Tag Archives: Foodie

Foodie Tuesday: Come Away with Me

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Travel eating can be a horror, of course, since the challenges of being in unfamiliar territory, changing time zones (and therefore, often, the times when we’re hungry or not), having to figure out the differences in price based on a travel budget and possibly foreign currencies and the simple odds of finding great food in a new or different place can all conspire to put us at risk of eating badly, if at all. I can think of a few classic examples in my own history, to be sure. A trip to a certain little (long gone, God willing) Inn that wanted ever so dearly to be thought quaint and Elizabethan and folkloric springs instantly to mind: a speedy glimpse into the dining room should have warned of danger ahead, had either my sister or I bothered to note that the decor included a plate rail circling the room and bearing an ominously vast collection of cartoonish miniature boxes of cold cereal. What followed, since we failed to notice this flagrant danger signal before we’d ordered and waited quite awhile, was remarkable in its weirdness and memorably awful tasting, a meal in which every single ingredient smacked noticeably of the tin from whence it sprang and the pièce de résistance was a salad thus composed: one wet leaf of iceberg lettuce cupping a hard, slightly greenish canned peach half that in turn cradled one whole pitted black olive. If ever a thing eyed me ominously, it was that thing.

But more often than not, lest you think me incapable of finding out the true culinary delights peculiar to any place I visit, I love travel in large (no pun intended) part because I do find and relish such specialties of places-not-my-home.

In Texas, besides the fine variety of regional treats influenced by the mix of whatever native and immigrant populations rule therein, there is almost always some great Mexican and/or Tex-Mex food to be had, not to mention the whole range of beefy, meaty and BBQ-smoky goodness that reigns in the hearts and stomachs of the locals. So you know full well that when my spousal-person and I get to do any wandering in our current state of dwelling, we tend to hunt for those joints where the area’s avid eaters congregate to eat such good and glorious things.photoA trip to the Boston Early Music Festival is reason to rejoice by virtue all of the fantastic playing and singing we hear there. High art and musical culture are always a thrill. But it’s also an outstanding excuse to indulge in Boston‘s superlative food culture. So, given the chance, you can bet I’ll dash to one of the nearest provisioners of provender to order up a beatific lobster roll as soon as I can manage it. If it is repeated numerous times and also happens to be followed by a number of equally fine regional treats, say, a dainty dish of Boston baked beans swimming in molasses-sticky sauce or some spectacular Italian food at the north end of town, why then, I’m all the happier.photoDriving through Oregon wine country is a sure way to enjoy some spectacular scenery, its vineyards interspersed with small organic farms and fruit and hazelnut orchards, but do you think there’s any chance I would settle for merely viewing such glories and not dining on them too? Think again! Would I go visiting in northern Italy and not fill up on ethereal handmade pasta with wild mushrooms? Never! Cross an inch of Hungarian soil without seeking out a good dose or ten of paprikás or gulyás? Perish the thought! This musing is motivated in part, of course, by the opportunity and intent to spend a bit of this summer engaged in this beloved sport of eating-while-traveling. (Or, admittedly, traveling-while-eating.) But if it also serves to move you to further such adventures, rest assured I will be cheering you on all the way. And if I can find you and join you at the table, I most assuredly will.photo

Foodie Tuesday: The Drinks are On Me

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photoCold Water

There was a lovely icy drink

Of water, saved my life I think,

One dusty day of heat and dirt

And sweat that soaked right through my shirt,

And if that day should come again

I’ll pray for more ice water then!digital illustration from a photoMeanwhile, there’s so much more to be imbibed as well!

photoIt need not be a special occasion for [metaphorical] immersion in a magnificent drink to slake the spirit as well as the thirst. A pretty glass is reason enough. A dry palate, of course, demands it. Good company makes it lubricate the conversation, whether by dint of mere moisture or by the companionable pleasure of the drink itself.

