Fat Guy

Last year for our son's nursery school's annual fundraiser I designed, with your assistance, a specialty cocktail (that discussion can be found here). So well received was the "Builder's Punch" that this year I've been charged with masterminding the whole bar situation. I need some help. There will be approximately 150 people for 4 hours. We will have enough white and red wine to follow the standard 1.5 glasses per person per hour formula. Last year they offered only wine and one specialty cocktail (plus soft drinks). This year the goal is to expand the selection, however a full bar with the whole array of spirits and mixers is not really within the budget. I was thinking about offering three specialty cocktails, simple enough to be batched and served by temp bartenders without a ton of skill. It would be great to do some equal-parts cocktails, etc. -- easy stuff. We will give each a name that evokes the name of the school. It would be best to be able to use a single type of glass for all three, and for them to be three different colors, different garnishes. We also plan to have vodka, gin and basic mixers for those who insist on G&T or whatever. Everything has to be certified kosher, which isn't usually a problem with hard liquor but can be an issue with liqueurs. Thoughts?

Sheesh. I have that book but never thought to look in it.

Tonight I had dinner at my neighborhood pretty-good Japanese place, Isohama (1666 Third Ave., Btwn. 93rd & 94th Sts., 212-828-0099, http://isohama.com/ ), probably for at least the 20th time in the past several years. Over dinner, my mother's friend asked "Will you be reviewing this place on eGullet tomorrow?" I get asked variants of this question so many times, I've learned that it's not worth the bother to explain to people that I'm not really a restaurant reviewer and that my eG Forums posts (as well as those of most members who post about restaurants) are more along the lines of reports and discussion than what many people have come to think of as restaurant reviews. I simply replied, "I never post about this place." "Why not?" asked my mother's friend. I confess I didn't have a simple, convincing answer. I mumbled something about our members and readers not being interested in neighborhood "utility" places. Later I thought maybe I should have said it was because there wasn't much to say about the place. But chatting about it with my wife on the way home I realized the real reason was the perception that we were, in her words, "eating below the level of eGullet." I did a search through my zillion eG Forums posts and learned that I've mentioned Isohama only once, when somebody asked about grabbing a bite near Mount Sinai Hospital. Then I realized there are several other restaurants in my life that are like Isohama: they're close to home, my son's school, my mother's apartment, etc., and we eat at them fairly often, but I don't post about them. Next, I concluded that surely I'm not the only one -- many of you probably have a similar list of places that you don't bother posting about. And, while posts about such places are not going to be as interesting as posts about El Bulli or even Hawaiian Tropic Zone, they still serve a purpose. I'll start. Near my home, Isohama is a major standby. It's a better-than-average Japanese restaurant like you find all over the United States: there's sushi, tempura, noodle soups, etc., on the menu -- all the foods that in Japan would have specialized, focused restaurants. The American-Japanese equivalent of a diner, albeit a bit more expensive. Nothing is as good as what you'd get at 15 East, Sushi Yasuda and the other top places. But it's substantially better than the sushi and Japanese food being served at a lot of Chinese restaurants and the like. We usually eat dinner early, and from 5-7 there are "early bird specials" for $15 that are quite generous: a full-size portion of an entree item (sukiyaki, katsu, sushi platter, et al.), plus soup, salad and ice cream. 1666 Third Ave., Btwn. 93rd & 94th Sts., 212-828-0099, http://isohama.com/ Also in the neighborhood, Chinatown East is a place we rely on heavily. I won't say it's a great or even particularly good Chinese restaurant. But they make better-than-decent renditions of the American Chinese standards. Occasionally I'm eating something from there and I say, hey, this is pretty good. But it's not competitive with the good Midtown and Chinatown places. It's just the reliable neighborhood place. Better than in some neighborhoods. 1650 Third Ave., Btwn. 92nd & 93rd Sts., 212-987-3500, http://www.chinatowneastnyc.com/ A couple of blocks down, also on Third Avenue, is Naruto Ramen. I've posted about Naruto Ramen on the aggregated ramen topic. It's not as good as Ippudo and its ilk, but it's surprisingly good for the Upper East Side. 1596 Third Ave., Btwn. 89th & 90th, 212-289-7803, no website. By far the best pizza in the neighborhood comes from Nick's. This is the Manhattan offshoot of the famed Nick's of Forest Hills, which was never one of the very best but was always quite good. Nick's on the Upper East Side, in turn, may not be quite as good as the original. But it's a lot better than the average slice shop and as good as anything except the very best places. It's an asset to the neighborhood, to be sure. Nick's Restaurant & Pizzeria, 1814 Second Ave., corner of 94th, 212-987-5700, http://nicksnyc.com I'm a little ashamed to admit how many times we've had weekend brunch (and other meals) at Sarabeth's on Madison Avenue. It's basically across the street from where we've lived for the past 18 years (the other places I've listed are a bit of a walk east from us), so even though it gets crazy-busy on weekends it's easy enough to walk over, give a name, get a time estimate, go back home, then arrive when the table is ready. The food is always quite good, and the baked goods are destination-worthy. 1295 Madison Ave., Btwn. 92nd & 93rd Sts., 212-410-7335, http://sarabethseast.com/ I wish we had a branch of Hummus Place near my home, but in lieu of that Falafel Express serves acceptable Middle Eastern fast food. 1406 Madison Ave., Btwn. 97th & 98th, 212-987-6185, no website. The best Mexican in my neighborhood is El Paso, on 97th Street (they have two other branches uptown). Not fantastic, but very serviceable. 64 E. 97th St., Btwn. Madison & Park Aves., 212-996-1739, http://elpasotaqueria.com/ Those are just the decent places near my home that I never post about. I'll cover a couple of other clusters of dining activity in later posts.

