Mail From the Patel Brothers

Something new in the mail the other day: a circular from Patel Brothers. The grocery stores of theirs that I’ve seen have the appearance of being local — tucked away in strip centers — but in fact Patel Brothers is a national chain, with about 50 stores. The brand did start in Chicago, however, with its first store on Devon Ave., hub of the city’s East Indian population, in the 1970s.

Patel BrothersThe four-page circular has one of our names on it, so it’s more than a blind mass mailing. Chinese New Year is mentioned on the front page. Guess the Patels are looking to expand their market a bit.

On the back page, various East Asian items are offered, such as Ichiban Tofu, Sriracha sauce, TYJ spring roll pastry and Chaokoh coconut water. Looking up that last one further, I learned that the Thai product is the “Official Coconut Water Partner of Liverpool Football Club.”

Inside the circular, the products are more South Asian. From it I learn that Swad brand is popular. Apparently that’s an Indian food distributor headquartered in Kerala, but its web site is less than helpful when it comes to offering much information about the company.

The About Us page says, all sic: “Catering to gods own people is no mean task. We embraced this challenge with great enthusiasm and with Swad Food Products, a well known house hold brand name in India. We make available premium Wheat & Rice Products all over the world. Our products are available all over the world through more than hundred strong distributors. Our Product Quality agreed internationally by getting orders from Middle East, Europe and USA.”

Anyway, at Patel Brothers, you can buy Swad peanuts, cashews, salt, moong dal, whole moong, kidney beans, kabuli chana, turmeric powder, ghee, rice flour and canola oil.

Katsudon

I had lunch with an old friend on Friday at the food court of Mitsuwa, a small Japanese-oriented mall anchored by the grocery store of that name in northwest suburban Arlington Heights. We had a good visit. The food is quite good there. I had some katsudon, a Japanese creation with pork cutlet and egg and a small amount of vegetables on rice, and long a favorite of mine among Japanese eats.

There’s a tiny restaurant off an alley in the Namba district of Osaka simply called Katsudon (or rather, カツ丼). It seated maybe eight at a counter looking straight into the small area in which two cooks made katsudon, the only thing on the menu, in gleaming copper-bottomed vessels. It wasn’t especially expensive and it tasted like heaven.

In fact, the place offered up the Platonic Ideal of the katsudon, as far as I’m concerned. All katsudon of the material sphere yearn to be that form. They inch toward it, but never quite make it. In short, the one at Mitsuwa was very good, but not as good as Katsudon, at least as it was 25 years ago. Hope the quality’s been maintained.

I had to look around to make the sure that the restaurant is still in business. I found some pictures, and it even looks like I remember it. Seems like the joint now also offers the related dishes of tonkatsu — cutlet on a bed of chopped lettuce — katsucurry, which is the cutlet on top of curry rice. Bet those are top-drawer, too.

I also noticed that the name of the alley is Hozenjiyokocho. I’m not sure I knew that back then. According to one source, the alley is a “collection of 60 small izakaya, bars and eateries in an alleyway behind Hozenji Temple in Osaka. The street has been filled with nightlife since the 17th century, when the area was a theater district.”

As for the nearby image of the kami Fudo Myo-o, which is covered with moss, I must have seen that. That’s the kind of thing I would notice. But I don’t remember.

What I need now is a specialized Tardis, one that takes you to your favorite restaurants, past or present, closed or still operating. Katsudon in Hozenjiyokocho would be such one place, since my tastes run to the inexpensive.

Off the top of my head, other destinations would include O-Sho, also in Osaka, which made wonderful gyoza; River Kwai in Chicago; Mack’s Country Cooking and Loveless Cafe as they used to be in Nashville; the Daily Catch in Boston; Viet Nam in San Antonio; that place in Apalachicola; that other place in New Orleans; the Cuban place in Tampa; Pizza Rustica and Mario’s in Rome; that fish-and-chips spot on Cleveland Street in London; halbes Hähnchen mit Pommes frites in Lüneburg; and yet other establishments whose names I’ve forgotten in New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bali and other places.

