Malawry
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The Washington Post food section did a feature on rhubarb a few weeks ago. It's no longer archived online (I just checked. Archives are only free for two weeks.) But you might be able to find the info at your library, or decide it's worthwhile to pay for the articles online. They did two stories, one about sweet dishes and one about savory ones.
My partner's childhood springtime ritual involved going to the garden after school, selecting a couple stalks of rhubarb, pouring a dish of sugar, and repeatedly dunking and eating the stalk.
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There's a bakery not too far down the road from where I live that carries pastries filled with all kinds of interesting things, including guava paste. I imagine puff pastry pinwheels with guava paste and cream cheese sprinkled with slivered almonds could be quite tasty.
Said bakery sucks, but then I didn't try a guava pastry and maybe they aren't so bad. (They clearly use a bunch of commercial dreck in there. Everything I sampled had that waxy-chemically flavor to it like the bakery goods available in North Carolina in the late 1970s that I recall.)
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Interesting question, Stella. (Your questions are always interesting!) I was a huge red meat fan as a child, and would barely pick at fowl or fish. My diet expanded rapidly during my adolescence, but then I quashed it by becoming a lacto-ovo vegetarian when I started college. It took me a while to stop craving meat and potatoes. (Well, I never stopped craving (or indulging in!) potatoes.) When I stopped craving meat I think it was mostly because I knew how I'd feel if I ate a big steak. Somewhat logy, and after my vegetarianism went from months into years of habit I realized it might possibly make me sick. I didn't really miss meat, I just missed the variety it represented in my life sometimes.
I don't know if you'd stop craving it if you simply cut back your intake. I suspect probably not. But you might be less likely to want to polish off a huge tenderloin in a single sitting. You might be more likely to feel the impact of such a meal if you've made meat a small-portion adjunct to meals. I think that craving has more to do with dietary choice than with activity level. My high activity level has had minimal impact on my desire to eat a sandwich with butter (yum!). And I know that when I've fallen off the wagon dietarilly, I go for the same fatty/sweet foods repeatedly. Once I've had them I just want them more.
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What kind of things do you like to read that are food-related? How much time are you able to spend reading and writing about food?
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I also try to be diplomatic, and I'm well aware that my views are unpopular here. It is true that a group of humans in the Andes once were forced by circumstances to eat their frozen dead comrades just to survive, but in a world where we are often able to choose what we eat we can sometimes make educated choices.
I don't mind unpopular views. Many of my views are unpopular. And I don't mind the views you personally have presented either.
I just don't like to see people feeling attacked, is all. I appreciate that you didn't intend to come across as doing so.I like the idea of making educated dietary choices. I try to make my own food choices in an educated manner. This is intentional for me in terms of food origin (and is why I do most of my food shopping at a natural foods co-op and the farm market in summer) and employee treatment (again, the co-op, plus the little independent supermarket where I purchase mainstream groceries) and of course nutritional content (hence my mostly meatless, fiber-rich ways). These things are almost as important to me as taste. Taste, however, trumps everything else in my book.
Taste can be engineered to appreciate things that are better for us, despite our natural proclivities for the sweet and fatty (and therefore most compactly caloric). I've engineered my own tastes for reasons including my personal politics, my interest in eating healthfully, and my interest in eating a diverse diet. Jaybee can do the same thing, as one possible strategy for losing weight.
Thanks for the links, btw. Back to your regularly scheduled topic...
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Friday night: Portabellos filled with spinach sauteed with butter, topped with nutmeg and Balsamic vinegar, and orzo with sundried tomatoes chez Stellabella (they ruled! plus I used the oil in the dish), artichokes, anchovies, capers, garlic, flat-leaf parsley, and nicoise olives.
Last night: Good ol' fashioned tossed salad, devilled eggs, toasted onion rye slathered with hummus. We're so eager for summer we decided not to wait for it to have a summery dinner.