And Now, to Retire to the Dining Chamber

Let us retire, old friend of mine, and hie to find us there a

Couple sublime cold cocktails on the gold-baked Riviera,

A sunset stroll off-season on the warm Amalfi coast

Accompanied by pork pâté on points of brioche toast;

Perhaps in Brighton lolling near the breezy, rocky beach

With fish-and-chip perfection and a Guinness within reach,

Some spa-time simmering upon the languid Baltic shore

With sparkling water and a plate of pastries, six or more;

At any rate, though I am pleased as Punch to go retire,

I wouldn’t want to spend it only lounging by the fire

Unless something’s a-roast on it, and pleasure in a glass,

For that’s what flavors years and hours with beauty as they pass

Refreshment can easily be whipped up in a swift, quenching cocktail, or it can just as easily be a thirst-slaking alcohol-free cooler. Today’s has alcohol in it, but a negligible amount, and it can just as easily be left out or substituted for with another ingredient. Drink blends are just as flexible as food recipes can be, and this one scores high for garden-fresh taste and simplicity.photoGarden & Orchard punch

1 bottle Granny Smith hard apple cider (omit or substitute unfiltered plain apple juice to de-alcoholize the punch) (12 oz)

1 bottle Sidral Mundet Manzana Verde (green apple) soda (12 oz)

1 bottle Mr. Q Cumber soda (7 oz)

Pour these together in a gallon pitcher (they make just under 4 cups together) and add (4 cups) fresh limeade to fill. Put a handful each of fresh basil, cilantro and mint leaves into a blender, pour in a cup or two of the soda-juice mix, and blend thoroughly, then strain the liquid back into the gallon pitcher and stir or shake gently. Pour over ice or just chill it in the fridge before serving, and dream happy dreams of shady woodland gardens, birds singing and gentle spring rain. Wet, tasty rain.photo

photoOh, and I happen to know that this punch goes very nicely with Smoked Tuna Dip, vegetables and chips as a light lunch or supper. All it takes, besides the veg and crisps (or crackers) is to fork-blend a tin of smoked tuna (I like Tuna Guys‘) with a big spoonful of Avocado-Roasted Tomatillo salsa (I used Arriba!), a smaller spoonful of mayonnaise, and a touch of dill. Add salt, to taste, if the chips or crackers aren’t salty enough. You’ll always have that nice, juicy punch to keep you hydrated.photo

Un-Appetizers

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You may not be the least bit surprised to hear that I was recently duped by a fast food commercial (yes, I do eat Junk Foods of many kinds) into thinking that a special treat of theirs was going to be worth trying. Not only was it worlds from what was portrayed (as the old Norwegian-joke goes: ‘What was wrong with it??? The food was terrible! And the portions were so small!’), it was accompanied by a zippy little packet from the counter container marked Honey, which on closer inspection turned out to be not honey but ‘Honey Sauce’–a packet I was too fearful to open after reading the long ingredient list wherein honey fell fourth to three of the other four sweeteners, barely before water and a list of preservatives impossible to spell.

I was tempted to go directly home and swill real, pure, local, raw Texas honey straight from the bottle, but I resisted. Needless to say, the packet of Mystery ‘sauce’ (I still find it kind of amazing that it’s even legal to call it that, let alone Honey Sauce) went instantly to the circular file, followed in short shrift by the remains of the appalling main dish, and I went off to cleanse my palate at home. You’d think I’d be smarter by now. Sigh.digital artworkFasting Food

Silly me! I thought Fast Food

meant eating something raw and crude,

Something exotic and delicious,

not appallingly pernicious,

But cooked and primped and sauced to serve

as amuse-bouche, starter, hors-d’oeuvre,

Not some spectacular, emetic

parody of dietetic

And comestible delights—

it seems to me, Fast Food, by rights,

Should be what shows up close to hand

in finished form and on demand,

Unsullied by the attitude

of what we often call Fast Food.

