Category Archives: Food & Beverage

The Sounds of the Solstice Breakfast

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Longest night, shortest day just passed up here in the Northern Hemisphere. Like most other days, I got up and made some breakfast.

Actually, not quite everything. Lilly made eggs and brewed coffee. This is what both of those sounded like together: frying egg and the drip-drip-drip from nearby Mr. Coffee.

Eggs and Coffee Dec 2014

The toaster oven tick-tick-ticks. I prefer that mechanical sound to the hum of something digital.

Toaster Oven Dec 2014

Here’s another breakfast sound that might be a little hard to guess.

Grits Dec 2014

Yes, it’s the bubbling of grits when the pot is nearly done. Big steam bubbles rise from the bottom and puff their way through the surface of the grits. Reminds me of the films you see of bubbling hot mud.

Ecuadorian Choco

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Those jokesters at Trader Joe’s, or at least their hired copywriters, are still coming up with too-clever-by-half product names. We were at one of the stores recently, and noticed Moral Fiber brand bran muffins. What’s the subtext of that? These muffins promote ethical digestion?

We didn’t buy any of the muffins, but we did buy Inner Peas – a bag of green pea-based snacks. Or, to quote the bag, “Trader Joe’s Contemplates Inner Peas.” Maybe they’ve been visualizing whorled peas, too.

It doesn’t have a twee name, but we also bought 65% Cacao Dark Chocolate-Single Origin-Ecuador. I don’t ever remembering trying any Ecuadorian chocolate, so that was just about enough to make me part with $2 for the opportunity. The verbiage on the box promises that it’s made only from “Arriba cocoa beans that are native to Ecuador. The bean are grown exclusively in the cocoa plantations located along the Guayas River…”

Turns out that Ecuadoran choco is making a comeback. According to the BBC: “Over the last decade, as the demand for more flavourful cocoa has risen, Ecuador has emerged as the pre-eminent exporter of fine beans.

“It is a favourite destination for globetrotting chocolatiers in search of the best, and cocoa production has also become a sustainable source of income for Ecuador’s farmers.”

The Globetrotting Chocolatiers. There’s a band name or a title of something in that somewhere. Anyway, we’ve tried the Ecuadorian chocolate, and it’s high-quality stuff.

Thanksgiving ’14

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The Thanksgiving meal, served at about 5 pm on Thursday, minus the rolls and olives.

Thanksgiving dinner 2014

Lilly insisted on making all the starches: from left to right, genuine mashed potatoes, boxed stuffing, and her own mac & cheese creation. The meat – between the potatoes and m&c – was tilapia, though roast beef was available as well. Non-alcoholic cider came in wine-style bottles: once again, Martinelli’s Gold Medal Sparkling Cider.

The meal was good, so was the time we spend preparing and consuming it. Even better, the holiday represented three whole days when I didn’t have to pay attention to my laptop or email or or clients’ web sites or Google News or any of it. Some of Wednesday and Sunday, too, so you could call it four.

Hi, How Are You

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Just before dark on November 8, Tom took us to the corner of Guadalupe and 21st. That’s the location of the “Hi, How Are You” mural, also known as “Jeremiah the Innocent.”

Austin, Nov 8, 2014It was the first I’d heard of it, but I haven’t spent that much time in Austin in the last 20 years. A record store that used to be on the site hired musician and artist Daniel Johnston, who has some renown in Austin, to paint the mural in 1993. Popular demand kept it intact when the location became a Baja Fresh in 2004, and now the restaurant on the other side of the wall is called Thai, How Are You?

Thai sounded just like the thing for dinner, especially since we hadn’t taken the time to have much lunch, so we went. I’m glad to report that the Thai, How Are You? serves good food.

Everywhere a Sign

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A question to ponder: How can Crème Caramel Chicago’s product be so good? Ingredients: milk, eggs, sugar, cream, caramel, vanilla. That’s it. Yet in the words of Shakespeare, it’s a wow.

It’s also a product of EU Foods, though it has nothing to do with that supranational entity, I think, since it was made in Bensenville, Illinois.

Another thing to ponder: a thematic men’s room sign.

