Dead Man Gnawing: The Vitis vine, César Chávez, and the Winning Ayatollah Khamenei (6,000 B.C. – present)

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Grapes.  They are the fruiting bodies of the genus Vitis vine, have been cultivated for food and libation since at least 6,000 B.C., are frustratingly expensive at the grocery store, and are generally recognized as being wicked yummy.

(Did you know that Syrah is thought to be “Syrah” because in the Persian city of Shiraz, the noted A+ wine producer of the 9th Century Middle East, the origin of the Bahá’í religion, and the home of that religion’s founder, which was demolished and paved over in ’79?  Nor did I.  But then I wandered down the Wikipedia Hole.)

So grapes; yes, yummy, expensive, and that takes us to Mister César Chávez.  Now I recall Chávez from elementary school posters that celebrated the grand and peacefully dissenting rainbow that is America, and I suppose that’s where I learned he organized migrant farm workers.  But that’s about all I knew.  Barack Obama, however, declared 105 acres of the Tehachapi Mountains in California a National Monument in October, and that sent me to the aforementioned Wiki Hole. Continue reading →

Nogging in the New Year

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egg nog

Never mind the taste; few words are so pleasing as "nog."

After days of consuming rich holiday treats, Jason and I were pretty sure we didn’t need to add to the load. Yet there was one recipe that we hadn’t gotten a chance to try over Christmas, and we couldn’t resist giving it a whirl on New Year’s Day. The New York Times had run a recipe for Nog, the Hard Way in December, and we have a known weakness for things that are a) alcoholic and b) more difficult than they really should be. And so we put the black-eyed peas on to boil and got down to the business of nogging.

The NYT recipe is broken, rather arbitrarily, into five steps, but let me assure you, there are more than five steps. In fact, reading the thing beforehand made Jason (a wee bit hungover) threaten to wave the white flag. But once we got going, it wasn’t so hard after all, and despite a small disagreement over how fast a whisk should be moving before the action can be considered whisking, it made for an excellent tag-team cooking experience. For instance, Jason could stir in the heavy cream while I was preoccupied with cursing the fact that we only had three ice cubes left in the freezer with which to create an ice-water bath for the pan. (We ended up improvising by using an ice pack.)

ice water

Sometimes, you just have to improvise.

Jason was a tad skeptical of the raw egg factor, and we’d splurged on the freshest, most pristine eggs we could find. But regardless, it was amazing to witness how thorough of a transformation the eggs go through. After all of that whisking and beating, it seemed a chemical impossibility that they would be at all slimy or unpalatable.

Would all this intrepid nog determination turn out to be worth it? Continue reading →

Top 12 Beers of 2012!

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Cheers!

We’ve entered that dead man’s zone between Christmas and New Year’s; a week long sugar- and family-hangover that floats heavy over the couch while you sit and watch sequels of Christmas movies and ponder the impending death of another year-full of dreams. Hm. So to distract you, here’s another arbitrary end-of-the-year list! Llalan’s Top 12 Beers of 2012:

12. Edmund Fitzgerald Porter from Great Lakes Brewing. Since I’ve moved back to Ohio, this brewery has played a large role in my evening imbibing. Last January I was reminded that even the coldest Midwestern storms can be warmed by this beer — itself a tribute the power of The Lakes’ fury. One of the best porters on the market, which I continue to buy regularly despite the risk of having the Gordon Lightfoot song pop into my head.

11. Left Hand experienced a brief flurry of attention when their Milk Stout came out in Nitro bottles. At a favorite bar, the manager passed around a pint of freshly poured Nitro, which rolled and cascaded like a draft Guinness. I overcame my unease at sharing a glass with eight virtual strangers and decided yes, it was worth it.

10. Flying Dog has long been one of my favorite breweries, and not just for Ralph Steadman’s inexplicably terrifying label art. Their biting Raging Bitch Belgian IPA has clawed its way to the top of the pack, despite the gaping wide comic opening it allows my sweet mother. Continue reading →

Grocery Shopping for Good Fortune

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black-eyed peasHere we are, staring down the barrel of a new year, a suspended moment that can feel both hopeful and intimidating. Luckily, our forefathers have left us traditions of “lucky food” to bolster our fortune for the coming year and to give us something to chew on besides our fingernails as we contemplate the uncertain future. And so, a rundown of some essentials for this weekend’s grocery list:

Sauerkraut: I thought everyone ate pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day, but when I Googled it to find the backstory, the first thing to pop up was an article called, “Why do Ohioans eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day?” So maybe it was just us, all along. Even so, Tuesday’s feast wouldn’t be complete without a healthy dose of the German cabbage staple. Roots of this tradition are vague, at best, though I think I was told as a child that cabbage is green and represents wealth. I also have a sneaking suspicion that all those Cleveland Germans were probably just tossing together what they had left in the pantry after Christmas. By far the most creative answer, though, was one I found on Yahoo Answers that posited that people eat pork because a pig roots forward with its nose similar to the way we forge into the new year. Even if it’s not true, I like the idea, so I’m going to get some soy sausage to complement my kraut.