Foodie Tuesday: Pretty as a Picture

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photoThere’s an almost unbreakable rule when it comes to sensory perception and food: if it looks bad, it’ll taste bad. People will eat the most strange-smelling stuff–witness durian, any number of aged cheeses, fermented foods, and a large number of culture-specific items from around the world that, to anyone not either genetically inclined to be attracted to it or else remarkably brave and adventuresome, will yell at the lizard brain ‘POISON! POISON!’ The emetic reflex is, indeed a powerful thing when triggered by smells, but somehow a vast quantity of people have not only overcome that response but embraced the non-toxic results of the experiment. But things that look unpleasant are often a much harder sell. We humans respond intensely to appearances.

That’s not to say that we won’t eat things that look fairly nasty. The first person who looked at a monkfish probably didn’t say to himself, ‘gosh, that looks inviting,’ so much as something like ‘good thing I’m starving here!’ and the famously slimy strands of nattō (compounded, I’m told on good authority, by a perfume that’s fully its equal for off-putting qualities) were unlikely the source of its original appeal. In our household, the favorite rude comment if food has a notably unpalatable appearance is, ‘are ya gonna eat that or did ya?’–to which my response is generally to spoon up a big bite of it, because I’m almost always the one who eats Weird Things and I’m also a petulant show-off.

But for the most part, looks are terribly important, not only because in the rawest sense they can mean the difference between safe and unsafe eating but also because ultimately, we like food to stimulate our pleasure centers. So it’s not the worst rule of thumb to look around, when seeking ingredients and recipes, for things that have the inherent beauty we will respond to most happily, and that can sustain their loveliness throughout the prep and presentation arrangements.

Sometimes, of course, the best rule of thumb in the event is to simply eat the food as we found it, because if it looks pretty to start with it probably doesn’t need any plastic surgery from us ordinary non-chef mortals. See it, eat it. Pretty good recipe, pretty often.

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Where We Meet to Eat

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digital image from an oil painting on canvasLanguid Lunches

Sweetly as the day begins,

It cannot reach its finest part

Until that leisured à la carte

Procession of great taste that twins

Fine foods with seasonings and drinks,

With garnish, relish, fetish, fish–

Whatever makes the perfect dish–

‘Til everyone at table thinks

He’s surfeited (at least, quite near),

Whereon the pace grows slower yet,

Chairs get pushed back and belts made loose,

And everyone’s digestive juice

Begins to work on this grand set

Of foods and trimmings at a rate

That makes the luncheon eaters feel

Almost as if another meal

Could fit in with what they just ate–

But since it was so fine, no sweeter

Course could complement the feast,

From boldest spoonful to the least,

So full content is every eater–

So they set down, each one, that spoon,

And smile, and wipe their chins and lips,

And sup no more, not even sips,

Through this delicious afternoon . . . digital image from a mixed media assemblage

Foodie Tuesday: Inner Beauty

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Holy Basil--Ocimum tenuiflorum--Batman!

There are nearly as many food aphorisms and adages as there are things to eat. Or not to eat. Humans have long sought specific herbs, seeds, barks, flours, shellfish, eggs, and much, much more for the decoctions and concoctions made of them as treatment or cure for far more than starvation. Theories abound regarding what is and isn’t healthful and when and why and for whom, and they swing from one extreme to another at the drop of a spoon. The only fairly dependable approach, it would seem, is to listen to one’s own body. Not such a bad thing to do, in any event, but remarkably rare among the extreme advocates of numerous dietary practices, for whom their personal insights and experiences become a matter of faith.

Indeed, faith (as expressed in religions) has long been a significant factor in shaping what is deemed good or ill at table. Religions often determine what their adherents consider healthful or horrible, sacred or profane. Many religions require strict practice of particular dietary laws, from veganism to vegetarianism to specifying what meats or fruits one may or may not eat and how they must be prepared and in what season they may be embraced. My own beliefs about foods are far less religion-driven–as you can probably tell from my food-related posts here, anyway–but I don’t think religious strictures are any more or less perfect or questionable than dietary practices developed by most other means. I would no more knowingly offend anyone’s religious dietary practices than tell them they should eat foods they’re deathly allergic to or that they must like or dislike the same food and drink as I do. And let’s just be honest here: if others say No Thank You to something I like, then there’s more of it for me!