Samurai bathroom attendantI saw it about a year ago in Dallas at the Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum. As I write this, the wires – quaint, that term – are burning up with news of the first U.S. Ebola case, and the honor goes to Dallas. Well, why not? Texas excels at so much else.

I doubt that we’ll get an epidemic, though. What we will get is excessive news coverage. Just another reason to avoid cable news, out in that vast wasteland. Vaster now than when I was born; a regular Sahara.

Newton MinowI didn’t know that Newton Minow had an honorary street sign in Chicago, but I saw it downtown last month. I’m happy to report that at 88, Mr. Minow is still alive and kicking.

Thursday Debris

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Distinctly cool today. We’re in for a run of cool days — enough to use the heater. A bit of fall too soon, but there will be some more warm days before there aren’t any more until next year.

The local skunk population seems to be way up. I smell them often when driving along. At night, I’ve seen a few live skunks scurrying down the street – the first time that’s ever happened since I moved to the northwest suburbs over a decade ago. By day, I see dead skunks on the road.

Not long ago, early one evening, I went out the front door and there on the driveway was the distinct black-and-white of a skunk. I stopped instantly. It stopped too. I figured it would do what most animals do in the face of a larger animal – get away. Advance on the animal, get sprayed. Otherwise, not. I was right, it hurried away.

A headline spotted today, via Google News: “Islamists Are Not Our Friends.” An Op-Ed in the NYT. Glad you cleared that up, headline writer. I would drag out Captain Obvious, but that seems a little adolescent, as many Internet memes are. Why is he a captain, anyway? Patterned after Captain America and the even greater Captain Canuck, I suppose, but isn’t –man the common suffix for a superhero, even a satirical one? Greater minds than mine will have to sort these questions out.

Another head: “DC teacher has sixth-graders compare George Bush to Adolf Hitler.” That from Fox, which is probably trying to highlight the shocking things that public school teachers do, especially if they have the temerity to belong to a union. But then again, you can compare the two (and I’m assuming they mean the younger Bush, but it doesn’t matter). Conclusion of such a comparison: Bush wasn’t much like Hitler. No major American politician has been, is, or can be. Well, maybe Huey Long had a bit of der Führer in him, but we’ll never know for sure.

From Newser, which seems to be a Weird News site: “Waitress Hits Lottery, Won’t Quit Job.” Why is that news? Is that supposed to be salt-of-the-earth admirable in some way? Or just the mark of a shriveled imagination? It just begs for an Onion satire. They’ve probably already done it: “Waitress Hits Lottery, Says Take This Job and Shove It.”

Product Thursday, example 1: Vigo Black Beans & Rice. In the convenient 8 oz. package, “completely seasoned & easy to prepare,” as the package says. Also: an Authentic Cuban Recipe. For a thing you cook in boiling water for a while – and that’s pretty much all there is to it – Vigo Black Beans & Rice is pretty tasty. Everyone liked it. Now if I could only remember where I bought it.

Example 2: Pirate’s Booty. Yuriko, impressed by a sample being given away, bought a bag of the white cheddar snacks. Shrug. Coincidentally, Lileks had a comment about the bag this week: “I have always hated this guy. Partly for the way he’s drawn. Partly for the fact that the food within is overpriced and insubstantial. But mostly for THAR BE GOOD, which he says on the larger packages. It just bothers me.”

The cartoon pirate on the bag does look like a Hanna-Barbera reject, but the stereotypical pirate verbiage doesn’t bother me particularly. After all, Talk Like a Pirate Day is coming up soon (next Friday). Like National Gorilla Suit Day, it comes but once a year.

Speaking of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon factory, I saw the introduction to the original Space Ghost the other day, probably for the first time in well over 40 years. Why? One of those things that happens when you’ve got a lot of other, more important things to do. One thing struck me about it. Space Ghost sure seemed to fight a lot of man-sized insectoid creatures.

There Ain’t no Coupe de Ville Hiding at the Bottom of a Cracker Jack Box

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I never was much for Cracker Jacks. Maybe because it was marketed as the kind of thing adults thought kids should like. Or maybe that it seemed fossilized in another time even 40 years ago, though simply being old usually doesn’t put me off a thing. Mainly, though, it’s that molasses taste.

