Perpetual Carouse

Last week, NPR did a story on the quest for the Holey Grail, a trans-fat free donut. Voodoo Donuts, birthplace of said donut was also the birthplace of the bacon-maple bar, which was also on my "to eat" list in Portland.

Bauer's Top 100 hit the streets yesterday.

Haven't had time to chew on it all yet, but at first glance, I'm impressed so far.

I got quoted in a Budget Travel article about Ghetto Gourmet. I'm reasonably certain I had something far more insightful to say than "It's great," but then again we had polished off a bottle before I spoke to the writer, so I'm just glad she didn't write "...slurred Ray Aguilera."

OMG! Slashfood found a tiny bell pepper inside another pepper.

What's worse, them posting about it, or me posting about them posting about it.

It's totally me.

As if being responsible for the beer that most tastes like piss (I'm guessing...but I do know what the beer tastes like) isn't enough, Anhueser Busch is now bringing us Spykes, little bottled shots of alcoholic nastiness in flavors like "Hot Melons" (seriously!) and "Hot Chocolate." The Spykes website suggests that they're perfect for adding to a beer (to hide the piss-taste, presumably) or to do as a standalone shot.

MSNBC is reporting that anti-underage-drinking folks are up in arms, and AB is playing Rainman on the question of whether or not they're marketing to teens.

As if the ringtones, screensavers, and IM icons available on the Spykes website weren't dead giveaways.

" Oh..we're very aware of the important contribution of our Lateeeno population." Then, proudly boasted about the good works Beard House has been doing on their behalf: " Why...just last week at a dinner at the House, 7 out of 10 of the waiters we hired were Lateeno!"
She looked at me, guilessly, as if expecting a pat on the head.
-Anthony Bourdain, on a recent conversation with Beard Foundation muckety-muck, via Ruhlman.

Joe. My. God. reports that Out magazine is naming the Times' "Gay Mafia" (including Frank Bruni) as the seventh most powerful gay man/woman/collective entity in America.

They're also outing...

Edible Estates is an attack on the American front lawn and everything it has come to represent.
Edible Estates reconciles issues of global food production and urbanized land use with the modest gesture of a domestic garden.
Edible Estates is an ongoing series of projects to replace the American front lawn with edible garden landscapes responsive to culture, climate, context and people.

Unfortunately, I don't have a front lawn, but if I did I'd be ripping that sucker out and planting a garden.

Everybody loves anthropomorphized food, right?

Especially when accompanied by a totally bitchin' tune from the 80s.

I'm kind of a geek when it cones to old cookbooks and recipes. I absolutely love reading about all these old-school things that we don't really cook or eat anymore. Things like weird Jell-o molds and stuff like that. I'm not really interested in actually eating any of this...but I do like reading about it. It's amazing how food is so intricately connected to time and place, and how reading about food from a different era is almost like being in a time machine.

My friend Jane stumbled across an issue of the San Francisco News from July 25, 1941 (click the graphic for a readable version). On the front page, above the fold, was this story about a society BBQ from back in the day when "the Woodside-Atherton summer colony" was a rustic getaway for city-dwellers. Now, the entire area is a pricey part of the ginormous stretch of suburbia that stretches between San Francisco and San Jose and beyond.

Props to Mrs. Betty Downey Westphal, who managed to rock out eight turkeys with a family-secret orange, white wine, and tarragon sauce; all while keeping "fresh as a daisy." You can be certain I would not be that fresh after that much cookery. More like greasy and beer-stained.

My friend Jane comes through once again with an awesome find: a copy of The Art of Barbecue and Outdoor Cooking, originally published in the 1950's. It's filled with spectacularly bad recipes for all sorts of mid-century culinary delights, things like Franks in Silver, or a Hobo Special For One.

The best (worst?) part is the book's insistence on ingredients like "processed American cheese" and its fascination with stuffing minced-up things into other things...along with great section headers like "Let's Have a Hobo Picnic."

Recipes coming soon, although since this particular culinary gem is a BookCrossing book, perhaps one day you'll be lucky enough to cross paths with it yourself.

The highlight of my recent trip to Portland (food-wise) had to be Saturday dinner at Le Pigeon. It's the new place to be (apparently), and Chef Gabe Rucker definitely proved he's got the chops to live up to being on Food & Wine's list of the best new chefs.