But what is on my food-crazed mind on this particular day is the practice of finding what foods suit one’s own particular health and happiness. Aside from any laws and limitations, and of course availability and accessibility, we must make constant choices about what to eat. Nearly as long as humans have eaten with any deliberation, any sense of knowing what will kill them or preserve their lives, they have also looked at foods as capable of qualifying the degree of health and well-being they enjoyed.

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Love-Apple or Deadly Nightshade?

Tomatoes, perhaps because they are members of the Solanum clan, the nightshades, were considered poisonous in some places (including North America) long after other places’ cuisines were safely and even happily employing them as food. Consciously or not, we all revisit the notion of a comestible‘s safety and health-enhancing properties rather constantly, choosing those things whose tastes we prefer or that make us feel new-and-improved in any way, and avoiding those that give us heartburn, nausea, gallbladder attacks, the Wind, loss of hair, loss of appendages, dropsy, dyspepsia or excessive whimsy. (Well, masochists aside, at least.) Herbalists and nutritionists teach us the known and purported characteristic effects of pretty much everything that can be chewed or swallowed. And ultimately, all I can do is try to learn from my own body what it does and doesn’t want or need.

That’s not to say that I will always do what I believe is best for my health and welfare, by any stretch of the imagination. And you know I have one.

What I want is to feel good. And sometimes stuff that’s not necessarily guaranteed good for me makes me feel good.

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Dear Verbena, let me be candid: I may be a little lipophilic, but I'm no radical . . .

It’s really quite amazing what the things we eat and drink can do to us, in us and for us. And I’m not just talking about pharmaceutical effects. Necessarily. See, lunch affects how we feel until dinner, yes, but there’s also the general effect on mood and attitude, on what we see when we look in the mirror, on whether we feel healthier and happier or more impressive in any way. Part of me wants to believe that if I just ate the right stuff I actually would look fabulous in my long-ago orange fake-fur trench coat. That I would be suddenly as smart as I’ve always thought I was and solve all the problems of the world. And of course, that I would be the most spectacular version of myself possible and live that way for another half-century or so at least.

But really, I’m just happy when I figure out what pleases my inner workings and makes me feel pleasantly sated and really ready for whatever the next few hours bring. Oh, and doesn’t make me break out like I’ve reverted to my teens. I’ll get back to you when I’ve developed the perfect diet for all humanity. All I know so far is that it has lots of butter, salt, and chocolate in it. And that it guarantees a certain degree of both inner peace and vigorous smiling when taken regularly and judiciously.

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. . . meanwhile, back in my orange trench coat days . . .

Nuclear Winter Descends on the Kitchen

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I am so not that blogger. You know, the one who makes stupendous, dazzling, dream-fulfilling, frenzied dance inducing deliciousness every time I enter the temple of cookery and take skillet in hand. The artiste-de-cuisine whose documentation of each morsel of impending salivary serenity is preened and primped into further gleaming gloriousness and photographed more glossily than a phalanx of supermodels in swimsuit season. The doyenne of dining, the poet of pumpernickel, the queen of quenelles, writing elated paeans to the plate that stimulate the appetite and soothe the spirit simultaneously, every word a twinkling, perfectly faceted gem of gustatory wisdom and love.photoSee, what my heart is cooking and what my hands and brains are genuinely capable of producing are not necessarily identical in nature, not wholly synchronous. I start out with a perfectly innocent yellow capiscum, intending nothing more sinister than to slice it into tidy segments and give it a friendly saute in a spot of sweet butter, and I think to myself, Why, that’s a mighty pretty bit of golden sunshine! I really ought to take its portrait. And sometimes it cooperates moderately well, and at other times it becomes something of an extended exercise in abstract thinking to even discern that the resulting portraiture is indeed of a sweet pepper, and a rather tasty one. It refuses to be anything other than a poor defenseless bell pepper mauled malevolently by bad knifework and lying listless, awaiting its ultimate destruction in a frying pan. I mean well, really I do.photoThere was, for example, an incident the other day involving an attempt to make (for the first time in a verrrrrry long time, mind you) crepes for supper. I wanted to make them without flour, since I’m making a sincere effort to battle an addiction to wheat and offset the unkindness it seems to do to my stomach. So to the eggs I added only a splash of cream to thin them a bit, a pinch of salt and a touch of vanilla for depth of flavor. So far, so good. But of course, not having made crepes in eons, I made the first one so far too thick that it morphed quickly into a leather-thick omelette of unwieldy proportions and promptly subdivided into continental shapes and semi-detached crevasses when I attempted to force it to wrap around the roast-chicken chunks anyway. The second was more successful, but given that the crepes were already going to be fairly huge and there were only two of us coming to the table, I’d only made enough batter for two crepes, so one remained a geographical disaster area when plated.

