Food of the future
January 8, 2010
We’re Schwan’s customers, or, at least, we’re Schwan’s customers as much as is allowed while only purchasing ice cream every four weeks. It wasn’t a choice – it came with our house. Or, to be clear, the handsome Schwan’s delivery driver came with the house, a bi-weekly reminder of our mortality.
“Only TWO gallons of ice cream?” he says, burrowing a deep gaze into our resistance.
It’s the extra 150 pounds or so I’ve gained since moving into this house that put things into perspective. What is this service? In Today’s Turbulent and Volatile Economy, how do people justify ordering frozen food via delivery service, the prices sitting comfortably at around 20% higher than grocery store rates?
My only guess: this is some weird holdover from the 50’s, when convenience was the invention du jour. The catalog reads like one of those Sears Wish List books, with row after row of frozen food, all ready to put into your Kitchenaid Range or, later on, your Panasonic Microwave Oven.
Broccoli. Penne Gratin. Mixed Vegetables. Sushi Rolls. Meatballs (Turkey or Pork). Pretzel Poppers. Tomato Basil Soup. Green Beans. Sliced Ham. Brown Rice.
“Don’t forget to tell them about this week’s special, the Pirogues.”
Yes. Sorry, handsome delivery driver.
This is Schwan’s. Everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – at the ready. Totally prepared and brought to your door. But now, instead of the future, it seems like an old standby of less frugal times.
This, my friends, is the future we were always waiting for. And it continues to serve us, one bag of frozen grilled mushrooms at a time.
Tags: Food, Home, On..., Technology |
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Risotto spoon
November 23, 2009
It may simply look like a wooden spoon. But you’d be wrong.
It’s handle was thick; sturdy and solid, it gave control to the flimsy, tedious process of stirring. It’s wide face, cupped enough to provide necessary currents, gave life to dried rice, moving, constantly moving, the power to sift and dance and swirl. It was more than a wooden spoon. It was an agent of change, perfect for turning rice into risotto through the slow, delicate process.
Pour. Stir. Pour. Stir. It sat idle only long enough to allow for a bit of liquid.
It was hefty. It felt comfortable. It was perfect.
That is, it was until Becket found it. A few minutes of gnawing and several slivers later, it had become old news, left abandoned as he turned his attention to another bone.
Some people might say, “Just get another one.” But then again, it wasn’t just a wooden spoon. Which makes it painfully obvious how much some people don’t understand.
Cheese
November 13, 2009
I love cheese. Love it.
LOVEIT.
Kerrie asked me recently to guess the three classes of consumables she appreciated the most. I kinda sorta guessed correctly: coffee, beer, bread. And, I wholeheartedly agree – my three are nearly the same, with the only difference being my choice of cheese over bread.
(Though both are crucial for the most underrated great food in the world: the grilled cheese.)
Coffee. Beer. Cheese. I’m good, thanks.
That being said, there are things I don’t want to know about cheese.
It’s fermented. Through acid and coagulation, it’s rotted to a perfect, pungent taste. It’s separated like bad cream, the chunky part smashed and left to sit. Sometimes, it’s curdled.
We usually throw out things that are curdled.
It’s moldy. It’s often filled with gross things like pimentos and horseradish. It’s smelly. It has a rind. Oranges have a rind, and you DON’T EAT THE RIND.
It’s populated with weird (albeit awesome) words. Curd. Rennet. Milkfat. Blue vein. Sometimes, it’s barely cheese at all; it’s milk-like (see: Époisses) or it’s processed (see: Velveeta).
Despite the fact that it’s a staple in my diet, and despite the fact that it’s responsible for my second favorite Monty Python sketch, cheese is sort of creepy.
If you think about it too much.
Which is why I don’t think about it too much.
[Prompt: Cheese is sort of creepy, if you think about it too much.” – Abi Jones, editrix of Heat Eat Review, UX expert, Arnold Schwarzenegger expert.]
Tags: BMOWP: By Request, Food |
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Pickin’ on huckleberries
August 25, 2009
Despite their common appearance, there is little similar between a blueberry and a huckleberry.
A blueberry is pale, with a subdued taste. It’s common. It’s boring.
A member of the same family, the huckleberry is tart and wonderful, every bite similar to what caviar must feel like.
Blueberries are typical. Huckleberries are rare. In fact, blueberries are often used in less particular creations that claim to be made with huckleberries. One huckleberry to every three blueberries – enough to keep everything legally “huckleberry-ish.” They cost a fortune when offered pure, and they’re almost as good when offered muddled.
They’re like gold. Except worth more, it seems.
Huckleberries can’t be grown in captivity.
They are a mystic fruit, dripping with old west legend. Their name is rustic in a way no other can claim. Nestled in the family tree next to the cranberry and the blueberry, they serve as a backwoods cousin.
Like homemade whiskey, they pucker your lips. You shudder, waiting for the next rude smack of insolvent country manner. Instead, you’re treated to a taste that blueberries still fight to attain.
Though I’ve grown up around both, only one carries the legacy of hand-picking, the plunk of a tin bucket as we wind our way through a wooded hill, speaking loud to keep the bears away and wondering if all of the work is worth it – if these few handfuls of berries will be able to ease our sore knees and purplish hands.
But a few handfuls are all you need. And yes, once paired with cream, or siphoned into jelly, it’s more worth it than any food you’ve had the trouble of fighting for.
You’d get in trouble for stealing a few, but Grandpa Boyer scolded in jest. After all, his lips had the same purple tint as yours.