"While potatoes may be deep-fried in the nude, most foods require protection."
-John Hodgman

John Hodgman has a 2003 Men's Journal article on his blog about his experimentations deep frying various and sundry food items. Definitely worth a read, even if the deep-fried Twinkie craze is now behind us.

I had a deep-fried Twinkie once, sadly. Even worse was the fact that I had spent about 20 minutes walking around a street fair seeking it out. 20 minutes walking around in the sun with no beer is too much expectation to put on a Twinkie. It was doomed to fail.

The part that most surprised me was that the Twinkie itself seemed to vaporize under the fried batter. I was expecting a crunch, then that rubbery sponge cake. What I got was crunch, then this weird liquidy mush inside. I'm fairly certain I threw the rest of it away.

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As I mentioned before, a friend of mine found a fantastically bad BBQ cookbook called The Art of Barbecue and Outdoor Cooking circa 1958.

Perpetual Carouse proudly presents:

Hobo Special For One*

1/2 pound ground beef
1/4 tsp. salt
pepper
1 tbps. chopped parsley
1 tsp. chopped onion
1 small carrot, cut into strips
2 small onions, peeled
3 slices potato, cut 1/2 inch thick
10 olives
1/2 ear of corn
salt and pepper to taste

You'll need a one-pound coffee can with lid.

Combine beef, salt, pepper, parsley and onion. Shape meat into a patty the size of the bottom of the coffee can. Place a meat patty in each can. Layer with carrot strips, onions, potato slices, olives, and corn. Salt and pepper to taste. Cover tightly with coffee can lid. Nestle cans in hot coals, and cook for one hour, or until vegetables are tender.

*I'm paraphrasing the cooking instructions, because, well, retyping them was a pain. And there's that whole copyright law thing, too. Plus they weren't really all that technical anyway. The ingredients, however, are straight out of the book.

The SF Bay Guardian ran an article this week about an absentee landlord who booted an impromptu community garden off her land. Owner Aileen O'Driscoll has let her vacant lot fill with trash and weeds for as long as anyone can remember. Earlier this year neighbors took the initiative to clean up the lot, turning a longtime neighborhood eyesore into a garden.

O'Driscoll refuses to negotiate with the gardeners, and has demanded that the plants be torn out. Apparently, bare dirt, weeds and trash are preferable to a thriving garden, and the woman has even refused the gardeners' attempts to lease the land from her.

Chow's got a short list of cheap kitchen gear just as good/better than the expensive stuff, and for the most part, I agree with their list.

I'm certainly guilty of overspending on certain gear, but frankly, you'll have to pry my All-Clad chef's pan out of my cold, dead hands. Same goes for my Global knives (although I hate the shape of the handles). My little-used but much-appreciated Cuisinart falls into the same category. Expensive, and worth every penny.

I'd say Chow's best picks are the restaurant-supply sheet pans, and Lodge cast iron. I'm big fans of both, and it kills me to watch people buy $40 baking sheets and $150 grill pans in fancy kitchen-porn shops.

It's also pretty easy to get good deals on the expensive stuff, too. We're always on the hunt for Le Creuset at garage sales, antique shops and discount stores, although the antique shops seem to be catching on lately and jacking up the prices. Thanks to the lifetime warranty, a cracked/chipped/otherwise fucked up Le Creuset will be replaced free by the company for the price of shipping it to them. And there's always the outlets.
[All-Clad, Le Creuset]

Chocolate-covered pluots from the farmers' market.

Delicious...although some serious dark chocolate would have made these suckers just that much better.

[TasteSpotting #1404]

Got a highly amusing call from a friend last night during the Food Network Awards. Sounds like it was a trainwreck. Haven't seen it yet, as I was busy catching up on Lost, but I've got it faux-Tivoed at home.

Do Emeril and Bobby--who, whatever you think of their shows--BUILT that fucking network, deserve to be pimped out with such casual disregard? Does anyone deserve to run the Gauntlet of Shame that was the "red carpet", forced to waddle past the California Raisins and Tony the Tiger and a bunch of other corporate Big Heads?
-Bourdain on last night's awards

I'm not quite sure how we got along all these years without individually-labeled, pre-washed, plastic-wrapped, microwave-ready potatoes.