It’s hardly the worst sin I’ve committed in the cooking realm, but even the vegetable-mushroom medley in herbed tomato cream sauce being lapped over the top and sprinkled with shredded mozzarella to melt couldn’t exactly disguise the rocky profile of the crude assemblage underneath. Ah, well! It tasted fine enough that (given the huge portions) chopping up the remainder in a little casserole with some added tomatoes and more sprinkled mozz and cheddar to melt in made a perfectly serviceable (and actually, prettier) pseudo-lasagna for brunch the next day. I keep reminding myself that aroma and flavor, not good looks, must always remain the chief arbiters for the biters of the dish.

photoBut I can’t help but judge a dish on its beauty, still, and neither do any others unless they’re genuinely starving. Christmas Day’s standing rib roast of beef (above) was as tender and juicy and flavorful as any I’ve made, and in fact the gravy was a delicious simple reduction of beef juices and Cabernet finished with a bit of butter, but they didn’t impress with their devilishly handsome appearance as much as they might have done if I’d more intelligently plated the meat on top of the sauce, especially in the company of such homely looking side dishes as sweet coleslaw and brown-butter mashed potatoes. Presentation remains elusive, and capturing it on camera even more so. I must continue to learn!

Meanwhile, back at the oven, there are more serious disasters, ones that if compounded one with another and another as they were last week for some infernal reason beyond my ken, verge on apocalyptic. The centerpiece of one such Perfect Storm of kitchen failures was the day in which I managed to mis-set two crucial cooking elements at once. The end result of the first was that the wrongly timed egg boiling created not the expected hard-boiled eggs (a simple enough thing!), not even soft-boiled eggs mind you, but implosive mutant mush that was unsalvageable and decidedly unpalatable and went straight from kettle to compost in a trice. I was relieved that the Dutch oven finishing its long time in the sauna at least held a nice batch of broth that had been simmering overnight–that would cheer me up–relieved, that is, until I discovered that I had apparently jostled the lid out of place the night before and left just enough gap that not only did the liquid all vanish in a beautiful cloud, it left behind such a blackened, smoking pile of bones and charred vegetables and meat bits that I not only had to chisel out what I could and soak the pot for two days, continuing the excavations until I could scrub it back to a recognizable enamel surface, but I could also literally not photograph it at all. It was the perfectly even black of deep outer space, offering not a single change in surface that could reflect the light required by a camera lens for recognition. The smoke released when I opened the pot took days to clear from the house, and the only upside I can think of is that the pot was too tough to die despite its trial by fire.photoSo any time you are feeling a little blue, a little inadequate as a chef or depressed as a foodie, take heart. I have not only managed in spite of myself to keep self and fellow diners alive and un-poisoned for all of these years, even without resorting to the antique cure-all elixir waiting on the apothecary shelf, but have even occasionally risen above my faults and produced some memorably tasty, yes, even prettily presented, treats that people who didn’t even owe me money complimented. I’d show you the best of them and preen a little, but documentation still remains my weakest suit, and of course there’s that perpetual problem where the really good stuff gets eaten before you can say Photo Op! and dash for the camera. Later, perhaps. Dig in!

