gobble

School Lunch

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:44:00 -0400

When I was in first grade, you were only cool if you brought your lunch from home, in a plastic lunch box, preferably with a Garfield sticker on the outside. Kids who ate school lunch were generally looked down upon as supremely gross (for eating, without complaint, the “faux” hamburgers - “Don’t you know those are *soy* burgers” the mean girls would snidely remark to people like poor Laura, the tomboy of my class and one of 11 children whose only option in a household of that size was the reduced price school lunch ticket, as she nibbled at her greyish-looking burger with its soggy bun.) It was as though eating a fake hamburger - or school lunch in general - meant you were not only poor, but also stupid.

In many cases, if you were forced buy school lunch, whether out of economic necessity or because you forgot to bring your own, in order to save face with the popular kids you had to just throw the whole thing away. (Come to think of it, first grade was a lot like being in the fashion industry now. Don’t touch the passed h’ors doeuvres, never finish your entree or dessert…) Maybe you ate the french fries or fake mashed potatoes made from dried potato flakes and smothered with inedible brown gravy (the cool kids never get theirs with gravy), or maybe you drank the small box of milk, but never, ever, under any circumstances were you to touch the “chow mein” or the “meat loaf” or the “hoagie” or the “cheese melt.” Pizza, corn dogs with “catsup,” these were okay to eat, as they only came on special days and were not made by the lunch ladies in the cafeteria.

My best friend at the time, Melinda, was the queen of home lunch with her orange plastic lunch box and a sticker of Garfield eating lasagna. Her mother filled it with the kind of food that only a spoiled youngest child such as herself could command: Peanut butter and jelly on Wonder Bread with the crusts cut off, some kind of Hostess cake product like Twinkies, Ho-Ho’s, Ding-Dongs or Cupcakes, maybe a bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese chips and to drink, a Capri Sun. It’s the kind of lunch that screams “Unhealthy American,” devoid of any nutritional value whatsoever, what with all its processed food, full of sugar, and the kind of lunch that my parents vehemently opposed, much to my dismay. It’s also the lunch of least resistance, so when you’re a brat and your parents don’t want to hear you complain, it’s the food you shovel at your children.

When it became clear that in order to maintain my status as Melinda’s best friend, I needed to ditch the school lunch and the brown paper bags, and start carrying a Garfield lunch pail. I convinced my mother to take me to Albertsons, the local grocery store, to purchase one. I searched the shelves desperately to find the orange pail with Garfield, outlined in thick black lines. All I could come up with was a purple plastic box, with Garfield not outlined in black, but in blue…I wasn’t sure about this. I had a sense of what “knock-off” meant and this lunch box didn’t seem like the real deal. Would Melinda still like me if my Garfield was blue instead of black? I remember how I’d had the same issue when it came time to purchase my Trapper Keeper for the year - I wanted “Designer Edition” with its loud neon scribbled text and paint splatter graphics, but had to settle for the “regular” version with a picture of drops of water or somesuch (it was cheaper). It looked like I had no choice. If I wanted a Garfield lunch box, this was going to have to be it.

But it wasn’t the box so much as the contents that branded me as a food freak in Melinda’s eyes. Junk food didn’t exist in my house, at least as far as I knew at the time (my mother, with her sweet tooth, must have always had the same stashes that we discovered hidden behind dish towels years later, when we were tall enough to reach them). And Wonder Bread? Forget it. Whole wheat only, with nubby bits of whole grain, smothered with peanut butter but no jelly - only honey. I put my foot down at peanut butter and banana, which seemed the most vile combination but to my outdoorsy, camping oriented father, it was the perfect fuel for energy. I actually hated peanut butter and honey, too, so often times I requested cheese sandwiches instead, and my parents conceded. (Cheddar, not processed American, of course). However, crusts were left on the bread, and there was always some kind of fruit or vegetable in a plastic baggie, usually carrot sticks or apple slices. Chips were an absolute rarity, but if I did get them, they were Lay’s plain potato chips, never Doritos. And to drink? No juice box, no Capri Sun…I got diluted orange juice, in the thermos that came with the lunch box.