Black-eyed peas: While I was munching sauerkraut in Ohio, Jason spent the New Year’s Days of his childhood eating black-eyed peas with stewed tomatoes. This is typically considered “a Southern thing,” and there’s a Civil War story that goes along with it, in which the modest pea was the only thing left in the fields after Sherman’s notorious march to the sea, and the Confederate soldiers felt lucky to have them that winter. True? Well, maybe. Continue reading →

ABCs of Baking: Cheese of Wonder, Cheese of Light

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cream cheese frostingNothing sounds more relaxed and delightful than a potluck (just listen to the word roll off your tongue—a combo of steaming, cozy kitchen and good fortune), but as the holiday potluck at the literacy center approached, I admit that I was feeling anxious. Looking at the list of suggested dishes, I began to suspect that I didn’t really have the same taste in food as many of the other people attending—half of the list was meat, which I don’t eat, and I wasn’t even sure what mauby was. (It’s a drink, in case you’re interested, though I still haven’t had the chance to try it.) So I took a deep breath, thought of my winter baking initiative and volunteered to bring a cake.

I have, in fact, made cakes before, but only of the packaged cake mix variety, so this seemed the perfect opportunity to expand my horizons. Because it is the season of root vegetables, I decided to dwell in the C section of the alphabet a touch longer and make a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. The recipe in Better Homes and Gardens seemed a little work intensive (three cups of finely grated carrot = almost certain thumb abrasions) but rather simple, and I had a pleasant reunion with an electric hand mixer that had been tucked away on a shelf in our kitchen for many moons. It wasn’t until the cake was in the oven that I realized I’d only put in about half of the baking powder and baking soda that the recipe called for. Here is a good baking lesson: you really should read the lettering on those measuring spoons, no matter how strongly your intuition tells you which one is a full teaspoon.

As it cooled, the cake was looking a little dense. Had it risen enough to be edible? It actually didn’t matter much, because here, dear reader, is an even more important lesson: Continue reading →

The Spruce Goose (and Other, Less Risky Infusions)

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tiny bottlesA few years ago, when Jason and I were trying to think of a fun theme for a holiday party, our friend Ethan told us of a longtime dream of his: to bust open a piñata full of tiny bottles of booze rather than candy. And how often, really, do you get to make someone’s dream come true? Realizing Ethan’s vision, however, put us up against a few obstacles.

The first was that the only bottles we could find that were plastic rather than glass contained vodka, and we worried that having only a single kind of alcohol would dampen the fun of the enterprise. We solved this by infusing the vodka with whole a range of ingredients (ginger, chili pepper, rosemary, etc) to give them more variety. It worked like a charm, because such a tiny amount of liquid infused very quickly. The second stumbling block was that a piñata full of bottles is very heavy indeed, and the poor thing strained and sagged under the weight so much that I was certain it was going to burst onto some unsuspecting partygoer’s head at any moment. Thankfully, it didn’t, though unleashing a piñata full of candy-colored booze on a roomful of people who’ve already been drinking for hours did its own kind of damage.

Though the piñata may have been a one-time only affair, some of the infusions were so good that we’ve made them many times since. Cinnamon is a personal favorite: a beautiful red color and, mixed with tonic, it tastes pleasantly like Big Red gum. Give it a try. This year I decided to experiment with a few other wintery flavors as well, and when I read a recent snippet in the Atlantic about someone making a cocktail syrup out of pine resin, I knew I had to try making a spruce-flavored vodka. Continue reading →

Dear Santa, I’d Like a Beer.

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I *Heart* Clever T-Shirts! Courtesy TheRoamingPint.com

Have a beer-lover to buy for this Christmas? (If not, add one to your wish list. We’re great people.) The easiest gift is sticking a bow on top of a new or favorite bottle and plopping it in the stocking. We’re easy to please. But if you’re one of those that discourages early-morning drinking on a holiday, I’ve got a couple other suggestions:

As many of you already know, I like books. I spend all day surrounded by them, talking to writers and readers, so I’m partial to the beer book as a  gift. These are a few of my favorites. (Yes, these are all linked to my own bookstore’s website. Go to Amazon, I dare you.)