Let Out the Waistband a Little, Wontcha

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photoBig as All Outdoors

Though she’s partial to the taste

Of homely things, she would not shun

A lobster tail or truffle, waste

Fine wine, or insult anyone

Who’s made the effort to provide

Her with the best the fecund earth

Produces, so she opens wide,

And so maintains her striking girth

garphite drawingMy paternal grandfather was a fabulous person, a super-grandpa. He was also a well-rounded man. He used to tell us kids he had a ‘watermelon’ stashed under his belt, and we had little reason to doubt it. Clearly a man so full of joie de vivre could have no worse burden than being shaped like the centerpiece of a summer picnic. Unfortunately in combination with an imperfectly functioning ticker this particular element of his physique probably led down a fairly direct path to his early death. But honestly, I can’t say it’s likely he’d’ve traded for more years of life if it meant giving up any serious amount of the good food he adored. He didn’t seem too distressed when laughingly relating his trip to a clothier where he’d been rather imperiously informed by the tailor that he was Portly and would require a bit of special attention to be well fitted.

Me, I can’t say I’d find it easy to choose differently than he did. Because food is a grand part of my joie de vivre as well. I’m more likely to reenact his slightly sheepish yet cheery confession when Grandma caught him almost literally with his hand in the cookie jar and he told her “I only ate fourteen.” Or I’ll quote his favorite refrain about virtually anything edible: “Wouldn’t this be great with some chocolate ice cream!”

photoWhether the menu du jour is old-school comfort food like lemony shellfish over butter-steamed beet greens, a cheeseburger-meatloaf or an egg salad sandwich, or is some fantastic concoction full of exotic ingredients (probably made by more skilled hands than mine, in that case), count on me jumping into the buffet line right away. Hey, I give myself aerobic credit for the jumping, for starters. The exercise’ll help improve my odds, right Grandpa? I’m always going to have a little Grandpa-angel on my shoulder, of course, reminding me to be moderate when I can stand to be, so I won’t follow too exactly in his genetic footsteps, but if I can keep up with the total-immersion happiness he seemed to find in sitting down to a great meal with his loved ones I’ll be glad to consistently have that aspect of my role model in mind too. Just thinking of our many fantastic times with Grandpa makes the food taste that much better, as it is. Hey, you over there, sneak another scoop of that Tillamook Mudslide ice cream into my dish while I go change into my elastic-waist stretch pants, all right?

graphite drawing

Foodie Tuesday: Bad News/Good News/Bad News

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Neither photogenic nor as much tastier than photogenic as it should have been . . .

The true food bloggers and kitchen mavens have it all over me when it comes to fully celebrating food in the manner it deserves. Take my lunch the other day (please!). It seemed like a good idea: cream of roasted cauliflower soup with a spoonful of buttery mushrooms on top. Nice and simple and earthy. Turns out, it was too simple, to the point of being about as bland as a children’s book written by well-intentioned Educators. I ate it, being a pietist of my own sort, but not with any particular enjoyment. I should have had the dedication to re-season the soup, but I wasn’t committed enough at the moment. The sautéed mushrooms, it turned out, only emphasized the soup’s lack of valor. A mild, but still a little irksome, moment of appetite suppression that didn’t match up to my original plan at all. The upside of it was that I was sufficiently fueled to fix up a much better dinner by the time my spouse headed home. If I cook up something disappointing, at least I’d rather it’s not when I’m sharing the food!

The week has been a little like that–mistakes and false starts punctuated and rescued by recoveries and rediscoveries.

There was the pantry light that was less and less frequently willing to be switched off until its pull-chain switch finally just broke entirely. It was good that the light was stuck “on” so that we could still find things in the pantry, but bad in that even with a low-e bulb it still heated up the little room, not very welcome in food storage at all but especially when the ambient temp here has been ridiculously high for so long. The other positive that came out of it was the motivation to replace the old ceramic shadeless utility fixture with an actual glassed light fixture, though I can’t say I enjoyed crouching atop my stepladder and angled over the pantry shelf at about 85 degrees Fahrenheit for even as long as it took to wire in a new little lamp. I’ll admit I do like the slightly more diffused light and appreciate the ability to once again turn it on and off, so I will concede that it was time to do the deed.