Thursday Residuum

Remarkably rainy January so far. Even when it hasn’t been raining these past weeks or so, the skies have looked pregnant with rain. So it’s been a wet January, not an icy one. That was the case at UIUC, as the last of clinging frozen matter thawed, as it might in a normal northern March.

UIUC January 15, 2017

Blame it on climate change? I’d be tempted, but weather isn’t climate. Besides, there’s a blizzard lurking out there in the near future, or at least heavy snow. Winter will not be denied.

A few days ago, I approached a four-way stop to make a left turn. Directly across the intersection another car arrived to make a left turn. To my left, a third car arrived to make a right turn. We all got there at about the same moment. We all made our respective turns concurrently. Can’t remember when that happened before. Had a fourth car to my right wanted to make a right turn, it would have been truly remarkable, but we had to settle for a three-way synch.

At a World Market last week, I saw bottles of Tito’s Handmade Vodka for sale. I couldn’t ever remember actually seeing any before, as opposed to hearing about it, though I don’t go to a lot of liquor stores.

Last month, I heard Tito himself on the radio, pitching his creation. He didn’t quite sound like his high school self, no one would, but it was him all right. I was pretty sure I hadn’t ever heard advertising for Tito’s beyond sponsorships on public radio (the ad I heard was on a commercial station). Maybe Tito’s needed to up his ad budget in the face of competition.

I’m most of my way through the book River of Doubt, about the Roosevelt-Rondon expedition into the deep Brazilian rainforest. Reading it, you think, how did anyone survive that trip? They faced untreatable diseases, looming starvation, dangerous animals, venomous bugs, an extremely hazardous river, a murderer among their crew, and the potential for Indians to attack at any time and wipe them all out. At one point, a very sick Theodore Roosevelt seriously contemplated overdosing on morphine. Not too end his pain, but to avoid being an impediment to the rest of the expedition. His son Kermit wouldn’t allow it.

Amazing how close TR’s bio came to ending with, “Led expedition down the River of Doubt in Brazil, 1914. Never seen again.”

Nipponese Debris

Yuriko and Ann are back from Japan, no worse for trip except for the usual jet lag. They brought back various things, including some printed items and small packaging material. Japanese aesthetics, known the world over, are present on every surface.

The only request I had for them to bring me some postcards. Here’s an Osaka-specific one.
Osaka postcard 2017Osaka has a sobriquet: The Kitchen of Japan. Specialty regional items include butaman, okonomiyaki, kushikata, and takoyaki. Delicious indeed.

Disposable chopsticks. Or rather, the paper wrapper for the chopsticks.
Disposable chopsticksSometimes even disposable items are too cute for words. Too cute is a running theme in Japanese design.

A nice brochure picked up at Nara Palace (Heijō Palace).
Nara Palace brochureHeijō Palace was the imperial residence in the Japanese capital city Heijō-kyō (Nara) during most of the Nara period, which essentially spans the 8th century AD. Things tend to get lost or kicked around after 12 centuries, so what visitors see on the site now are 21st-century reconstructions. Good ones, Yuriko said. Yet another thing for me to see, since they weren’t there in the 1990s.

Back to food packaging: Sakuma Drops hard candy.
Sakuma Drops Something a bit softer: Morinaga’s Milk Caramels.

Morinaga's Milk CaramelsThat’s the front of the box, plus one side. Each piece is wrapped in a yellow wrapper whose design is the same as the box.

Uncle Bub’s

Good old Uncle Bub’s. It’s a barbecue joint in Westmont, Ill., and one of my favorites in this part of the country, along with Hecky’s in Evanston. We had dinner there on Saturday with my old friend Kevin — known him nearly 30 years now.

No reason to write much about Uncle Bud’s, when you have a picture that will offer up 1,000 words.
Uncle Bub'sThat’s pulled pork, mashed potatoes, baked beans and cornbread. A fine feast on a cold December night.