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Few people know more about weight loss than those who have attempted to lose weight, even if they were not successful. I think there's nothing inherently funny about anybody of any size giving weight management tips, unless of course they're delivered with a sense of humor. I am not a small woman, nor am I what I'd consider "fat" by my own definitions, and my experiences are just as valid as those offered by anybody else who has tried to manage their weight. Let's not laugh at people who ask reasonable questions, and then offer reasonable advice in turn. That's a no-win situation.
I do agree with your comments on fiber. Not so sure on the dairy stuff, I'd love to see some links as well. We humans are designed to be able to handle a wide variety of foods from many plant and animal sources. It's one of the beautiful things about being human that we can choose to be omnivorous or vegetarian, among a million other dietary choices, depending on economics, biome, cultural experiences, beliefs, or whims. Humans exist healthily with and without a wide variety of foods. I don't believe in villifying any of them, even though I have historically eschewed many broad categories of food.
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I lost over 50lbs even as my food geekiness was turning into an obsession, starting about a year and a half ago. I did it by watching what I eat carefully and working out daily. I've come to the point where I'm addicted to exercise endorphins. I schedule exercise first, and then I schedule the rest of my day. I usually go to the gym in the morning before work, though that will change once school starts in July. Chocokitty is right in that exercise should be fun if possible. I don't mind working out in a gym, and I listen to music and read during my cardio portion (I've almost completed Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking while working out over the past month).The time flies. And I like pushing myself. I also ride my bicycle in season which is fun, I love the feeling of speed, and periodically I go hiking with friends. If it wasn't at least somewhat enjoyable I'd never do it.
As for watching what I eat, I've found the keys to be allowing myself the foods I love but in small quantities if they come with lots of calories and fat. I try to stick to whole-grain stuff. I try to only splurge on one big meal per week, and I challenge myself to make it a meal that counts rather than something junky. I eat butter, but I measure it out and make compensation for its calories. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, and have been known to polish off a plate of crudite with a seasoned salt as accompaniment and call it lunch. I barely eat red meat and fowl but I consume fish three to five times per week. Learn about nutritional analysis and try to add up the foods you're eating and see where you stack up. One thing that really helped me was writing down everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) I eat. It's tough at first but it's the only way you can start to analyze what you're doing well and what you could do better.
If it's possible for me to do it...a weakling, somebody who loves food but at least initially didn't care for activity...then surely you can. Consulting with a nutritionist worked for me. Plans like Weight Watchers and Taking Off Pounds Sensible (TOPS) can help for others. And some people do just fine by watching what they eat independently.
Finally, lifestyle changes such as weight loss are personal choices, and I'd never come down on somebody who chose not to manage their weight. I didn't for a long time, and I understand why people don't. That being said, it really is true that I had more energy and less health problems after taking my weight off. Good luck whatever your decision may be.
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I do about 80% of the cooking in my house. The other 20% is done by my esteemed housemate. My partner does not cook at all. He made pasta the other week but that was the first time he'd cooked in, like, over a year. He likes cooking but says he sees little point when I am so good at it. As for the housemate, she enjoys cooking and is curious about it but is not as passionate as I am. Still, she's pretty good, and comes up with interesting ideas for using leftovers especially.
I also do about 80% of the food shopping and 100% of the food cleanup. I care more about the state of the kitchen than anybody else I live with, plus I am specific about the care of our nice knives and pots and pans. If we have a dinner party, this still holds true: I do all cooking and all cleanup. But I don't have to empty cat litter or mow the lawn (tasks that aggravate my allergies) so it all works out.
I would not mind having my partner and housemate cook more or otherwise control our menus, but they don't seem as interested as I am. I admit to being a "kitchen top" who totally dominates her own kitchen, and it's hard for me to step back even when a cook I trust like Edemuth is around. I usually handle this by splitting up duties...that way I don't depend on somebody else to prepare parts of what I'm making, and I can just enjoy the end result of their work. I wish I could be more laid-back about it since I like it when others cook, but I really am specific about how things are used and assembled.