Then we started seeing ants, more ants, lots of ants around the kitchen. And we’d just had our quarterly household pest-control visitation in the last couple of weeks. At first I’d thought these were just refugees fleeing the spray-guy’s weaponry, but clearly the activity was beginning to build rather than subside. Great! A family of carpenter ants with resistance to our accustomed defense systems. But when I called the pest-control company this morning they sent “my” guy right on out, no waiting. Now, I like him not only because he’s a nice guy who comes when contacted and because he generally manages our bug problems quickly and thoroughly. This man, however, endeared himself to us immediately on his first visit by hooking us up with the best New York style pizza around this area (in a hole in the wall strip mall joint run by New York expats). You know you’ve found a good contractor when he can recommend first class food of any kind.

Today’s bug-fixing visit was a detailed reinspection and treatment with a new combination of baits and poisons and so forth, and certainly the ants visible during my rescuer’s efforts were not inured to this particular combo, so I am hopeful. The inspection and injection, however, required our moving most of the furniture in the affected rooms and most of the kitchen’s pantry and cupboard contents as well. And of course there were dead and dying ants all over the place. Sorry, I’m just not very zen about sharing my home, particularly my food storage areas, with indoor bugs. There was no doubt that at the end of it I would be facing a major household cleaning. The very good thing about the kitchen semi-demolition, however, was the usual one that when the contents of pantry and cupboards and counters get disturbed it’s amazing how much I discover that I’d put out of sight, out of mind or simply forgotten where it was stashed. Amazing that in less than a year since our move in I have managed to get that absent-minded and inattentive about things, but I suppose that’s not as uncommon as I think it is.

In any case, it was inspiring enough to overhaul the entire kitchen; I couldn’t even resist a foray into the freezer, though I’m reasonably certain that neither ants nor pest-control contractor visited in that particular corner of the room.

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And in this corner . . .

In any event, it was nice to rediscover a few food strays here and there that will undoubtedly whet my appetite for various forgotten dishes and treats in the near future. The freezer reminded me that I have a pair of modest lobster tails (thank you, there are some kinds of bugs I love) sealed up in there that will surely make a nice treat soon, perhaps with a little hollandaise, my all-time favorite seafood sauce; but I must tell you that I think no haute chef’s classic version or fussy variation of hollandaise matches the version I love best, the one my mother always made from the old Betty Crocker cookbook that’s purely egg yolks and lemon juice and a ton of butter. Meanwhile, I dug up and re-corralled a bunch of other favorite condiments in the pantry, from sauces to preserved lemons to pickled jalapenos and chipotles en adobo to Asian fried shallots. Sigh. Hidden treasures revealed.

Of course I couldn’t do so much tidying without simultaneously making a mess. When I was installing the light fixture, it was catching my sleeve on something that upset a bottle of vinegar from a shelf, sending the bottle headfirst onto the tile floor where it exploded in a shower of intensely fragrant miniscule glass shards and balsamic spray. Today it was turning around only to hear my favorite measuring pitcher (you know the one, you’ve got one too that’s got exactly the combination of measurements you most often use, in the size and shape of pitcher that’s most perfect to fit your favorite whisk, spatula, spoon or single-recipe-amount of any- and everything) overbalance and fall with a sharp crack on those same beautiful but deadly tiles. Goodbye, sweet kitchen tool.

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Not a tragedy in the classical sense, perhaps, but still . . .