Ick!

Personally, I subscribe to the Alton Brown school of baked potatoes:
Stab the sucker full of holes with a fork, toss with a bit of olive oil and a heavy pinch of kosher salt, bake at 350 directly on the oven rack for about an hour. Perfect.

I want my 90 minutes back.

I was expecting that the Food Network Awards would be about-- oh, I don't know-- food. The dead giveaway that the whole idea was a clunker was the conspicuous lack of chefs not on the payroll. What a drag.

The award for best professional grade appliance goes to the microwave? The microwave? Do professional kitchens even use microwaves? And then there's the award given for Achatz' anti-griddle. That's supposed to be the kitchen technology just around the corner for all of us? Um, no.

Quick, name a Tuesday night dinner that requires the use of an anti-griddle!

I didn't think so.

It's sad, really. For the longest time, the Food Network was good TV. It's the reason I still have cable...although they're fading fast. Actual cooking on the Food Network is going the way of music videos on MTV. It sucks. Most of their new shows are leaning toward faux cooking like Sandra Lee, and they haven't added a serious chef to the lineup in I don't know how long.

People originally turned on to the Food Network because of the food. If they keep dumbing things down (California Raisins walking the red carpet, anyone?) they're going to alienate more people than they'll attract with stupider shows.

[The comic is Achewood from January 26, 2007.]

Everyone is obsessed with where their food comes from. We love to talk about it, read about it, think about it. People go to the farmers' market once a month for three heirloom tomatoes and pat themselves on the back for eating locally. The sad reality though is that we're not exactly eating the way we pretend to be. Three tomatoes does not a factory-farm-crushing movement make.

I'm guilty of it myself. I live close to a good-sized, well-priced, year-round farmers' market. For the first few months, we went pretty regularly, almost every Saturday. Almost every Thursday, we'd end up throwing out about 50% of the stuff bought the previous weekend. We always had the best intentions, and the best food-porn fantasies of some sort of urban (urbane?) Martha Stewart-ish life overflowing with the freshest local products consumed at their nutritional and culinary peak.

Unfortunately, it always seems easier to stock up on more shelf-stable, reliable (read: imported from Chile in the off-season) produce at our local chain store. Now add in the fact that, contrary to farmers' market propaganda, eating locally and seasonably translates into spending more cash. It's easy to see why most people most of the time just say "fuck it" and go to Safeway instead.

This idea of eating locally has always appealed to me for both reasons of taste as well as politics. Food that ripened on the vine tastes better than food that ripened in a box on the floor of a food distributor's warehouse. The closer it was made to you, the better it tastes, and the less time it spent traveling in a big-rig wasting gasoline and getting old. Buying local products supports local people. I probably buy a lot more locally than the average American already. But can I live on local products alone?

I recently stumbled across the The Eat Local Challenge, a bunch of food folks basically challenging themselves to eat food produced within a one hundred mile radius of home for a week.

Further, this challenge is about trying to eat local within the budget for the "average" American family. Whoever those people are, they must be eating like crap. For a household with two working adults, that budget is $144.

Why do this?

To prove that it can (or can't) be done. And to raise questions about the state of food production and consumption in this country.

$144 a week. I hate to say it, but that's only a bit more than we spend each week on lunch in downtown San Francisco. But that's what we're going to try and live on for seven days.

Wanna rock out some sous-vide, but you don't happen to have a $4000 thermal circulator?

Throw your protein in a freezer bag with some yummies, place the bag in a pot of water, and put the pot in your oven on low. So says the L.A. Times.

I'm also wondering if this might not be a good way to re-purpose a crock-pot. I was just reading one of Jeffrey Steingarten's essays the other night, and he clocked a crock-pot around 180 degrees I think.

[Via Megnut: Ziploc officially doesn't dig on the idea of people boiling its bags. Don't say I didn't warn you.]

The Chron's got pretty extensive coverage on The Eat Local Challenge. As I mentioned, we're going to be giving it a whirl starting tomorrow.

Already I can see some of the difficulties. Sticking to the budget is going to be the big one. The other is that there isn't really salt, pepper, flour, or a zillion other things I cook with all the time within a hundred miles of my kitchen. I was talking with a friend of mine, and he asked about restaurants. He pointed out that even restaurants that emphasize local products get a lot of stuff from far-away lands.