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I see two problems here:
1. Seasonality, i.e. a lot of those fruits aren't in season at the same time as rhubarb is
2. I'm allergic to way more fruits than just strawberries.
So, I'm unlikely to sample a rhubarb-other fruit pie anytime soon. And I like tart flavors, but probably not enough to eat an all-rhubarb pie. Snif.
Liza, I'll go your Land-o-Lakes and raise you one generic butter. I've bought it before when doing massive baking projects, when I just couldn't justify the cost of a premium butter. This is usually around the holidays, when there's lots of turnover in the butter dept. (I rationalize that this makes for a fresher product.) It's still better than margarine!
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Yeah, I saw the buttah thing in the NYTimes. I felt like they were behind the eGullet curve when I saw it. I didn't know that one of those butters existed (I think it was called Organic Valley of New England or something) and I will look for it at my coop. The coop carries other items in that brand.
In the past week, I have baked twice with Plugra:
1. I made a buttermilky coffee cake last weekend, with a pecan-vanilla swirl. Came out rich and tender, a little too crumbly but delicious nonetheless.
2. Yesterday I baked my first ever pie, a strawberry-rhubarb. I am allergic to strawberries (I baked it for my partner Erin) but I did taste some of the crust and it was quite flaky and rich.
I don't know how much the results would have varied had I used more ordinary butter (Steve Klc, maybe you can speak to this?) but the Plugra definitely held up nicely in baked goods.
BUTTAH!
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To tie several threads together:
Edemuth, my partner Erin, our housemate Abi, and I hit Hard Times last night for din dins. I ordered my usual 4-way vegetarian chili mac, about half of which I ate and half of which I will consume for lunch. Edemuth ordered the Terlingua Red, and Abi got the Cincinatti style, so I had the opportunity to sample beef two ways. This was my first beef in about a decade. It wasn't that flavorful on its own...what I tasted was mostly chili spices. I liked the Cincinnati style more but I sense that if I acclimated to eating red meat, I'd probably prefer the darker, hotter Terlingua. I was also quite happy with my vegetarian chili, which I washed down with a pint of the house root beer. Mmmmmm.
Afterwards, we went home and I served my first-ever homemade pie: strawberry-rhubarb two-crust. I'm allergic to strawberries so I didn't eat the pie, but I tasted the crust and it was quite excellent. I like pie! I'll make one again soon...maybe once blueberries come into season.
So, Jinmyo, no Texas chili for me, but both the Terlingua and Cincinnati were bean-free chilis. And followed up with pie, how good can life get?
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Edemuth, another friend, and I made it over to Melrose yesterday. Edemuth had seen something on opentable.com about a $25 appetizer, entree and dessert deal good for the month of April, so we thought we'd go check it out.
The service we received was wonderful. The phone staff was professional and polite, despite our changing our reservation around twice. After we were shown to our table we looked over the menu and realized we didn't see the special listed. We asked about it and were told that it had ended at the end of last week. Somebody went and talked to the manager, though, and she came over and told us that they would give us any appetizer, any entree (except for the crab cakes), and any dessert for $25 since we'd come in part for the special. This was cool; it meant we had the pick of the menu, which we wouldn't have had if we'd come the previous week.
I ordered the shrimp bisque and red snapper with grapefruit and grits. Edemuth ordered the Thai calamari salad and a lamb entree with a wedge of potato-rosemary cake. Our friend ordered a more ordinary tossed salad with Balsamic and feta and the same fish entree I'd ordered. I also ordered a kir.
The shrimp bisque consisted of a small pile of thin strips of sweet peppers and red onion plus a few baby shrimp in the center of a bowl. Our server presented the bowl and then poured the soup over it from a gravy-type boat she had brought with her. The broth was thinner than I'd expected (I think of bisques as rich and creamy) but it did not lack for flavor. It was savory and a little briny and not too rich. I would have liked more of the baby shrimp (or larger shrimp, for that matter) but I enjoyed the soup nonetheless.