I'm sure the product is in the enriched-bread family, but the Miami onion rolls seem to be significantly moister and squishier than any brioche I've had, and also moister and squishier than any challah I've had. It may just be a question of ratios. I'm not sure.

Onion pockets aka "Miami onion rolls" are wonderfully addictive little rolls that always used to come in the bread basket at Jewish deli and dairy restaurants like Wolfie's in Miami and Ratner's in New York City. These restaurants are gone, but the Miami onion roll persists as a bakery and supermarket item, and it pops up at other places here and there. What is it? What makes the Miami onion roll so great? Eggs, butter, oil, sugar, what?

Quantities vary, but I always pack enough so that if he skips one or two items it's still enough. He's a very good eater, so I indulge him. And sometimes he does manage to eat through a whole one of those lunches. The school sends home the leftover food, so I get to see what he eats. On 3 out of 4 days, he eats about half of what I pack. On 1 out of 4 days he might eat everything or nothing. Catching up on lunch photos since my last post:

Soaking pots is a cleaning strategy that I have found many people don't embrace. But it works. Sometimes you cook something -- like the lentils I made last night -- and you get a really stubborn crust on the pot. If you try to scrub the pot under running water, or you put it in the dishwasher, you'll make little headway. But if you fill it with warm water and a little dish soap and leave it overnight then the goo comes right off in the morning. So let's hear it for soaking.

Just getting caught up on last week's lunches. I posted Monday above. Here are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday's lunches. No Friday, as usual, on account of early dismissal. Are we in an egg rut? We certainly are. I keep trying to balance my desire to try new lunch strategies with his desire always to have either an egg or an avocado roll.

Last time we ran this challenge, an ABC News television crew did a story that was scheduled to run on Good Morning America. Several postponements later, the story seemed to disappear into the abyss of never-aired television footage. Over the past couple of days, however, a version of the piece has started to air on some of the local ABC evening news broadcasts. Here's an example from the Seattle station: http://www.komonews.com/news/consumer/80756472.html

Whether or not one applies the label "economics" to the argument, it seems profoundly silly for most residents of the Western industrialized world to invest a significant amount of time to save a dollar solely for the purpose of saving a dollar. If they're spending the time because they're enjoying it, great. But then don't pretend it's about saving the dollar.

Whether $2 or $3 a day is expensive or not is something that sort of has to be determined from an individual perspective. If the comparison is between $1 for the homemade lunch and $2 for the convenience lunch, and there are 180 school days in a school year, the total savings will be $180 if one avoids the convenience lunches. To someone who bills $375 an hour at a law firm, that may be a worthwhile expenditure. To someone on unemployment, it probably isn't. To someone living in a country where the per capita annual income is $180, it almost definitely isn't. And aside from income, there are many other factors -- already discussed -- that go into the value calculation.

I swung by my local supermarket this morning and, among other things, looked at the Lunchables. I'd never been all that aware of the product, so I wanted to see what I was missing. While they're not for me, I'm not sure I'd characterize them as awful. Pricewise they range from $2 to $3 (the ones with a Capri Sun drink aka fruit punch are $3 and the ones without are $2). That's of course more than cheese, deli meats and crackers cost separately, but not a million times more and there is certainly a convenience factor. Contents-wise, they're mostly full of stuff that I wouldn't necessarily eat but that's not total garbage by the standards of what's out there.

Yodels. A number of those meals were made during the period of the no-shopping challenge, so they're a bit more eclectic than our baseline. That, combined with an onslaught of food gifts in December (the Yodels were part of one gift, the smoked salmon part of another, etc.), plus PJ's increased interest and participation in the selection of menu items, made for some unusual lunches.

Which brings us up to today. PJ has been getting more involved in choosing his lunches, which is why they're becoming a bit more eclectic. Today he had a brown-rice cucumber-and-avocado maki, a cheese sandwich, an oatmeal cookie and a segmented clementine.