They’re irresistible. And no amount of blueberries will ever suffice.
Tags: Food, Grandpa Boyer, On..., Outdoors |
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A quick aside about dieting
August 12, 2009
Listen, I know that no one wants to hear about dieting. No one wants to hear about the pudgy blogger who has gained weight, nor do they want to hear about the process of them losing that weight.
But come on.
So yeah. I’m doing this. Because I need to get healthy. And you – YES, I’M LOOKING AT YOU, WORK REFRIGERATOR – should just LAY OFF and stop stocking up with ice cream sandwiches.
It’s getting pretty rude, buddy. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer it if you – and anyone else who’s paying attention – would kindly stop tempting me with your vicious delectables.
Thanks. Carry on.
Black Marks on Heat Eat Review
January 12, 2009
A few months ago, I ate a Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers General Tso’s Spicy Chicken meal.
As I often do when I walk by the Healthy Choice section, I thought immediately of one of my favorite sites: Heat Eat Review.
I sent a tweet to Abi Jones and asked, “Can I write a review?” And she said, “Hell Yes, Dawg.” And I took a artfully moody-looking picture and dug in.
“The sauce was the selling point and, ultimately, the downfall of the dish. Put a classy sauce over awful chicken and you can possibly get away with a saved meal. But this sauce, while proper in consistency, was lacking in taste. It was like homemade sweet and sour sauce that was made with an unequal amount of ingredients – as if the sugar was running low, so they used silica gel instead.”
I love reading works of food criticism. So, it should come as no surprise when I say I’m pretty excited about my first Heat Eat Review post.
The Food Lover’s Companion
December 16, 2008
The Food Lover’s Companion proclaims to include comprehensive definitions of over 4,000 food, wine and culinary terms. At over 700 pages long, it’s a compact reference book that spans the entire spectrum of taste, from plain water to the complex makeup of rare cheese.
For our home, the Food Lover’s Companion is a pre-children experiment in chance. Kerrie and I, buoyed by a love of food-based television programming and encouraged by several food magazine subscriptions, developed a game to accompany the Food Lover’s Companion – a game that ultimately gave us an excuse to read the reference book, as our normal cooking habits did not often require the definition or use of rare ingredients.
The game was played like this.
Kerrie would begin by naming a food. Any food. It could be general, like “beans” or “pasta” – responses that naturally gave a much wider chance of continuation – or very specific, like “Gorgonzola” or “pinto.” I would read the description aloud – an act that could try my patience with the epicurean language, especially in those cases of long, general descriptions – and Kerrie would choose one of the cross-referenced words within. In the rare case another term wasn’t cross-referenced, we would start again.
This little ritual began during a time of sleeplessness and continued for a year or so. I was working late nights – the relay center closed at 1 AM, and I often didn’t make it home until 2 AM – and on my nights off I would typically stay up much later than Kerrie.
Every few weeks, when Kerrie needed to fall asleep, we’d pull out the Food Lover’s Companion and start sifting through the descriptions. We’d slowly learn a little more about food, developing a keen sense of which terms would profit in terms of available cross-references, thus keeping the game afloat. Eventually, Kerrie would get tired and I would continue on with my night.
The act has since been abandoned. The Food Lover’s Companion now sits in the kitchen, where it probably – no, definitely – belongs. I no longer work late, te go to bed at about the same time each night, and a 16-month old toddler (not to mention a blossoming pregnancy) has rendered us a tired mess by about 9:30 PM.
In other words, getting to sleep is no longer a problem.
Still, the allure of that little white book still captures my attention. I still open it up now and then at work (I have a copy that was handed down to me from a co-worker for use with a handful of restaurant accounts) and marvel at the complexity of food – the miles of descriptions and backgrounds and cultural ties, the thousands of preparations, the amazing array of choice that forces havoc on the eternal question, “What should I eat?”
It’s no bigger than a travel bible; no thicker than a pocket dictionary. Yet, it holds the entire history of food. Term by term. Each linking to the next. Until finally, you arrive at a dead end, and you can sit back with awe at the path you took to get there and wonder, of all things, how anyone could have discovered this rare food, this odd cheese, this strain of wine, and marvel at the chance that led to some random person tasting it and proclaiming it to be good.
The chance of discovery that, ultimately, leads to the choices in taste we are allowed to make each day.
About
Black Marks on Wood Pulp has been commenting on life and everything associated with it since February 2005. He's also photoblogging at Much More Sure. Everything you've ever wanted to know about Black Marks on Wood Pulp and Corey Vilhauer is located here, on the About Page.
Posts
- What I’ve Been Reading – The Red Pony
- On the first day of preschool
- Mastering the cycle of inspiration
- Puddle jumping
- D*** it
- The doctor’s office
- Everything is dead
- What I’ve Been Reading – HTML5 for Web Designers
- A quick note on children’s brands
- There is no greater sports star than the sports star I become … in my head.
Comments
- Corey Vilhauer on Mastering the cycle of inspiration: "Possibly. One thing’s for sure: your creative peaks are much more delicious than mine."
- kv on Mastering the cycle of inspiration: "This must be why I have to make ricotta cheese and spaghetti sauce for the eggplant parmesean and still feel the need to make hamburger buns. Oh, and..."
- Corey Vilhauer on The “Aha” moment: "I loved that episode. I love that show."
- m!les on The “Aha” moment: "RadioLab had a great episode where they discussed counting in young children. The conclusion they made was that children think of numbers logarithmically...."
- Sam on Everything is dead: "“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” - The Web"