Now, of course, I’m thankful for this early education in wholesome food, but at the time it felt unfair and cruel in the cutthroat world of lunch room politics to give me this nerd lunch, with all its healthy and tasteless foods. I fantasized about snack foods that came in neat little individual packages, like the value “snack pack” of chips in every flavor, and the holy grail of all packages, the dual golden Twinkies with their perfectly smooth, elongated surface and just a hint of white cream filling squirting out from below. The concept of twin snack cakes was the genius to me of Hostess, because it gave you hope that perhaps your best friend might share one with you at lunch. (She never did. Bitch.)

I was dying for what I thought of as a “regular” lunch, which happened to perfectly mirror Melinda’s, and I especially wanted that forbidden white bread and those Ding-Dongs. But when I asked my mother for them, I didn’t get a simple “no” - it went further, deeper than that. The epicurean snobbery of my parents meant that you had to be shamed for even desiring that kind of bad food in the first place. “Oh, so you want white bread, huh? And I’ll bet you want the crusts cut off, too,” as if only commoners with no taste asked for such a thing. The implication: “How gauche.”

So now when I hear of high end restaurants or bakeries doing their own haute version of American “classics” like Twinkies, I can’t shake the image of my mother’s lip raised in disgust at the prospect. But here’s a version that I wished had existed when I was a kid:

These are the “Goldies” by Sarah Magid, a Brooklyn-based baker, and they’re sold for $6 a piece at Jan & Aya, a cute new shop in Greenpoint. She’s created a deluxe organic version of the infamous sponge cakes, reports Gothamist, with dark chocolate sponge cake filled with organic vanillla or espresso whipped buttercream and covered in dark chocolate ganache with a sprinkling of gold metallic powder.

To this day, I still have never actually eaten a Twinkie, and after seeing that this version exists, I don’t see how I ever could.

—Renata

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:02:00 -0400

Tam Tams are, apparently scarce. And I call “bullshit” and “unacceptable!”

Its Hide the Matzo, for Real: Where Are the Tam Tams? - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

This is REALLY uncool, Manischewitz. Your starchy Tam Tam crack’s are one of the only highlights of Pesach-time snacking. And you went and made less of them this year? Why would you do that? SILENCE IS NOT AN ANSWER, MANISCHEWITZ!!!

Ugh.

-Julie

Tooth in Advertising

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:37:00 -0400

Via Boing Boing, an eye-opening gallery of food products side-by-side with their photographic representations. Is it bad that I still want to eat the food? Because I still want to eat the food.

-Julie

An addendum for peanut allergy sufferers

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:48:25 -0400

Those allergic to peanuts need not fear yesterday’s recipe: You can have your bird’s nest and eat it, too, by making a simple modification to the recipe. Skip the peanut butter in the recipe in favor of something non-nut derived like soy butter instead (thanks, Julie!). And instead of peanut butter chips, use butterscotch or chocolate chips.

You can also omit soy/nut/etc. butter altogether, and just melt the chips and stir in the noodles. Or melt marshmallows instead. The point is just to glue the noodles together. Just like a bird would.

—Renata

Easter Bird’s Nests 2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips* 1...

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:41:00 -0400

Easter Bird’s Nests

2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips*

1 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup milk

4 cups chow mein noodles (yes, the ones from a can)

Mini Robin’s Eggs or other egg-shaped Easter candy

Melt the chocolate chips over the stove top with 1/4 cup of the milk, stirring constantly over low heat. Add the peanut butter and the rest of the milk and stir until smooth. Stir in the noodles to coat.

