then, make a bowl in the middle with your fingers and throw in a splash of olive oil. Put the eggs in one or two at a time and stir them up.



When they're all in, go to town kneading it all together with your hands. You'll end up with a dough ball that might be kind of ugly, but it will be fine in the end. Cover the dough and let it sit for 30 minutes before cutting it into three pieces. Flatten the pieces out so that they will fit into the pasta maker and roll 'er through. The flattened piece of dough can either be used for making ravioli or for slicing into linguini and spaghetti.

The pasta recipe I've been using calls for 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1/2 white flour. I had an unsuccessful attempt at using 2/3 wheat to 1/3 white and the consistency was like Play-Doh that has been left out over night. Moral of the story, never go full wheat. You can also add beets, spinach, mushrooms, and sundried tomatoes to the mix to make colorful flavored pasta.

Once the pasta is all sliced up, it's ready for drying. I think it's unnecessary to buy a drying rack. John and I just rigged up a string in the corner of the kitchen. It's literally just two nails and a piece of wrapping ribbon, but it works.



There are going to be pieces of pasta that either fall off the string and break into little pieces or won't fit on the string to begin with. Throw these ones in a bowl to dry-they're good for things like no chicken noodle soup (or chicken noodle soup if you're into that.)
This pasta maker can also be used to make sugar cookies and fondant, which will come in handy if you're like me and you want to work for Charm City Cakes someday. Also, I think that homemade pasta would be a great gift. Maybe a combination of beet and spinach pasta around the holidays, in a nice basket with a ribbon...
That was my Martha Stewart moment for the day-and yes, everyone's getting homemade pasta from me next Christmas.