The Naked Pint: an entertaining and easy-to-read guide about everything-beer, written by two ladies I aspire to be like someday.
Great American Craft Beer: by Andy Crouch, a renowned beer writer, this guide takes the reader through the US, style by style, brewery by brewery.
The Beer Book: a beautiful catalogue of beers from around the world, photographed and explained in the elegant style DK Publishing is known for.
Fermenting Revolution: a history of beer from its roots as a female-led trade to present-day commercial brewing and how beer and breweries are improving our world.

BeerBooks.com is a good place to check for quirky and/or rare books on beer. On the reading theme, there are numerous beer- and beer brewing-related magazines available. Beer Advocate is one of my personal faves; Draft is another. BA is for your beard-and-flannel, make-your-own sort of beer enthusiast; Draft, your sweater vest-and-corduroys, hosts-tastings-and-uses-real-glasses sort of appreciator. Continue reading →

Salty Sweet Winter Squash & Apples

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I love winter squash.  Summer squashes like zucchini wear me out pretty quick, but winter squashes have stamina.  They’re nutty, buttery, have heft.  They’re full of all the B vitamins and omega 3s and fiber.  They’re a good source of folate.  I don’t know what folate does, but I trust that it’s good, and I’m okay with just eating winter squash and trusting it’ll hold down the folate fort for me.

I found a winter squash recipe at the Union Square farmers market last week.  As best as I can tell, the Natural Gourmet Institute next to the Flatiron Building is laying claim to it.  It rocks.  You should eat it.

You need squash, apples, thyme (fresh, if possible), honey, salt & pepper, butter.

First, get your squashes, let’s say 6 cups-worth or so.  That worked out to be 2 medium-to-small specimens for me.  You can use Acorn, Butternut, whatever is on hand, but you want them hard and you want them colorful.  Unless you are John Ford or Dorothea Lange, color is always good. Continue reading →

Holding Fast

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water glass

Lunch.

At the moment of typing this, I haven’t eaten for about seventy-two hours. I actually feel a little better than at hour twenty-four, when I couldn’t read or watch TV for the fear that a character might have the audacity to eat something in front of me. But more about this later. First, I should mention why someone who loves food as much as I do would ever consider embarking on a fast.

1)    Foremost was the notion that a relatively brief fast might help my turbulent stomach return to its usual steely resolve. I’m not sure why it’s been in such a huff lately, but not much seems to soothe it, and I was reminded of a friend who fasts about once a year mentioning that it helped her sort out the foods that she can’t tolerate. If you clean out your system, she said, you’ll know immediately when you start eating again if there’s something you should avoid. I liked this idea of a gastric reset button and decided that this might be a way to clear my stomach’s fog of confusion.

2)    Although it’s far from a proven fact, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that fasting might benefit you in the long run. An article in Harper’s magazine explores the possibility that simply not eating for a few days might help patients undergoing anything from epilepsy to chemo. The problem is that not doing something doesn’t really benefit anyone financially, most obviously pharmaceutical companies, so fasting hasn’t received the funding for rigorous testing. At any rate, I do recall being scared a few years ago by some news article that likened burning calories to putting miles on a car—eventually, the engine, or the body, just wears out. Yikes, I thought. I eat way more than a lot of people. Maybe I should give the engine a rest for a few days.

3)    There was a chance, however remote, that fasting might bring some sort of clarity and insight. People describe having this sort of experience on a fast, and I thought that perhaps I was missing something. Flaubert ate virtually nothing while writing his novels (though if you’ve ever seen his portrait, you can probably guess that he gorged himself as soon as he delivered a manuscript to the publisher). Maybe the next Madame Bovary is lurking within me, blocked until now by food. Continue reading →

Cinnamon Girl

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cinnamon tea

Boiling some smaller pieces of the bark

“People think cinnamon, it is like a little twig, but this is not true. Do you know?”

“Sure,” I said, because I was pretty sure I knew what cinnamon looked like.

“No, you do not know,” Veronica said, sighing heavily, because she was pretty sure I didn’t.

As it turned out, she was right, but let’s back up a step or two. Veronica is one of my students at the Bedford Learning Center, a doggedly determined woman who is a few decades older than me and likes to pepper our conversations with bits of wisdom, usually about the differences between men and women. But that evening, she had turned away from gender problems in favor of the flora of her homeland, St. Lucia. A friend visiting from the island had just brought her a new supply of herbal tea-fixings, including the bark of the native cinnamon tree.

“You will see,” she said, and I did, because at our next meeting, she brought me a big Ziploc bag of leaves and nuts and the bark of what looked like a very large tree. In fact, it looked like someone had hacked off a chunk of a sizable oak tree or something and dyed it a more reddish color. It definitely did not look like what passes for cinnamon at any grocery store in America. Continue reading →