My apologies for dropping out for a bit. I have been making and photographing lunches but missed most of December on account of school vacation and a medical thing. Here's the backlog of photos, including embarrassing attempts at producing maki and rice balls:

I was at a friend's house this past weekend and she made a remarkably good piece of poached salmon following a method from the Silver Palate Cookbook. She simply took a salmon fillet and covered it in cold, salted water, brought it to the boil, then took the pot off the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes. Upon removing the fillet from the water it was poached evenly and had excellent flavor and texture. It was a good piece of salmon to start but this method really did the trick. Maybe I'm the last to hear about this, but I'm going to be switching to this method. The book says it works for a variety of fish.

Simple syrup is a good example. I was in a store recently and saw an approximately 12-ounce bottle of it for something like $7. In addition to sugar and water I think it contained a little vanilla.

It's interesting to see this discussion develop. I think in general it's hard to find agreement on what constitutes a must-make-yourself item and what constitutes acceptable convenience. The factors that go into judging whether a convenience item (whether it's bread or pre-chopped vegetables) is worth it include monetary cost, time, training, equipment and quality. The existence of so many convenience items in the marketplace indicates that large chunks of the population don't always rule in favor of highest quality, or lowest cost. Sometimes this is due to ignorance (a surprising number of people really don't know how easy it is to make a vinaigrette) but sometimes it's an informed choice (baking bread at home has been rejected by most -- though not everyone -- in the modern world, regardless of station or culinary knowledge). It's also the case that it's usually possible to find someone who will advocate for doing more than the next person: one person uses powder to make iced tea, the next person uses Lipton teabags, the next person uses fancier teabags, the next person thinks teabags are for amateurs and that only loose-leaf tea rates, the next person thinks iced tea is an abomination altogether. And practically nobody grows tea, dries it, etc.

What's the difference between apple juice and apple cider? I thought juice was filtered but cider wasn't, but I've recently seen some examples of a product labeled "unfiltered apple juice." Is that not cider? And if not, what's the difference?

Hear hear. It's always worth re-reading Mark Bittman's 2005 New York Times piece on frozen vegetables. Of particular interest are Michel Richard's comments on frozen Brussels sprouts.

Also some clementines, origin unknown. The stickers on the individual fruits say nothing. Bananas too. I think it's safe to say that if I held out for local, seasonal oranges and bananas I'd never be able to get them in New York City. As for what most people in France do, I'm sure there are statistics from a reliable source that we can call up, but it seems highly unlikely that the majority of people in any European country are eating mostly local produce.

I live in New York City. Stuff grows near here, though not enough to feed all of New York City, and it grows without creating water deficits with neighboring states. But it doesn't grow year round, and not everything grows here. New York City is, by most accounts, one of the world's top food cities on many levels. This is the case despite the unavailability of local oranges, ever. Today I went to the market where I do most of my shopping (Fairway on 75th and Broadway) and bought the following fresh produce items. I bought other stuff too, but these were the fruits and vegetables: Sunset brand mini "Persian" cucumbers, from Mexico. Excellent. Red-leaf lettuce. Origin unknown, but certainly not from the New York area in January, unless grown under glass, but that's unlikely. Fresh-tasting, unassailable. Arugula. Origin similarly unknown. Superb arugula, as good as from the farmer's market in season I think. Saladini brand crunchy sprouts, from Lush Life Gardens in New Jersey, presumably grown under glass. Crunchy and not particularly flavorful. Green Giant carrots, package says product of USA presumably California. Bland but decent enough for mirepoix. Earthbound Farm organic celery, Mexico. Ditto. Yellow onions, origin unknown. Haven't tasted. Red onions, origin unknown. Haven't tasted. Russet potatoes, origin unknown. Haven't tasted. Grape tomatoes from Florida, Wm. P. Hearn produce company, not as good at the Splendido ones from Mexico that weren't on the shelf this week.

But if you expend three hours every time you find a way to save three dollars, you're not really saving. So you shouldn't do that as a way of saving. The value has to come from elsewhere or you're wasting your time.

This I agree with. Bottled salad dressings too, though Marie's blue cheese is pretty great in a pinch. But I hasten to add that when making tomato sauce I generally use Pomi tomatoes, which are a packaged product, or some form of canned tomatoes. If you buy Sabra at the regular supermarket, where a skinny container of it is like $4, it's expensive. But the big tub at Costco for $5.99 is a pretty good deal. Even if it costs double what homemade costs, I think it's better and the absolute dollar difference is just not so great.

I'm sure it's cheaper to make it from scratch, but a significant container of Sabra hummus is $5.99 at Costco. To make a similar amount at home, with chickpeas, tahini, garlic, oil, and whatever else, would cost what? Even if it's only $2-3 in product, when you factor in the labor (even at my low personal hourly time value) it's not necessarily worth it to me to cook the chickpeas, clean the food processor, etc. Especially since I've never had homemade that was better, not by me or anyone else. Especially if you serve it right -- let it come up to room temperature, garnish with paprika and olive oil and maybe a few olives -- the Sabra product is incredibly good. If someone teaches me how to make it better than Sabra, I may start doing it, but once Sabra hit the US market we pretty much gave up on homemade hummus.