A box of Cracker Jacks made its way into the house recently. I think one of Ann’s friends brought it over. At least it still looks like a box of Cracker Jacks should, complete with mascot Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo. The candy is, of course, part of Chicago history, though it hasn’t been owned locally in quite a while, unlike that other Gilded Age favorite, the Tootsie Roll.

I didn’t eat any Cracker Jacks this time, but I did find the “prize.” An Arizona Diamondbacks sticker. I’ve read that there’s also some kind of code for some kind of app, but I couldn’t find that. Really, Frito-Lay? You can’t spring for two- or three-tenths of a cent for a little plastic toy made in Guangdong Province?

The International Pizza Doctrine

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Seeing the Perseid Meteor Shower’s always been problematic here in the Chicago suburbs, where the sky is usually washed out at night, but this year especially so. It’s been overcast most of the time since Sunday. And usually cool today – I think we spent the day in the 60s F.

No matter. The place to be for the Perseids is somewhere in the Rockies. I might make it one of these days. At least Google doodled the subject today (and it appeared about 48 hours earlier on the Japanese version of the search engine, which sometimes has doodles the English version never sees).

Recently Lilly discovered that I’d eaten one of the larger slices of pizza left by her friends the other day in our garage refrigerator, and she made some complaint. I cited the International Pizza Doctrine to her. Later, I Googled that phrase to get the exact wording, and was shocked when no such thing readily came up, even when adding “Sam Hurt” and “Eyebeam” to the mix. So I did the only thing a reasonable person would, and thumbed through my Eyebeam books until I found it.

From Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Tweed, p. 59, a strip first published September 24, 1983: “Leftover pizza, like fish in the stream or birds in the sky, is not susceptible to ownership.” (Ratliff quotes it; Eyebeam adds, “Engraved on the refrigerators of mankind throughout history.”)

Someone needs to mention the International Pizza Doctrine online, so here it is, maybe to last as long as the server farms of Silicon Valley glow hot with gooey petabytes.

One more thing: I’ve taken to calling Lilly’s usual group of friends “your hoodlum friends.” It’s an homage to the Coasters, of course, since her friends are about as hoodlum as after dinner mints.

Road Eats ’14

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Serendipity is your friend on the road, but you have to be open to it. After spending some time at the Wichita Public Library’s main branch in downtown Wichita on July 14, we headed west on Douglas Ave., the way we’d come into downtown. We wanted lunch, and I thought I’d seen something interesting coming in. But I couldn’t remember exactly what. Then I saw Nu Way Crumbly Burgers.

Crumbly Burgers, yumClearly my kind of place. It’s a small Wichita chain. “The Nu Way tradition began on July 4th, 1930, at the same location we still call our ‘original’ home at 1416 West Douglas,” the Crumbly web site tells us. “It all started when Tom McEvoy… moved from Iowa to Wichita and built the first Nu Way. The dedication and absolute commitment to quality Tom began can still be tasted today as we carry on his reputation.

“We still make Nu Ways with the exact same recipe using our patented cookers and we still make our world famous Root Beer daily along with our homemade Onion Rings.”

Crumbly burgers are loose-meat sandwiches and root beer is, well, root beer, and we had both (Ann’s was a float), sitting at the counter. Considering that it was mid-afternoon on a Monday, the place was busy. For good reason. Those crumbly burgers might crumble, and you have to position your wrapping to catch those loose odds of meat, but they were satisfying. The frosty chilled root beer hit the spot exactly.

Nu Way harkens back to the ’30s. In Dallas, Keller’s evokes the 1950s, I think. But not the ’50s of televised nostalgia – we saw a lot of that in the ’70s – but just an ordinary burger-and-shakes joint that’s simply never been updated. Jay calls it Jake’s, since that used to be its name, but there was some kind of family ownership split or something. We went to the one on Garland Rd., but there are a few others, including one that’s supposed to be a drive-in. Anyway, the Garland location serves tasty burgers, fries and shakes, ordered and picked up at the front counter.