Uncle Bub’s is not to be confused with Uncle Bud’s, a catfish joint in exurban Nashville. One strange day in the spring of 1980, two friends and I wound up at Uncle Bud’s for a meal. The catfish was fine, but what I really remember seeing was Gregg Allman and his entourage — including a few very tan, very blonde young women — enter the restaurant and head for a back room.

Sierra Mist Goes Missing

Temps dropped into the subzero kill-you-if-it-could range beginning on Sunday night and continuing through early Monday morning, though they moderated to the balmy teens above zero F. during the day today. The temps didn’t get to me, this being an age of central heating and Gore-Tex, but it did lay waste to some cans of soda in the garage.

Mist Twst

This isn’t the first time we’d forgotten some cans in the garage, only to have them become a chemistry demonstration: solids tend to take up more space than liquids.

We probably forgot them because “Diet Mist Twst” brand isn’t all that memorable. (Where’s the missing i?) We acquired the cans as part of a 12-can package, though I don’t remember why we bought that particular brand. Probably because they were temporarily cheap and represented something different. Worth a try. As a drink, it’s OK. Basic unmemorable lemon-lime.

A year ago, E.J. Shultz wrote in Ad Age that “Sierra Mist is about to the leave the mountains behind. The PepsiCo-owned brand is removing the word Sierra from its name as it becomes “Mist Twst” as part of a major branding overhaul that will put more emphasis on taste…. The change is the latest makeover for the lemon-lime-flavored soda brand, which has undergone multiple overhauls since launching in 2000.”

Ah, it used to be Sierra Mist. I didn’t notice the change. Or any of the “multiple overhauls.” As brands go, it’s no Coca-Cola. Or even Pepsi. But what is?

Nata de Coco Thursday

Picked up Lilly last night where the bus from UIUC dropped her off, near a northwest suburban mall. Fortunately I was there more-or-less on time, so she didn’t have to spend much time out in the bitter wind, because the drop-off point is simply a parking lot. Not a good night to be outside.

Driving home, we did have the pleasure of hearing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” by chance on the radio. I like to hear that exactly once every Christmas season. No more than that.

Here’s the packaging from Jubes brand nata de coco. Jubes, we figure, is a portmanteau of “juicy cubes.”

jubes

To save a trip to Wiki: “Nata de coco is a chewy, translucent, jelly-like food produced by the fermentation of coconut water, which gels through the production of microbial cellulose by Acetobacter xylinum. Originating in the Philippines, nata de coco is most commonly sweetened as a candy or dessert, and can accompany a variety of foods, including pickles, drinks, ice cream, puddings, and fruit mixes.”

It’s a product of Pt. Keong Nusantara Abadi, located in Lampung Selatan, Indonesia. I had to look that up. It’s on the southern end of Sumatra. I can’t think of anything else imported from Sumatra, at least in my house.

The marketing text, especially the last line, has a Japlish flavor. This Grape flavored JUBES is for those who favour gentle & refreshing taste. But for all I know, that’s Bahasa-lish as well.

Nata de coco is popular in Japan. Some years ago, Yuriko was eating some and Ann wanted to try it. Then she wanted the whole bowl. She’s been fond of it since. At some point I tried it too. It isn’t bad, but it’s probably one of those foods best discovered as a child for a deep appreciation.

Thursday Bits

Two days in a row now I’ve been able to eat a mid-day meal on our deck. It wasn’t been quite balmy, except compared to the usual November temps, but even so it’s been nice out there. I expect that to come to a quick halt soon, and never come back till April. Or May.

bowelsThough it was only a few weeks ago when I did so, I don’t remember why I scanned this box front. Maybe to remind me how glad I am that the procedure is over. Nothing amiss down there, fortunately. Man, the taste was awful.

Product recommendation: Trident Seafoods Panko Breaded Tilapia, available in the handy (if a little large) three-pound box at your neighborhood warehouse store. It’s remarkably good for frozen fish. Best frozen fish I think I’ve ever had.

