Friday, August 17, 2007
Chefs
Top Chef is often delightful to watch, in my opinion. Good food, lively personalities, crazy nutty people, competition, enviable kitchens, on and on. This week was odder than usual, however. In the quick round (which was not an elimination round even though it's touted as such), they were told to make awesome burgers. So no one made anything with hamburger. Sure. Salmon, mushrooms, etc., but no plain old hamburgers, which was supposed to be the point, for goodness sake. Trying to out-thinking instructions wouldn't seem the way to win anything, it seems to me, but what do I know. Anyway, in the long part, they were divided into two teams and had to conceive of a restaurant and prepare a dinner that was served to 30 people in each place. The reactions of the judges, who were among the guests, was the brass ring. But instead of amazing them, the contestants appalled everyone both with the restaurant designs and with the food. Apparently the food looked and tasted ghastly, in some instances, and one of the restaurants smelled so heavily of vanilla that it was off-putting. Plus, one server smelled, which must have been horrifying; I mean, can you imagine going to a gourmet meal and being greeted with body odor? In the end, the judges either have an agenda to which viewers and contestants aren't privy or just plain wimped out; they decided that everything was awful so they'd not send anyone home this week but they'll have to do the restaurant again next week. Properly, one devoutly hopes. Anyway, if any of this interests you, you should read the TV Guide blog about it, here; it's a riot, especially the imaginary conversation with a grab-him-off-the-street dinner guest.

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Permalink | 3 comment(s) | posted by jau at 12:59 PM

Thursday, July 12, 2007
A fascinating concept
As the proprietor of Paris Daily Photo said, this is a photo (which I've copied) of dinner at a new French restaurant. It's called "Dans le noir" (In the Dark) and is located 51, rue Quincampoix - near Les Halles. Apparently you have dinner in complete darkness and the waiters are blind. I have to assume there's a hint of light so people don't crash into each other nor tumble all the food and dinnerware all over, but maybe not. Anyway, Eric says that the idea is that non blind people can experience what it is to be blind and also taste the food differently. I'm sure it's an amazing experience and wish I had a spare cache of cash to jump on a plane and go right now. Oh, and apparently there is also an "in the dark" restaurant in London and in Moscow. Come on, New York, don't let London, Paris and Moscow show you up!!

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 12:42 PM

Friday, June 8, 2007
Movie snacks
In a comment to this post at Dustbury, Mister Snitch says he mixes goobers into popcorn for movie snacking. Holy cow, wow, awesome, my head is spinning and my mouth is watering! (How quickly can I stop at nearest store with both, get home, get bowl, put in newly arrived DVD, sit down. . . ?)

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 4:00 PM

Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Dining alone
One of my joys in life is dining alone. I know that may seem strange to some people but it really is an activity I cherish. When our children were little and I was home with them during the week, my husband would take care of them on one or the other weekend morning so I could go to breakfast with a book or the daily newspaper. I've made note of (and usually vowed never to return to) restaurants where the host or hostess queries me with "just one?" sounding like code for "poor leper you, I guess no-one want to spend time with you." And I've made note of (and deliberately returned to) those where the hostess or host smiles and simply asks "one?" as if 1 is a quantity just like any other. One person's money is every bit as money from several, isn't it? And how I've loved traveling and dining alone - in Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, London, Frankfurt, San Francisco, . . . It's great fun to test culinary waters without worrying about what friends think or how they interact with the staff, much more fun and more reliable to have only myself as company in these situations. So imagine my joy today to see an article in the Guardian in which one of their restaurant critics waxes enthusiastic about dining alone! Not just accepting it but actually enthused (like me!). I am reminded of Merleau-Ponty's essay on the difference between (a) being alone (the fact) and (b) being lonely (the sadness) and (c) being solitary (the joy). It's well worth pondering.

P.S. Dustbury wrote a post on June 1st as a result of this post. I am delighted to have provoked his thoughts. Even more, I am fascinated by the many and somewhat lengthy comments it elicited, although of course I am mildly miffed that they were left at his place instead of mine. I guess expressing pleasure in something doesn't make people want to add their two or three cents as much as expressing displeasure and/or dyspepsia.