I’m glad to say that despite my utter lack of grace and athletic skills I am not generally a complete and horrific klutz either. So I’ll be a tad more vigilant and hope that I’ve gotten my major kitchen hijinks out of my system for a little bit now and get on with fixing and eating. And I am certainly glad that there was the impetus, however unwelcome its various pesky sources may have been, to get ‘down and dirty’ in order to be cleaner and more efficient and well-organized in the kitchen again for a while. There is definitely a kind of contentment for me in just looking at a space that has been newly neatened and unveiled, and I know it will lead to more thoughtful cookery for a little while as well. Next soup will surely be much better!

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. . . and don't get me started on the joys of a stack of freshly washed kitchen linens or bar towels!

Foodie Tuesday: Leave No Deliciousness Unloved

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almond-crusted grapefruit bars

With a tweak-tweak here and a tweak-tweak there . . .

I rarely make any little edible thing without messing around with the recipe (classic or otherwise). And I married a supertaster. Folks, you know what that means. Endless potential drama–dare I say it, a recipe for disaster?

Happily, it means instead tremendous room for growth and creativity on both our parts. I think after fifteen-plus years of togetherness we’ve managed a lot of dandy discoveries. And you know what? We’ve eaten well along the way.

The gift of massive quantities of papillae–tastebuds, those squiggly little fellas that make the mouth sing with salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami joy–makes one vulnerable in all of the good and bad ways possible to the information glut those gluttonous sensory detectors are zapping through one’s system. As an ordinary non-supertasting superhero, I find it hard to imagine surviving the experience of having extra helpings of sensation when eating divinely delicious stuff. When food and drink are superlative, it’s already so intensely exciting that I can be overwhelmed and left speechless and limp and hardly able to conceive of the prospect of time itself re-starting. All else falls into shade.

That this can happen not only over a masterfully executed and presented breast of pheasant with chanterelles served over handmade pappardelle in champagne cream but just as well and deeply felt over a tasty tuna salad sandwich is part of the beauty of experiencing food as more than mere physical sustenance.

That the great and the humble have equal power over gustatory happiness means that all of you out there who are under the supertaster spell are even less immune to whatever punch is packed by lunch. No surprise, then, that kids born with an extraordinary supply of papillae are quick to respond with particular strength of feeling, and very often of will, to what is put on their plates and in their little rosebud mouths. The bitterness in cruciferous vegetables is more potent to such an eater than to others and may taste downright poisonous. Sour cream? I don’t think so, Grandma! Aromatics alone can drive a poor supertaster around the bend.

So I’ve got me a guy that in his youth wouldn’t eat eggs unless prepared exactly to his specifications, very possibly because only under those ideal circumstances were the sulfurous undertones of the seemingly dainty egg tolerably controlled to bypass his micro-detectors. Like his father before him (also, I suspect, a supertaster), he is averse to the presence–nay, immune to the charms–of raw or strong onions or garlic, vinegar, grapefruit juice, buttermilk, a multitude of herbs, and ripened cheeses. But being a naturally hungry boy and an enthusiastic appreciator of good food, he learned many ways in which those things can be tamed and massaged into behaving in a friendlier, more mellow manner.

Thus I have a so-called picky eater on my hands, but one who despite his aversion to a wide range of strong sensory aspects of food still adores many kinds of highly flavored cuisines and a number of dishes one mightn’t expect: a long list of Mexican and Indian foods are high on the favorites list, sushi a longed-for treat, and Thai curries like mother’s milk to him. Since we live surrounded by equally hungry friends and family and a wealth of dangerously fabulous cooks, there’s no doubt we will continue to discover both the boundaries or limits of our respective foodly tolerance and the wonders of what lies on the other side when we manage to navigate our way across and over those edges.

Around here, asking what’s for dinner is nothing short of an invitation to examine one’s entire existential paradigm–that of the moment, at least. Excuse me, please. I think I hear the kitchen calling me.

PS–The bar cookies above are almond-crusted grapefruit bars, made simply by taking a favorite lemon bar recipe and substituting pink grapefruit juice for the lemon and almond “flour” (ground almonds) for the wheat flour. My spouse had no interest in them, of course. But our guests and neighbors and I all found them quite tolerable!