Of course, you can worry-worry-worry about tilapia if you want. I understand that people do, such as Dr. Axe, who breathlessly tells us that Eating Tilapia is Worse Than Eating Bacon. Gotta tell you, Dr. Axe, bacon is better than talapia. Bacon is better than a lot of things. But I plan to keeping eating both bacon and tilapia. Living dangerously, I am.

It’s one thing to see Christmas decorations and hear music in stores now — not something you want or need, but something you expect — but what’s the excuse for Christmas lights decorating a house in mid-November? I can see stringing the things now, since it’s relatively warm, but lighting them? I saw house lights this evening not far from home. Bah, humbug.

Thursday Residuum

No overnight freezes yet, though it can’t be long. Thus a lot of greenery is still hanging on. So are blood-red blooms in our back yards.

I don’t know the species, but the plant produces late-season flowers that are so heavy that the blossoms face the ground. Of course, that’s a human interpretation; no blossom is obliged to orient itself in any particular direction to please a human sense of aesthetics. Even so, I held it upward for the picture.

I discovered a giant cucumber on the ground recently.

It was hiding — again, a human perspective (it’s the only one I’ve got) — under the many leaves of the cucumber plants we’ve been growing near the deck since late spring. So we didn’t notice it when it was green. As you can see, it devolved into a yellow Hindenburg of a vegetable.

“Many people wonder, why are my cucumbers turning yellow?” asks Gardening Know How. “You shouldn’t allow cucumbers to turn yellow. If you encounter a yellow cucumber, it’s usually over ripe. When cucumbers become over ripe, their green coloring produced from chlorophyll begins to fade, resulting in a yellowing pigment. Cucumbers become bitter with size and yellow cucumbers are generally not fit for consumption.”

Ah, well. Guess I’m a failure when it comes to that cucumber, though the mother plant did produce small and tasty green cucumbers this year (as tasty as possible with cucumbers, anyway). The giant yellow cucumber was indeed unfit for human purposes. It’s been returned to nature to rot.

A couple of weeks ago I read about some seasonal haunted house in the western suburbs, and looked up its web site. Its advertising mascot is a zombie scarecrow or some such. It’s an ugly face, anyway.

I can’t count the number of times since then that I’ve seen that ugly face pop up on all kinds of other web sites. It’s an insane amount of digital advertising, an exercise in overkill, and I’m really tired of that face. I’d toyed with the idea of taking Ann to the place, but I’ll be damned if I will now.

Another little annoyance: about a week ago, I was driving along not far from home, and I heard what sounded like an aluminum plate rolling near the car. I thought I’d had a near-miss with some kind of round metal object in the street until about 15 minutes later, at home, when I noticed my car was missing a hubcap.

That’s what that sound was. I drove back to look for it. Gone. Hell’s bells. That’s never happened to me in any car I’ve ever driven, not over the course of many, many thousands of miles. Go figure.

Best to end with a more upbeat note. Somehow, our dog’s more photogenic on the stairs. She sits there often, but only when we’re nearby.

Maybe she likes to sit there to be more-or-less as tall as we, the rest of her pack, are. Just speculation.

Jumes, Sheboygan Update

Eight years ago this month, I visited the Sheboygan, Wis., area and had a fine breakfast one morning at a diner in Sheboygan, Jumes.

Jumes, SheboyganI wondered recently if it was still in business. Sorry to say, it isn’t.

I wrote in 2008: “The place had that diner atmosphere: a straight pink neon tube all the way around the walls, a few pictures of ’50s pop icons here and there, tables, booths and a counter, the hiss of frying, the clink of dishes, relaxed Sunday conversation, the smell of bacon, and even the faint aroma of cigarette smoke — which isn’t banned in all restaurants at all times yet in Wisconsin.

“A Greek immigrant named George Jumes got into the restaurant business in Sheboygan in 1929, and the place has been under the current name at the current location on 8th Street since 1951, so the ’50s memorabilia, which wasn’t overdone as some chain restaurants do, is apt.”

Sly’s Midtown Salooon, which is behind Jumes in this image, does still seem to be in business. People gotta drink.