Form nests using a spoon and drop the scoops onto a baking sheet covered with parchment or wax paper. Insert the mini eggs in the center (you may need to lightly press the mixture together so that the nest doesn’t separate). Place tray in freezer or refrigerator; overnight is best but if you’re short on time, a couple of hours is sufficient to set the nests.

*Peanut butter chips or butterscotch chips can be substituted for chocolate chips. And in fact, those are the chips traditionally used in this recipe, from what I’ve heard, to give the nest a nice uniform color. However, if your birds are dirty birds, well, then by all means use chocolate. Or make both versions, for a country-bird-meets-city-bird hoedown.

—Renata

Easter must be an especially busy time for one of our favorite...

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:25:47 -0400

Easter must be an especially busy time for one of our favorite writers (and now video producers) on all things adorable, Amy Kellner. With episodes on bunnies, hamster houses, puppy halloween and special needs pets, here’s Amy’s ode to cute cupcakes. Enjoy.

Snack Attack

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:15:00 -0400

Whenever I travel to a foreign country, one of my favorite activities is heading to the local grocery store or corner store in search of unusual snacks. I’m especially fond of flavors of chips that reflect something very specific about the taste buds of the local culture. In Prague, you’ll find paprika spiced or ham flavored potato chips; in Mexico “chile con limon” is the favored flavor (now popular in the U.S., when I first went to Mexico in 1999, this flavor of chip was non-existent).

Surprise, surprise, others share this obsession and one place cataloging the world of snack foods online - unusual or otherwise - is Taquitos.net. There you’ll find snack food reviews of all things crunchy, sweet, salty or sickening, from Australian chips (I’m now obsessed with the food scientist or marketing team who dreamed up this one: Red Rock Deli Red Wine and Tuscan Herbs Deli-Style Potato Chips) to airline snacks to “snacks containing cereal.” Of course there are also bacon-flavored chips, or guacamole-flavored chips, or Old Bay-seasoned chips (really?) They even break down snacks in terms of their shape: spherical and ring-shaped snacks are yet another method of classification.

Also amusing: A gallery of various snack mascots - anthropomorphized onions, potatoes, bananas and a variety of racist spicy chip mascots.

—Renata

[above: Doritos Mexican Hot mascot]

Chic Chocolate: Mast Brothers

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:17:00 -0400

Some of the loveliest chocolate bars I’ve ever seen are made by the Mast brothers, Rick and Michael, who are based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Mast Brothers Chocolate’s handmade artisinal bars are wrapped in Italian paper that make them look like tasty little books or old-fashioned parcels from a general store. They’re $7 each at Urban Rustic. I’m dying to try the Fleur de Sel bar after making Diner Journal’s chocolate shortbread with grey sea salt this past December. It’s a winning pairing.

[photo courtesy Mast Brothers Chocolate]

—Renata

Pig Porn

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:56:00 -0400

I’m guessing that the Brooklyn Kitchen is frequented by a number of staunch vegetarians, because they prefaced a recent mass email about a new meat-oriented cooking/prep class they’re offering with a “Not Safe For Vegetarians” warning, as though opening a message with a diagram of a pig and its various parts was akin to viewing internet porn.

The class is “Pig Butchering” and it’s a step-by-step demonstration by Marlow & Sons butcher Tom Mylan on how to cut up half of a pig, using a farm-raised pig from New York locavores’ fave upstate butcher, Fleisher’s.

The Brooklyn Kitchen, clearly fearful of hate mail, added this disclaimer: “If you were grossed out…Please accept our sincere apologies if you received this email and it was counter to your life choices.” Sure, that’s nice of them to be so concerned, but is the quasi-religious tone all that necessary? Particularly considering that the whole point of learning how to butcher a whole pig is so that people who might want to buy and eat every part of a humanely-raised pig - “nose-to-tail” eating - can learn how to do it.

At any rate, the class on March 25th is sold out, but it looks like they’ve added a second one on April 1st. (Unless that’s an April Fool’s joke by a vegan employee at Brooklyn Kitchen. Way to ruin it for pork fiends, guys!)