The way I look at it, this isn't an exercise in limitation. I'm taking it on as an opportunity to enjoy exploring the things around me, rather than fretting over where I'm going to find locally-produced cornmeal. It's rather telling that the most successful of the Chron's guinea-pigs were a retired couple who've been doing this for years, and restaurant-owners, although the less-connected, more time-constricted city-slicker made a good go. I don't have the time, or the experience required to spend my week hunting down every last ingredient. And that's fine for me.

As I mentioned to my friend, I'll be happy with an organic scone or loaf of bread from a locally-owned bakery. If the flour wasn't made in a shed in the back, it's not going to ruin my day. I'm approaching this whole thing as realistically as possible. We can't eat entirely locally. But that doesn't make trying to eat closer to home not worth working on.

Besides, anything that gives me an excuse to eat awesome cheese and drink good hooch can't be bad, right?

Dining Out For Life is next week in most cities (Click for SF and East Bay restaurants).

Go out, eat tons of food, and support local AIDS charities in your neck of the woods. Spend lots of money. Order two desserts.

Shopping trips: 2
Total spent: $59
Remaining budget: $101

In light of the LA Times' reccomendations for a poor-man's sous-vide, Megnut did a little sleuthing into the dangers of plastic.

Turns out that both freezer bags and the vacuum seal bags the pros use are both made with polyethylene, a plastic that melts around 115 degrees, give or take a few.

Ergo, eat really tender and delicious meats at your peril.

Two local/ sustainable/ (mostly) organic grilled cheese sandwiches with diet Cokes: $20

Being annoyed that you forgot the lunches at home during the Eat Local Challenge: Priceless.

That leaves us with $81 and three days to go.

Photo by Denise Siegel

The show was awesome, and only slightly marred by the woman in front of me who would turn around and glare disapprovingly anytime anyone would hoot or holler or otherwise make it known that they were indeed alive and breathing and enjoying this here rock and roll music that was being played. Pity the poor souls who had any sort of real-life emotional response. If you're that picky about your listening experience, stay the fuck home with your iPod, methinks.

Grant was in rock-tastic form, accompanied by a drummer and bassist. It was a much more "plugged-in" show than the last time I saw him, focused on material from the new record, Strangelet. There were a few bones thrown to the Grant Lee Buffalo die-hards, including a killer acoustic version of Honey Don't Think [from Mighty Joe Moon] and an awesome version of Truly, Truly [Jubilee].

When I first discovered Grant via Grant Lee Buffalo, I was living in a student co-op. There were about 150 people in the house I lived in, and we had this giant commercial kitchen. The organized meals usually sucked, so I'd head in there after dinner to cook for myself. I used to cook up a storm in there, and I can remember listening to a lot of GLB on the shitty stereo. One song in particular, Dixie Drug Store [Streaming MP3], captured my imagination, with its tale of a traveler in the French Quarter seduced by the ghost of Marie Laveau. Now I can't help associating Grant's voice with New Orleans, which is funny because he's actually from the same California town that I grew up in.

It's strange how taste memories manage to permeate seemingly unrelated things. Listening to Grant's records now remind me of meals I had in New Orleans and the steak sandwiches with caramelized onion and pepper jack cheese that I used to cook up on the flat top in my Berkeley co-op.

Hangar One's got a new limited-edition hot pepper vodka, made with chipotles smoked by Anthony Paone at T-Rex Barbeque in Berkeley. Get 'em while they're...um...hot.

Incidentally, I'm a big fan of T. Rex, but I have to say that their ribs are neither all that nor a bag of chips (as the kids say). As a food-nerd and a huge BBQ aficionado, I'd ordinarily write off any BBQ place with mediocre ribs, but T. Rex does everything else so well that I am willing to look past such a major flaw. But really, what up with that? They aren't exactly a hole-in-the-wall 'Que joint, but Barbeque is in the name. If you can't throw down mad ribs, calling yourself a barbeque restaurant is suspect.

Today is Day 6 of the Challenge, and... we're going to go over budget.

Tuesday night, we both had dinners out that were at least semi-business related, and thus unavoidable. I also went to see Grant Lee Phillips, so I ended up spending $12 on a couple of beers. They were local beers, at least.