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 2:37 PM

Saturday, May 26, 2007
Coke ~ Pepsi
I wonder if there's something going in the brown cola business? Laura muses here about a place she likes to eat that, to her delight, is no longer selling Pepsi, only Coke. Meanwhile, a local eatery we like to go to only sells Pepsi, a fact that sometimes influences our decision about where to eat because we're dyed-in-the-wool Diet Coke drinkers. Which two items I might simply have attributed to the vagaries of the marketplace except that for last three or four weeks my (large) office cafeteria has had a hard time keeping Diet Coke stocked, completely running out several times. It's hard to resist thinking something's going on.

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 8:29 AM

Monday, December 25, 2006
gift giving
Gift giving this year has been more irritating to me than usual, as I keep saying. In my younger days, I gave presents that I hoped would demonstrate how clever I was about "getting" the recipient's character and/or wishes, and would also, as a logical byproduct, get people like me or even love me more. The unavoidable consequence, over the years, was that then I had to live up to being a perceptive and generous gift-giver, so the pressure got worse. Now I'm feeling resentful about spending so much money and time on gifts for people who probably won't be per- or dis- suaded from their feelings about me by these superficial means.

Alan Sullivan at Seablogger writes about this subject that
The custom of gift-giving at Christmas has a curious psychology, if you stop to think about it. After all, the infant incarnation is a divine gift to humankind. When we give gifts in commemoration, we arrogate to ourselves the role of God. No wonder people get stressed by holiday preparations.

How people handle the gift dilemma says a great deal about their character. The loving choose gifts that fulfill wishes of recipients, rightly or wrongly perceived. Controllers give what they think the recipient ought to want. The self-obsessed give what matters to them. The selfish opt out.
I want to learn to give fewer gifts and to care less about their effect. It's not easy.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:07 PM

Saturday, December 23, 2006
christmas eve eve
While driving from pillar to post today, doing shopping preparation leading up to Christmas Eve, I chanced upon a new (to me) wine store, Vino 100, in Newburgh, NY. Fantastic location on the waterfront, nicely laid out inside, knowledgeable and friendly staff and owner, super prices, local wines as well as interesting and unusual wines. Very exciting discovery. I also went to the Cornwall Yarn Shop and Fiddlestix Cafe in Cornwall, NY. The yarn shop is well stocked with yarns of nearly every kind, loads of books and patterns, and includes a weaving component that is enthralling and delightful. The cafe has some of the best and most innovating and unusual home cooking I've had in years, from omelettes with caramelized onions to gourmet pizza and sandwiches to homebaked pies. I also went shopping and made a dent in what's left to buy as well as in my hysterics. Now, however, I'm starting to panic again. The good news is that time will inexorably march along and pass right through gift giving days. The bad news is that there is no way I will have enough and/or adequate gifts for everyone who matters. Good attitude. Not.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 11:54 PM

Saturday, December 16, 2006
fruitcake
Awesome: fantastic blogs have another member with the arrival of a fruitcake blog! It's enough to make me want to get one. I have several friends who are crazy about them - and some who loathe them. Not too many desserts arouse so many reactions. Anyway, the mission statement of Mondo Fruitcake is:
to review all the fruitcakes out there that seem to be giving fruitcake a bad name--as well as to find the fruitcakes that are actually good--swell, even. I've ranked all the fruitcakes I've reviewed so far and put links to those reviews in the sidebar.
And the links to the mail order places are there too. Ciao! Chow!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:04 PM

Saturday, November 25, 2006
recovery
The whirlwind is slowing down. After cooking all day Wednesday, being amid family and friends - including five energetic children - all day Thursday and Friday, I feel wonderful but also have a bit of 'empty nest'. I really love the hustlebustle of crowded families, even though one needs a nap now and then, and I would love to live amid the slight chaos of children and several other people. The gods don't always let you have what you want, of course, or at least they like to give it to you only now and then so you'll be wistful for it the rest of the time. Anyway, it was a good three days.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:01 AM

Thursday, November 23, 2006
getting ready
I'm sure I'm not the only one who plans and preps badly at holidays, but I wish I'd get over it. I always seem to end up staying up until 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. before the family big days that we're celebrating together - Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays. Did I go shopping early this morning so I could get going with the cooking midday? No, of course not. I slept an hour later than if I were going to work, then did some knitting and some reading, made some lists, made some lists of lists, and got out to the stores around noon. Then I ended up having to go to three different stores because each one was out of something, which seemed really odd considering that this is an eating holiday. For example, I had a devilish time finding plain bread cubes. Pepperidge Farm and Arnold used to have big bags of bread cubes, not spiced or cornbread or anything. I never found those but thankfully found a local bakery's or I'd still be toasting and cubing, toasting and cubing. Anyway, everything's done except one quickish thing, so I'll get a bit of sleep now before embarking on the fun and frolic.