Bun ‘n’ Barrel is on the Austin Highway in San Antonio. Points for actually having two apostrophes. It’s been there since I can remember (it was founded in 1950, so that makes sense). The last time I went might have been in the late ’70s. It doesn’t seem to have changed too much with time, though there’s been a few recent renovations, such as the addition of a little nostalgia-oriented decor. They’re also happy that what’s-his-name on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives showed up to do a segment a few years ago.

Bun 'n' BarrelThere’s a barrel on the roof, but I had a hard time getting a good shot of it. Also, it was over 90 F that day, and I didn’t want to loll around outside. Instead, I snapped the painted concrete  barrel out in the back parking lot.

Bun n BarrelI got the wrong thing: a ham plate. It wasn’t bad, but it was exactly like ham I can get at a grocery store. Probably the barbecue or a burger would have been a better choice.

Threadgills in Austin isn’t a classic road-food diner or a greasy spoon, but it makes a mighty chicken fried steak. Be sure to have it with mashed potatoes and fired okra. Its nostalgia is late ’60s, early ’70s. For instance, I saw that the Jerry Garcia Fest will be at the restaurant’s beer garden this weekend. We went to the one in South Austin, one of two locations. The current restaurants are descended from a beer joint that opened as soon as Prohibition ended, with a musical heyday 40 or 50 years ago.

Finally, if you’re southbound on I-35 north of DFW and you take the very first exit after crossing into Texas, and then gas up at the gas station there, you will also see this.

Fried Pies!Among roadside eatery names, that’s high concept. Through much of southern Oklahoma, I’d seen fried pies advertised, like you can see pasties advertised in the UP. I decided it was time to investigate. It was arrayed like a doughnut shop, except replete with fried pies – bigger than the ones you buy in the grocery store, if you’re in the mood for high-calorie, barely mediocre treats. I bought a chocolate pie and a coconut one, and Ann and I split both. They were a lot better than any factory-make ones at a grocery store.

Marzipan Day

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Lübeck, June 28, 1983

Breakfast with Karen and Cindy, then boarded a bus for Lübeck. Nice ride up, lots of greenery, and as we approached, a view of the seven spires of Lübeck. Before we entered the city center (Zentrum) we stopped at a wide place in the road and disembarked. Three busloads of tourists, crowding around to take a look — from a distance, behind a large sign warning us to proceed no further — at a mean-looking fence and a grim guard tower, looking just like one you’d see over a prison wall. InterGerman Border, June 1983We’d come to the border with the DDR. We were told that there are guard towers like the one we saw every 500 meters along the intra-German border. [I forget who took this picture of Steve, me, and Rich.]

The first place we went to in the Zentrum was Marienkirche, St. Mary’s, an enormous, ornate, brickwork Lutheran church. It burned down during the war, but has been restored to what I assume was former glory. In one corner of the church, the bells that used to hang above lie broken on the floor, left as a memorial to the destruction. The story is that as the church burned, the bells rang and rang, moved by the rising heat, until they crashed to the floor. It’s a very effective memorial.

The church’s astronomical clock is an ornate marvel too, also rebuilt after the original was destroyed. It shows the hour and minute, of course, but also shows planetary positions, phases of the sun and moon, and signs of the zodiac. The town hall (Rathaus) was also well worth seeing.

Later we visited a large store specializing in marzipan. I’d never had marzipan before, never heard of it until I read about it in a guidebook. [I don’t know the name of the shop, but I suspect it was the renowned Café Niederegger in the Zentrum, which has a shop for the confections.] The variety of marzipan shapes you can buy is astonishing: large and small items, bricks and loafs, figurines and abstractions.

At 2:15 the bus took us to Travemünde, on the mouth of the River Trave and looking out onto the Baltic Sea. I sat with Bob, who lives in the Philippines, and Crystal from North Dakota, in a café as we drank coffee, tea, and chocolate, a watched the weather change with astonishing speed, from sunny to cloudy to rainy to sunny again, with the clouds always driven across the sky by strong winds we couldn’t feel closer to the ground.