I made another shopping trip for a few things for Wednesday dinner/ Thursday lunch, and since we didn't cook Tuesday night, I bought lunch out. Michael got a free lunch from work, so I'm not counting it.

The money breaks out like this:

My Tuesday Dinner before Grant Lee Phillips show + beers at the show: $32
Michael's Tuesday Dinner: $24.50

Software for Wednesday dinner & Thursday lunch:
2 organic red bell peppers: $5 (probably local, but I'm not 100% certain)
1 loaf of organic local bread: $3

2 local/ sustainable carnitas tacos w/ chips & salsa: $11.50

That brings our total spent this week to $155.

Dinner last night was roasted red pepper, caramelized onion and Fatted Calf bacon sandwiches with Happy Boy greens from the farmers' market on Saturday. I had wanted tomatoes, but there were no local tomatoes to be found. Paying $5 for two smallish peppers totally sucked, especially since I know the non-local, non-organic variety would have cost about a buck at the Korean market where I usually buy them.

My lunch yesterday was also illuminative. I spent almost $12 for Traci Des Jardins' designer Mexican street food. The tacos were delicious, no doubt, but I could have had the exact same meal for about $5 from the taco truck a few blocks away. The taco truck doesn't use Niman Ranch pork, or local organic produce though. I also cheated, and used the excellent (and imported from Mexico) Valentina hot sauce on my lunch. Traci's salsa may be local and sustainable, but it's also somewhat lacking in the flavor and heat department. For twelve bucks I was going to enjoy those suckers.

We're left with five bucks in the budget. Five dollars would probably be enough to get us through the next 24 hours via a flank steak or something and the odds and ends around the house. Today is Dining Out For Life though, and some friends invited us out to Cesar for dinner. If it weren't a fundraiser, and just a regular night out, I would have postponed until after the challenge. It does raise an interesting point though, namely that this sort of conscious eating can make having a social life somewhat challenging.

Ironically in our case, it seems to have supercharged our social life. In an average week, we might dine with friends once... and yet somehow this particular week gave us four opportunities to eat out, only one of which was planned before the week started. I suppose we could have taken a more hardline approach to the challenge and declined these invitations, but we don't get to spend enough time with people as it is. The fact that all these occasions happened this week is purely coincidence.

So tomorrow we're off the hook, and I'm kind of looking forward to it. Not because of the food... we've had great stuff this week. I'm looking forward to not having to bean-count. We've definitely incorporated more local products into our diets than usual, and that's something I'd like to carry forward after this week.

Last Friday, we headed out to Bourbon & Branch, the new-ish speakeasy-style bar in the TenderNob. I was fully prepared to hate it, what with all the New York-style cloak and dagger drama surrounding it (secret location, mandatory reservations, a password).

Turns out I was totally wrong. I love it. With the exception of the giant non-sign out front (yes, I get the joke...but the giant backlit plastic sign kills any aura of Gatsby-era authenticity) the whole experience is almost perfect.

The hostess was accommodating and friendly, even when 66% of our party was late. She showed us to the table (instead of making us wait), and within minutes of stepping through the door we were sipping a wonderful vanilla mimosa amuse while pondering the evening's drinking possibilities.

The tin ceiling, low lights, loungey vibe and Prohibition-era soundtrack were the perfect backdrop for the hand-crafted cocktails. A classic Gimlet got a respectful update with the addition of cucumber and elderflower, and the Sidecar was spot-on. Despite B&B's protest, they actually do make a great Cosmo, albeit a pomegranate-ginger version, which they creatively named... well... Pomegranate Ginger. Drinks are a tad pricey, but considering that a reservation guarantees you a seat, a waitressperson, premium liquors and house-made mixers it's worth the extra $2 or $3 a pop over what you'd spend in another bar. Early reports were that wait staff were slow and limited your table to only a few rounds, but our waitress was quick, helpful, and happy to serve us as many rounds as we wanted.

Once our table reservation was up, we headed through the secret doorway into the library. It was like being in a Scooby Doo cartoon, except with booze. Anyone, reservation or no, can step into the library for a drink.

While I might pop in there on a weeknight if there were no tables available, a Friday night in the library was just like Friday night in any other bar in San Francisco, namely loud and crowded. If anything, the library made me appreciate the relaxing, civilized atmosphere of the main bar even more.