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Permalink | 2 comment(s) | posted by jau at 4:46 AM

Wednesday, November 22, 2006
eve of giving thanks
Much cooking and running about to do today. My daughter and I are going to have a cranberry sauce competition because we each claim to make the best we've ever tasted. (Since we both like the Ocean Spray jelly, our taste may be questionable, but that's a different subject.) I make two different delicious ones, both easy but wonderful. One requires cooking but the cranberries take care of themselves as long as you stir them. The other is entirely in the blender, amazingly, and includes orange and lemon rind! I'm also making the out-of-bird stuffing (pears are my secret ingredient, adding a hint of sweetness) and an apple pie. I may do Brussel sprouts, too, because I love them. Anyway, happy Thanksgiving Eve!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:46 AM

Tuesday, October 31, 2006
happy pumpkin day!


Click here for some wonderfully eerie music and click here to carve a pumpkin online, amazingly enough.

For the carving-pumpkin side, thanks to Kitty Litter (who is back to posting, happily for us!) and for the lovely kitty amid pumpkins, thanks to chezmaya.com.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 11:56 PM

Friday, September 29, 2006
to trans or not to trans...
An interesting debate is getting going about banning trans fats. Mayor "Stop smoking now!" Bloomberg is urging the NYC health department to prohibit the use of trans fats. I'm a big fan of the whole/real food dictum that says you should eat only what you can identify as edible, thus you should avoide margarine which is basically coagulated fat, lower in fat than butter though it may be. This doesn't recommend butter, of course, but if you have to eat something butter-like, you should eat butter itself which is at least what it is. (Or try the delicious and zero-trans-fat Brummel & Brown yogurt-butter - which I've just discovered thanks to you-know-who-you-are!) Anyway, the most interesting part of the debate to me is whether the government should edict our good health or good behavior. Should they ban smoking or trans fats or anything else for that matter, or should we be responsible for making ourselves sick or unhealthy? I'm awfully uncomfortable with governmental edicts, I have to say. At least one large underlying issue is that we rarely have enough information to make choices (good or bad), so if I got to influence this debate and decision, I'd spend time, effort and energy on making sure the facts were accurate and visibly available.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:14 AM

Saturday, April 22, 2006
broccoli
This may seem like I'm kidding, but I'm absolutely serious - Perkins broccoli is fantastic. Sometimes I go there just to have broccoli, believe it or not. Tonight, my friends and I went to a Perkins near us for dinner (partly because it's near a Home Depot, but that's a different story). Everyone knows their breakfasts and baked goods are delicious (their eggs benedict is great!). But isn't it surprising that their broccoli is beyond yummy? For more than a year we'd noticed this and I finally asked and apparently they actually do have deliberate and high standards for broccoli. Who'd have thought?! They buy locally grown broccoli when they can, and they steam it in those big industrial-size steamers to very exact specifications. Anyway, it tastes fresh, light, neither tough nor soft, never too hot or too cold. I even brought some home it reheats well. So now there are no excuses to avoid broccoli - you'll WANT it!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 11:55 PM

Sunday, March 5, 2006
what do you think?
My friends and I went to dinner at a nice restaurant last night (terra cotta decor, pleasant and knowledgeable waitstaff, unusual and delicious accompaniments to main dishes, perfectly cooked food, etc. ). At one point, a party of three adults and seven children between 7 and 9 years old were seated at a nearby table. A few minutes after they got settled and ordered drinks, the adults set out two personal dvd players at either end of the table and the two groups of kids focused on the movies instead of continuing to talk with each other.

Here's the thing. I wonder about the merits of using movies to keep children quiet during an evening out. Why go to the trouble of taking kids to dinner with friends and then maintain calm and control by shutting them down? I realize that unexpected and/or possibly annoying chatter was prevented this way, but the dvd's also pretty much prevented conversations or exchanges of thoughts and ideas with the other kids or adults. But am I reacting from habit and convention and not moving along with the times? I'd love to know what other people think.

