Laura Ingalls Wilder, Where Did I Go Wrong?

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syrup and snowThis time, I’m afraid, there’s simply no hope of convincing the neighbors that I’m not completely insane. This morning at 7 a.m., I was outside in the swirling snow, shaking snow from a shrub into a cake pan, a bottle of maple syrup clamped tightly in one armpit. I am thirty-one years old, but the vestiges of my Little House on the Prairie fetish are still on display for everyone on my block to see.

When I was very young, my sister read the entire Little House series out loud to me, and man, did I love it. Sure, Mary was kind of a bore, but Laura was clever and charming and brave—all things that wee Shannon aspired to be. And I was enthralled with the idea of pioneer life. If my family ever had to move into a sod house for some reason, I was prepared to milk a cow, knit some mittens, and whip up some corn pone in order to help us through the long winter. I went so far as to insist that my parents buy me the Little House on the Prairie Cookbook, which explained how to make delicious treats like hardtack.

Laura and MaryFast forward to a few weeks ago, when New York was on the cusp of getting its first real snowstorm of the season; a scene from the first Little House book came back to me in a flash. Hadn’t Laura made maple candy by dripping syrup on fresh snow? Wouldn’t it be a hoot to do it myself? Alas, the timing of that storm was all wrong, and by the time I was out and about the next morning, it had turned to rain and slush. So this time, when I woke up to a couple of inches, I was determined to make it happen. Mind you, I haven’t read the book in question, Little House in the Big Woods, in well over two decades and my copy of the cookbook is probably still in a crate somewhere in my parents’ house, but as I remembered it, they just packed some snow in a pan, drizzled syrup over it in snazzy designs and—Voila! Candy!

In actuality, this is not what happens when you put maple syrup on snow. Continue reading →

Sorta Kinda Chinese Tea Series Entry Two: Sesame Black

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I can’t say with Gospel certainty (let’s stop and laugh at that for a second…) if sesame black tea predates the bubble tea I wrote about last week.  But I suspect it does.  We were eating sesame seeds at least 5,050 years ago.  The Assyrian gods celebrated their Creation by drinking sesame wine.

So sesame black tea with milk needs no gimmick like gelatinous bubbles or Rainbow Brite-colored mega straws!  No, it can be mixed up in a Chinatown bakery, in particular this morning the Dragon Land Bakery across from the perma-shuttered and dragon-topped NYC tourist booth on Canal Street.  The woman behind the counter spoons some of the black sesame tea powder (available on Amazon; who knew?) into my cup, fills the cup with hot water and milk, and drops in a Hong Kong Style-brand Ceylon tea bag.  The exchange takes some miming, fruitlessly precise articulation, and one mistake, but the two of us get the job done.

I take my seat at “Tiny Dancer” replaces “Grease” over the radio.  Everyone else here is speaking, reading, and looking Chinese.  They’re also middle aged or older.  Have all the young people turned completely to the novelty tea shops?  Am I into an old-person’s tea? Continue reading →

A Fair Fight?: Not-So-Fun Facts from “A Food Designed to Addict”

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scooby-snackI’m not sure anyone who loves to eat as much as I do can properly call herself a health nut. I did, after all, write a wistful tribute to Dairy Queen Blizzards on this blog just a couple of weeks ago. And I do have a deep belief in free will and the necessity of people taking responsibility for their own actions. (When I got called for jury duty on a personal injury lawsuit, the corporate defense attorney found me delightfully amusing before the plaintiff’s lawyer dismissed me.) Those two facts combined mean that I often have mixed feelings in the junk food debate. Yes, I like Cheez-Its, but I don’t eat them every day, and that kind of restraint doesn’t feel all that difficult. So should we really be able to hold food companies responsible for the obesity epidemic?

Well…actually, maybe we should, at least partly. A recent article in the New York Times magazine by Michael Moss makes a compelling case that the public doesn’t stand much of a chance against the unhealthy foods that the junk food kings are pushing. Really, you should just go read the actual article right now. But for the record, here are the tidbits that I found most interesting…and disturbing:

The Bliss Point
Any Malcolm Gladwell fans out there will already know about Howard Moskowitz, the guy who revolutionized the food market by testing in excruciating detail every possible permutation of a product (61 versions of Vanilla Cherry Dr. Pepper, say, to find the perfect balance of vanilla and cherry and, um, pepper-ness). He calls that balance the “bliss point,” and he finds it through surveying thousands of taste testers and crunching the numbers across dozens of factors. Which is all rather fascinating, but here’s the nagging thought I couldn’t get out of my head as I read about his process: can you think of anything that sounds less like cooking? Continue reading →

Grub Match: Foodie Throwdown in the Nation’s Capital

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grub match DC

If the stereotypical New Yorker is loud and rude, what’s the stereotype of someone from Washington, D.C.? If the first D.C. Grub Match is any indication, that person is driven, discerning and a model of good taste. Also, a tall, skinny white female whose name begins with M. And so it was that I found myself deep in the heart of Alexandria with Martha, Mignon and Margaret as they prepared to fight it out for the title.

Round 1: Lyon Hall (Martha’s pick)
Things got off to a smooth start with high praise of the food at Lyon Hall. The word “amazing” was used liberally to describe everything from the sausage to the spaetzle. Though the menu is rife with pork products, even our vegetarian contender Mignon found plenty to like at Lyon Hall, particularly the happy hour specials like the warm pretzels with three different dipping sauces and the pickled vegetables that change weekly.

Margaret did find a few weak spots on the menu, however: “When it came to the cassoulet I was a little disappointed because they didn’t cook it all together, they put some stuff on the side…the whole point is that everything is mixed and delicious together.” Also, she felt that the dessert selection didn’t live up to the high standard set by the savory dishes. Even so, Lyon Hall managed to dodge any serious punches during this round.

Interlude: Vince makes a guerilla grab for the title.
Here’s another difference between a New York Grub Match and the D.C. version: in NYC we make do with beer at a bar, while in D.C., Vince, Martha’s paramour, makes a seriously bitchin’ brunch for everyone. He actually baked loaves of brioche two days beforehand for the express purpose of making it into French toast topped with berries and freshly whipped cream. Which begged the question: was he trying to upend Grub Match by being some sort of dark horse candidate? Things just got interesting. Continue reading →

What Will Arizona Eat?

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Because Shannon is badass, she bought me horseback riding lessons as a combined Christmas-birthday gift.

I love horses.

I love them with something approaching the ardor of an 8-year-old girl.

You spend time with horses and you realize that they have a connection to humans that no other animals save dogs can claim.  The history of their existence is inextricably tied up with ours, and you can sense that when around them.  Learning to work with a horse can open a window into the ways our species is and has been connected to the natural world all around us, a window all the more important given how rapidly we are burying our sense of that integration under bells and whistles and hustle, hustle, hustle.

I wanted some of that, and Shannon hooked me up.

And soon I found myself hooking up the horses. Continue reading →