While we’re talking about Brooklyn Kitchen, though - who I might add is one of my favorite spots for high quality kitchen equipment in a pinch - check out their other classes, including this one for culturing your own kombucha. I’m all for turning the kitchen into one big bio-chemistry laboratory.

—Renata

Spicy and Irish-y

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:24:00 -0400

Over at Maud Newton today, there’s the kind of epic recipe that reads like an intercontinental romance between corned beef and chile: The Mighty Irish Tamale.

It involves no less than 48 hours and a lot of Guinness (both consumed and for the dish itself). It’s the creation of writer Jim Ruland, a third-generation Irish-American and his wife Nuvia, a second-generation Mexican-American. What cute Irish-Mexican-American babies those tamales must be.

—Renata

Some Tony for St. Patty

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:52:00 -0400

Anthony Bourdain went to Ireland recently, where he toured Belfast and chatted with at least a dozen men I would have sex with. More to the point, he ate some steak & kidney pie, and visited Chef Paul Rankin, who uses kimchi in his dishes, as well as “great Irish ingredients,” like loin of lamb and spiced potatoes.

-Julie

I thought the Spitzer Spritzer was good, but Eisenberg’s...

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:24:00 -0400

I thought the Spitzer Spritzer was good, but Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop topped that today with their latest edition to their sandwich menu, “Sandwich #9, Hot Tongue on Rye.” After placing my order for lunch, I chatted with owner Josh Konecky about his marketing genius:

Me: So, who came up with the sandwich?

Josh Konecky, owner [He is wearing his customary ponytail, and a loud
shirt bearing the print of hundreds of swirling cups of coffee]: Spitzer came up with it. [pause]. No, I came up with it. Did you already order?

Me: Yeah. I didn’t order the tongue.

Konecky: What’d you order? The chicken?

Me: No, the roast beef.

Konecky: A lot of people don’t like tongue. Tongue is delicious! Funny how people will eat one part of the cow, but not another.

Me: So how many have you sold today?

Konecky: A couple. [Gestures to the lunch counter]. Someone’s eating one over there right now. [Another regular walks in.] Jim, you gonna order The Spitzer?

Jim: [Looks up at a neon orange sign advertising the sandwich, “You
just gotta try Sandwich No. 9,” clenches fist, grins and softly taps
the counter with his fist]. Yeah, I’ll have mine with mustard!

—Renata

Monday night, after the news first broke that New York Gov....

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:21:00 -0400

Monday night, after the news first broke that New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer had been a client of an illegal prostitution ring, I was walking along Berry Street in Williamsburg and spotted this sign in the window of Teddy’s Bar and Grill.

—Renata

Scarier than Fast Food Nation, with the added bonus of repeated...

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 02:11:00 -0500

Scarier than Fast Food Nation, with the added bonus of repeated viewings ensuring legal insanity.

-Julie

The LEADER in food transglutaminase

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:41:00 -0500

“Activa^TM TG is THE WORLD LEADER in food transglutaminase!”

I stumbled upon this product while checking out L’Epicerie’s “Molecular Gastronomy” division of products. After all, who couldn’t use a few syringes in the utensil tray? Watermelon caviar can’t make itself.

Transglutaminase is a “naturally occurring enzyme that acts to link proteins,” says Ajinomoto, the Japanese company that makes the product. Or as L’Epicerie puts it, “meat glue.”

Some of the more mundane uses are “improving texture of cheese” or “reducing water loss in yogurt,” but obviously, glueing one type of meat to another, or making spaghetti out of shrimp - the REAL applications of transglutaminase - are far sexier. “Attach bacon to the surface of meat” cries Ajinomoto or “sandwich ham, turkey, and bacon in one piece” gushes L’Epicerie.

I’m imagining how transglutaminase could revolutionize turducken.

—Renata

Everything begins with an egg.

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:24:03 -0500

Everything begins with an egg.