Unfortunately, my friend and I were presented with the wrong entrees...so Edemuth ate her lamb while we waited for them to bring us the correct dishes. I had a taste and thoroughly enjoyed the meat. It was juicy and tasted a little smoky from the grill, and was rich without being gamy. The manager came over and presented my friend and I with a small plate of the Thai calamari salad to tide us over and apologize for the delay in receiving entrees. The salad was a curious combination of minty-cilantro pepperiness with the delicate calamari rings and crunchy bean sprouts. Quite a nice mixture of textures and flavors.
Eventually our entrees made it to the table. A small round of creamy, mild, rich grits was set in the center of the plate, with a large piece of grilled fish reclining atop it. A sweet, tart grapefruit-based sauce surrounded the grits, and two pieces of fresh grapefruit were placed at the sides of the dish. The fish was cooked perfectly, with a mild flavor enhanced by the smoky grill and tart sauce. Grits are not my favorite food, but this was a good example of them...they weren't gummy at all, just creamy and moderately corn-y. I liked the grapefruit sauce as an aficionado of grapefruit, but after a while I found the flavor got to be cloying and overly sweet. Perhaps using a little less of the sauce would make for a better dish, or enhancing the grapefruit sweetness with something more puckery like lemon.
For dessert, I ordered the pineapple upside-down cake with butterscotch ice cream. Our friend selected the banana-chocolate custard, and Edemuth ordered the frozen tiramisu on the suggestion of our server. The cake was good albeit a little too sweet, but I'd ordered it mostly because of the ice cream...which was all I'd hoped for, slightly bitterish from the burnt sugar flavor and not too sweetened and very very creamy. I tasted the banana-chocolate custard, which was mounted on a slightly crisp crust (meringue and hazelnuts, I think). There was a phyllo-wrapped deep dark chocolate mousse on top of the custard, and some banana chips on the plate as well. It seemed like a good "dead of winter" dessert, but a little rich for a springtime afternoon. I thought the tiramisu suffered for being frozen...the flavors were not intense enough to overcome the cold temperature...but it was made up for by the dark, intense hot fudge. The fudge came in a cruet with the dish and Edemuth seemed to enjoy pouring it over the frozen treat. It made a good dessert terrific.
This meal is an excellent example of the principle that good service does not mean not screwing up, it means dealing with it elegantly when you misstep. And Melrose certainly did that. Plus the food was better than most of the food I've eaten around DC, which put me in a pretty good mood. So I'd definitely recommend it, and would gladly return without any kind of "special deal."
Edit disclosure: Edemuth's lamb came with a potato-rosemary cake, not a rice cake. I didn't try it, nor did I remember to acquire a copy of the menu, hence my error.
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I split my grocery shopping between a natural foods co-op (of which I am a member), my local Fresh Fields (part of the WFM chain) and an independent "mainstream product" grocery...plus, in season I shop my local farm market weekly. I use Fresh Fields primarily when I am entertaining and need a set list of produce, cheese, and other products that I know will be reliably excellent and in-stock. I prefer to buy my produce at the co-op and farm market for everyday needs, though. Those places carry more local and more organics than Fresh Fields, and I feel like they need my support more than Fresh Fields does. I don't purchase much in the way of prepared foods, and the prepared foods at the co-op are more reasonably priced but less high-test than those at FF...I buy a seasoned tofu from the co-op deli regularly but rarely visit the FF counter.
Fresh Fields/Whole Foods Market can make a whole bunch of great foods accessible to a community, and I respect what they do. Usually the people behind the HBC, bakery, cheese and fish counters are reasonably well-educated about the products they carry, but good luck finding somebody to help you buy foods for a gluten-free diet or getting a person to explain how to use this or that condiment.
It's pricey, but I spend a lot of money on food and don't mind paying for quality. Fresh Fields is definitely the most expensive place I shop regularly, which is why I try to save it for when I'm entertaining.
