Month: April 2004

Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Mallo bar front. Here is the news flash —

I had a Penn State Creamery Orange Vanilla Sunday Cone the other day. The sky was blue and sunny. It was beautiful. The day was beautiful. I have a food blog. And yet, you did not see it. I had my camera with me, but I did not take a picture. I did not take a picture because the summary food log format I have been using to “reduce the noise level on this blog” does not lend itself to the detailed photographs I had been taking of my food. Since it appears only weekly, it does not encourage the sort of spontaneity that desires a photograph of everything. I censored myself and in so doing, you all suffered. For that I am sorry.

I have decided that the purpose of this journal is actually to generate noise. It is an ongoing conversation with the past, the present, and the future, and it should not be censored in any way. Who am I to say what the future will find interesting or even important. As George Bernard Shaw said, “All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.”

Since I want to make progress, I am no longer going to censor myself, regardless of the perceived information content of what I have to say. I am going to log my food as I eat it and I am going to update those logs without indicating what the updates are. Those who want the first draft of history will simply have to pay attention and witness it themselves.

I am restoring the daily food log today and I am going to retroactively log what I have eaten in daily format since the last summary food log.

That is all. Please go back about your day. Nothing to see here. Move along… move along.

The responsibility for great sushi extends to the customer.

The sushi bar diner is expected to order from the chef (but drinks and other food from the waiters), to pick up each piece with fingers or chopsticks (both are correct) and to eat it in one or two bites without putting it back on the plate.

Another sushi commandment, often flouted in American sushi bars, forbids dropping a piece of sushi into soy sauce and leaving it to soak. All the careful hospitality of the Japanese tradition could not conceal the shudder that ran through every sushi chef when asked about this practice. “It is very painful for us,” Gen Mizoguchi of Megu said.

For the record, you should turn the piece upside down and swipe the fish lightly through the dish of soy sauce. A small amount of wasabi can be added to the dish, but too much is disrespectful to the chef and the fish, as it drowns other flavors. [Moskin]

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Moskin, Julia. “How to Eat Sushi.” The New York Times. 21 April 2004. <www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/dining/21SBOX.html> (20 April 2004).

Potato chips may not be the most healthful food, but Pringles is going to introduce a chip this summer that is going to make you smarter — well, kind of.

That’s because the chip maker is using new technology and a partnership with the makers of Trivial Pursuit to print trivia questions right on a chip.

Every chip will include a multiple-choice trivia question with the answer printed upside down…

Pringles won’t reveal what its technology is, but assures that it’s safe. The questions are printed with a food coloring that won’t alter the taste of the crisps. [Guerrero]

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Guerrero, Lucio. “Chips as brain food?” Chicago Sun-Times. 20 April 2004. <www.suntimes.com/output/lifestyles/cst-nws-pringles20.html> (20 April 2004).

Breakfast was a bowl of cold cereal with a sliced banana and a cup of coffee. I weighed 156 pounds.

At work I had two cups of coffee and a banana.

I went to the Big Onion and had a chicken parmesan sub, a bag of chips, and a Dr. Pepper. Afterwards, I went for a two mile walk around campus.

Dinner was grilled marinated butterfly venison steaks, roasted winter vegetables — using the last of the butternut squash — a salad, a hand full of peanuts, and a bowl of pineapple and banana slices.

Are you fed up with bringing bananas to work or school only to find them bruised and squashed? Our unique, patented device allows for the safe transport and storage of individual bananas letting you enjoy perfect bananas anytime, anywhere.

The Banana Guard was specially designed to fit the vast majority of bananas. Its other features include multiple small perforations to facilitate ventilation thereby preventing premature ripening and a sturdy locking mechanism to keep the Banana Guard closed. The Banana Guard is of course dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.

Breakfast was half of a white grapefruit and a cup of coffee. I weighed 156 pounds.

At the office, I had two cups of coffee and a banana.

I walked downtown — about three miles — over lunch and got some lo mein. On the way back, I stopped at the Penn State Creamery and got an Orange Vanilla Sundae Cone.

Dinner was a mushroom/feta cheese/potato tart, a salad, and two glasses of Black Swan Merlot.

When I saw that Renee Kho, of shiokadelicious!, had decided to host the third Is My Blog Burning?, I was pleased. I was beginning to think that it was about time for another, but had not heard anything and I was afraid that the torch had been dropped and that we had seen the last of the distributed food event. But my concerns were unfounded. The response to the theme — A Cake Walk — seems to be overwhelming, to the point of including people who are not even food bloggers!