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Permalink | 3 comment(s) | posted by jau at 12:22 AM

Saturday, November 19, 2005
Holy Pop Tart, Robin
Today is the 40th birthday of the Pop Tart. Incredible. I wonder how many children would never have eaten breakfast if there were no Pop Tarts? Happy squishy warm and sugary day to us all.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:34 AM

Sunday, September 4, 2005
Light moments
Deciding to treat today like the middle day of a three-day weekend that it is, I slept about an hour later than usual, watched too many Sunday morning talk shows for my digestion, did some laundry, sipped coffee and read on my porch swing, knitted a bit on one of my projects, crocheted a hat (hey, who ever said crocheting can't be quick), visited a yarn shop I like and bought the new Interweave Crochet issue, watched a couple of distracting but essentially trivial movies, and took myself to dinner at an outdoor restaurant where I downed a platter of peel-your-own shrimp with a glass of Cabarnet Sauvignon. Yum. Now I feel worn out from so much fun and relaxation. It's a good thing holiday weekends are only three days long.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:15 PM

Sunday, July 24, 2005
Yum!
The Christian Science Monitor took advantage of the 50th anniversary of the first sale of frozen dinners on November 10, 2004 to write a paean. It turns out that credit for the concept belongs to Clarence Birdseye who made frozen vegetables a staple of our kitchens, bless him. But it was Gerry Thomas (who died last week - read an obituary here) who designed the three-compartment tray (sometimes four) along the lines of a serviceman's mess kit and convinced his employer, Swanson Foods, that it would be a successful way to present food. My own favorites have always been the original fried white meat chicken with mashed potatoes and turkey with cornbread dressing and gravy, sweet potatoes and buttered peas. What's yours?

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 12:08 PM

Monday, May 16, 2005
The Cookie Election
Thirteen years ago today apparently was the day pundits announced that Clinton, Perot and Bush41 were in a dead heat for the 1992 election. Which reminded me of the poll I conducted as a result of the Great Cookie Wars.

Remember Mrs Clinton's remarks about having accomplished so much because she hadn't been "stuck in the kitchen"? And that Family Circle then printed Mrs Bush's and Mrs Clinton's supposedly favorite chocolate chip recipes, I guess in an attempt to level the housewife playing field? And that, not to be out-housewifed, Mrs Perot's weighed in with her favorite cookie recipe, a white flour cookie with lemon frosting? My thought was that it could be amusing to taste all three recipes and see if my cookie choices had any relationship to my feelings for the bakers' husbands.

Mrs Bush's was a scrumptious classic full-bodied chocolate chip cookie. Mrs Clinton's was a nice variation using less butter and adding oatmeal. Mrs Perot's lemon-iced white cookie was tasty and light. All three were delicious. So I got the bright idea of baking several batches of all three cookies and asking everyone who came into our office to taste all three cookies and pick a favorite, of course without knowing which cookie belonged to which prospective first lady. I was curious about whether the results would have any relationship to the real election outcome.

I don't remember actual numbers, but the percentages of voting-for-people results were identical to the voting-for-cookies results. No joke! So I called a friend at CNN, hoping she would send a crew and let me share my unscientific fun poll with the nation, but it was too late (although she said if she'd known about it in advance, she definitely would have used it). One of my favorite things was that the cookie voters said the lemon cookies were actually their favorite but they felt they should vote for a more traditional cookie. In the end, the clear and decisive results were the same between the tasters and the voters. Maybe our decision-making isn't as sophisticated and clever as we think it is. Or maybe the way to men's and women's hearts and minds really IS through their taste buds.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 2:05 PM

Friday, April 15, 2005
McDonald's
Hey it's McDonald's 50th anniversary! And did you know they have a museum(!!?) in Des Plaines, Illinois (website: here). I assume it isn't full of old french fries and Big Macs. I hope. But looking at their site has definitely made me hungry. I'll have to go get some coffee (and not put it between my thighs) and breakfast (and not sue my cafeteria). Anyway, eat your favorite food today - of your choice but not too expensive - in honor of Ray Kroc!!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:23 AM