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Yup, I eat both butter and jam on my toast. I don't mix them before applying. I pull the hot bread from the toaster, smear it lightly with good butter, and then slather on the jam (I've mentioned before that I'm a huge jam fan). My partner Erin thinks this is vile, but then I think combining blackened tofu and hummus like he does on his sammiches is vile, so I guess we're even. I like the combination of rich/fatty, warm/crisp/grainy, and sweet/thick/fruity.
I eat two slices of toast with butter and jam for breakfast four to five times a week. Except when I'm on oatmeal, like Stella, in the dead of winter mostly. I like bagels, but to me bagels are a savory treat and should not be paired with jam or purchased in fruity flavors. I eat onion or "everything" bagels with cream cheese and olives for lunch or dinner sometimes. I like buttered bagels too but with bagels the point is more the bagel than the butter...as opposed to toast, where the butter and the jam are the point.
In addition to using butter as a condiment, I like to cook with it. Nothing beats slow-scrambled eggs cooked in butter. I like melted butter on top of steamed vegetables (thereby ruining the point of steaming, eh?) and sometimes I sautee foods in butter to add a richness and to get the browning reactions from the milk fat. I bake with butter, and think it's indispensable for brushing on scones or combining in pancake batter.
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Edemuth and I once did a Spanish-inspired dinner party which was mostly lacto-ovo vegetarian: chickpeas with romesco, potato tortilla, wilted spinach salad with currants and red onions, and so on. Marinated olives are good. A big platter of Spanish cheeses with dried fruit and nuts goes over well. Salads with orange and red onion.
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Hey Stellabella, my natural foods coop started stocking Horizon European-Style butter recently (not sure if that's the precise name). I got all excited because I try to buy organics when a viable option appears, and because this was the only European style butter for sale at said coop. I purchased it and carted it home and immediately slathered it on some toast. Man, what a disappointment. It tasted to me just like regular Horizon butter! Only more expensive. Well, it's slightly richer but not appreciably better. So stick to regular Horizon if you want organic.
I use Farm Families of New England butter in my baking, but now that I've found out Plugra is so cheap at Trader Joe's I'll probably invest in it for future baking fun. I imagine the flavor improvement would be significant.
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I worked in the deli-bakery of a crappy grocery store in my college town for one summer. During that terrible experience, I formulated a theory that foods which are tasty in small quantities are disgusting in large quantities. For example, frosting...love it on my cake, hate it in a bucket.
I feel vindicated. I must read this book.
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I LOVE BUTTER. I usually buy Plugra. Plugra is a creamy, rich butter. It's a little less pricey than the other premium butters, especially if you get it at Trader Joe's ($3 a pound last time I was there). It's the gold standard in my household. I occasionally sample other butters but haven't considered any to be superior enough to be worth buying instead of Plugra unless they're on sale.
I'd love to hear what kinds of butter everybody else uses, and recommendations for which butters to try.
Jinmyo suggested I start a new topic on this, so here I am. Part of this post is pasted from my post in the Dinner thread.
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I used a mint flavoring that we had around the house...just added some to the dough and tasted to correct. My partner adores mint chocolate chip cookies and is always after me to make them, but I never do...so I did that one time as a special treat. My housemate says her sister in law makes them with chopped fresh mint leaves, but I haven't tried that. I probably will once I can get fresh mint from the farm market.
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Check out this thread on casual finger foods:
http://forums.egullet.org/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=3&t=3019
Sounds like a fun party. What kind of concept were you looking at?
Ham Biscuits
in D.C. & DelMarVa: Dining
Posted
Those of you who have been following the "Adam Balic in America" thread on the DC board know that Adam was visiting Washington, DC for a short while and was interested in sampling some American delicacies such as red-eye gravy and grits. One thing we'd discussed was ham biscuits, those Southern wedding-reception classic savory treats. My close friend Edemuth generously offered to acquire some ham biscuits for Adam, and promised to cart them along when we met up with Adam for the first DC area eGullet dinner.