I have always been more of a pie person, so I turned to the Internet for inspiration in choosing a cake recipe. The Akron Beacon Journal has their Favorite Cake — a white scratch cake with a pineapple and nut frosting. Carroll Pellegrinelli, over at About Baking/Desserts has her Mom’s Piña Colada Cake — a coconut cake — and a Pistachio Cake and a Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing that all sounded good. The Recipe Connection at Quad-Cities Online also has a Red Velvet Cake as well as a Lemon Sponge Cake Pie, which sounded good to me, but I didn’t think it fit the bill. The Chicago Tribune had what looked like a tasty yellow cake with orange buttercream frosting. Ina Garten (a.k.a. The Barefoot Contessa) has her Orange Chocolate Chunk Cake.

In the end I decided that this sounds a little like so much food porn — unrealistic recipes and techniques that result in dazzling, decadent dishes that nobody will ever make. I needed to simplify, to look inward for the simple satisfaction of a tradition dish. My cake would be our Pineapple Upside-down Cake.

This is a very old — by American standards — very simple cake. The recipe originated as the winner of a 1925 contest held by Jim Dole, who invented canned pineapple in 1903. Upside-down cakes had apparently been in vogue since the 1870s. We will often make one after dinner if we are feeling peckish. It requires few ingredients, most of which are pantry staples, and little time. This recipe is adapted from the 1960 edition of the Better Homes & Gardens Dessert Cook Book.

Pineapple Upside-down Cake

• 2 tablespoons Butter
• 7 slices Canned Pineapple
• 7 Maraschino Cherries
• ⅔ cup Brown Sugar
• ⅓ cup Shortening
• ½ cup Granulated Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1¼ cup Flour
• 1½ teaspoons Baking Powder
• ½ teaspoon Salt

Topping

1. Melt the butter in a 9-inch by 1½-inch round pan.
2. Drain the canned pineapple, reserving the syrup.
3. Arrange the pineapple slices on the bottom of the pan — six around the outside and one in the center.
4. Place a cherry in the center of each pineapple slice.
5. Crumble the brown sugar to cover the fruit.

Cake

1. Cream together the shortening and granulated sugar.
2. Add the egg and vanilla.
3. Beat until fluffy.
4. Sift together the dry ingredients.
5. Add the dry ingredients and ½ cup of the reserved pineapple syrup, a little at a time while beating, alternating wet and dry ingredients.
6. When all of the ingredients are incorporated, spread the mixture over the pineapple.
7. Bake in a 350°F oven for 45 to 50 minutes.
8. Let stand 5 minutes.
9. Invert the pan on a plate.

Breakfast was a fajita omelette — that is filled with sautéed onions and green peppers, in our special marinade, and topped with our homemade salsa — orange juice and coffee. I weighed 157 pounds.

Lunch was a few peanuts and a glass of Black Swan Merlot.

Dinner was a Smoked Turkey Baked Chimichanga and some frijoles refritos with two glasses of Black Swan Merlot.

As the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences points out, this year will see the return of the 17-year periodical cicada. Well, for you foodies out there, this may prove to be a rare opportunity.

Although Americans are gradually increasing their intentional insect intake — a few bug parts get into everything from apple butter to wheat flour — the practice remains more a matter of novelty than nutrition. But when the billions of cicadas belonging to Brood X (the X stands for 10) leave their underground habitats next month, people who want to taste a bug may find their garage doors laden with opportunities. [Barr]

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Barr, Cameron W. “Cicada: The Other, Other White Meat.” The Washington Post. 16 April 2004. <www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16047-2004Apr15> (18 April 2004).

If you are visiting Britain, heed these words.

By all means visit Stonehenge and Buckingham Palace, but if you want to see what real life in Britain is all about, you have to go to the pub. Pub-going is by far the most popular native pastime. The 61,000 pubs in Britain have over 25 million loyal customers. Over three-quarters of the adult population go to pubs, and over a third are “regulars,” visiting the pub at least once a week. The pub is a central part of British life and culture. If you haven’t been to a pub, you haven’t seen Britain. [Fox]

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Fox, Kate. “Passport to the Pub.” Social Issues Research Centre. 1996. <www.sirc.org/publik/pub.html> (18 April 2004).