Here begins the Saga of the Ham Biscuits:
Vidalia is a nouvelle-Southern restaurant on L Street NW in the Farragut neighborhood of DC. Chef-owner Jeffrey Buben has received extensive press accolades for the creative upscale cuisine he serves, including two James Beard regional awards from 1998 and 1999. Executive chef Peter Smith currently runs the kitchen. Vidalia is also conveniently located halfway between my office and Edemuth's office. We figured Vidalia was our safest bet for finding a good ham biscuit experience for Adam. We knew that they had biscuits in their bread basket, and we figured any Southern restaurant would have to have real Smithfield ham laying around in the kitchen. So on Tuesday, she emailed me and suggested we head over to Vidalia and see about some ham biscuits for Adam.
We showed up between lunch and dinner service and spoke to the hostess, who listened to our story politely and stated nicely that she didn't think it would be a problem but she'd have to go check. She vanished briefly and then returned with a gentleman in a suit who looked like the maitre d' or perhaps a front-of-the-house manager. I repeated our story to him: friend from out of country, foodie gathering, desire to sample a ham biscuit. He didn't seem too positive on our ability to acquire ham biscuits. I tried buttering him up, and when that failed I politely suggested that since they had biscuits in their bread baskets and ham on the menu it probably wouldn't be too hard to put a few together. He responded with a comment along the lines of, "If it's so easy, why don't you do it yourself?" Well, there's a number of reasons why I didn't want to do it myself and why Edemuth didn't want to do it herself either, but we didn't feel like getting into it with this guy. He vaguely suggested that I return around 5:30 when I get off of work and he'd see what he could do in the meantime. We asked if we could speak to Chef Smith directly and were told that he was busy setting up for dinner.
I returned to work and immediately e-mailed Steve Klc, thinking that since he's well-connected in the DC food community that he might be able to pull some strings for us. He responded suggesting I call and leave a voicemail for the chef, and said he'd do the same plus he'd try to get his wife Colleen to help out as well. Turns out he and Colleen met with Chef Smith and his fiancee recently to discuss doing a wedding cake for their upcoming wedding. Steve seemed pretty sure Chef Smith would come through for Adam and the rest of us if we asked nicely.
I called the restaurant and asked for the chef's voicemail. I left a message explaining the situation and gave him several ways to contact me. I stated I'd call back in the morning the next day since I was too busy to stop by after work as the front-end manager had suggested.
Around 11am the next morning (the morning of the eGullet dinner) I called the restaurant again and asked to speak to the chef directly. The host gave me the kitchen number and suggested I try there. I called the kitchen and asked the person who answered the phone if I could speak to the chef. He immediately got on the phone. I introduced myself and asked if he had received the voicemail messages Steve and I had left him. He said he hadn't. So I launched into the whole story again. He seemed interested in helping. However, he warned me that they no longer put biscuits in the bread basket there, so they don't generally have any laying about the kitchen. He said he'd see if the pastry chef had time to whip up a batch, but if not he suggested that cornbread-ham sandwiches might do as a substitute. He said he'd have some form of ham sandwich ready for us to pick up at 5:30pm. I was impressed that he was so receptive to my request (not to mention easy to get on the phone), particularly since he hadn't checked his voicemail and therefore had no idea who I was.
At 5:30 Edemuth and I returned to Vidalia and asked to speak to the chef. I gave the hostess my name since I'd spoken to him earlier. She vanished into the kitchen and then returned asking if I was here for the ham sandwiches. I said I was, and she smiled and said they were ready for me at the bar. So we went to the bar and there was a box waiting for us with six cornbread-ham sandwiches. We paid for them and left for dinner happily. We were a little sorry they weren't able to come up with some biscuits, and we were also sorry we didn't get a chance to thank Chef Smith personally, but it's all ok because when Adam tasted his ham cornbread sandwich and declared it tasty we knew our mission had been accomplished.