Community News: Drought for Dinner

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The U.S. lays claim to over half of the globe’s corn exports and nearly the same for soybeans.  Nobody else comes close.  China, runner-up in the corn category, exports less than half the amount America does.  The same is the case for Brazil when it comes to the soy market.

The majority of each ends up as feed for livestock raised abroad, and additional bazillions of tons of corn and soy beyond our exports go toward the domestic production of meat that we export (it takes roughly 10 lbs of grain to grow 1 lb of meat).  All told, we shipped $53 billion dollars worth of all three—corn, soy, and meat—in 2011.

But global warming has made 2012 the hottest year since we began keeping records in 1895.  A third of the country’s counties have been declared federal disaster areas on account of drought.  Crops across the Midwest (88% and 87% of the country’s corn and soy supply, respectively) have been burned brittle and brown.  That’s driven corn prices up 45% since mid-June and soybean prices nearly 30% since the beginning of that month and nearly 60% since the end of last year. Continue reading →

Lunch at the End of the Line: Prowling the Financial District

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Zigolini's

The scene outside Zigolini's

Are chains really that bad? That’s what I was asking myself as the man at one of the Financier coffee shops gave me an angelic smile and extra complimentary cookies. Having already followed the subway to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, I realized that I had been neglecting the lowly isle of Manhattan. There are, indeed, ends of subway lines there, like the J and Z station on Broad St. in the financial district. But I’d been avoiding it up to now, because I knew all too well the proliferation of higher-grade fast food joints in any area of Manhattan where lots of people work. Pret A Manger, Potbelly’s, Cosi, Dean and Deluca—it’s not hard to see why places like this thrive here. They’re tasty, fast, efficient, and the best of them seem wholesome enough not to kill you even if you eat it fairly frequently. But if it was going to be a real end of the line experience, Financier just wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted to see where the more discerning regulars went.

Maybe it was the overwhelmingly crowded and fast-paced atmosphere on Broad Street, maybe it was just my mood, but I found myself following a different protocol than usual—I started to spy on people. It was fun to lurk behind unsuspecting men like some sort of iced tea-swigging and restaurant-obsessed femme fatale. Here are some observations I made about the young businessmen in the financial district: Continue reading →

Lasagna Roll-ups…Olé!

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lasagna rollsIn the dog days of summer, most people are loath to turn on their ovens, but I always think of it as lasagna weather. My sibling’s birthdays in July and August were occasions upon which they were allowed to control the culinary fate of the rest of the household. Ryan birthday comes first and, sensibly enough, he always decreed that my mother should make Lasagna Roll-Ups. Dawn, forced into making a choice a mere fourteen days later and feeling pressure to change it up, usually went with Chi-Chi’s Mexican Restaurant. (Despite her yearly pleading with my father not to reveal to the singing waiters at Chi-Chi’s why we were there, we have many photos of my sister as a sullen teenager with a sombrero crammed on her head, scowling at a softball-sized serving of fried ice cream with a candle stuck in it.)

I have nothing against Chi-Chi’s but I always felt like my sister got a raw deal, being robbed annually of those lasagna rolls. This recipe has ruined me for any other variety of lasagna. When I first tasted the layered version, it seemed like a slapdash disaster compared to the firm cheesy bundles that my mother would pull sizzling from the oven. Below, I’ll post my Great-Aunt Mary’s original recipe as well as a video showing how you can tweak it to your own tastes.

And here’s the original recipe. Continue reading →

Dead Man Gnawing: Aztec Peanut Paste and the Birth of Skippy (1519 & 1932)

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Among the wonders the Conquistadors discovered upon setting foot on the Americas was peanut butter.  Well, it would have been more of a peanut paste—just roasted, mashed nuts—but the essentials were there in 1519 when Cortez and his lunatics showed up.  Let’s assume the Aztecs had a long history with peanut butter because peanut butter is awesome and so are storied, long-dead ancient empires.

And now let’s jump to the 19th century.  We’re jumping because even though peanuts spread around the globe after the colonization of the Americas and folks surely smashed and ate them, the public record rarely takes note of what Average Joe and Jane ate.  It does take note, however, of issued patents.

In 1884, a Québécois named Marcellus Gilmore Edson received a patent for the process of milling roasted peanuts into a semi-fluid state between heated surfaces.  When the goop cooled, it achieved, in Edson’s words, “a consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment.”  Yum. Continue reading →

Grub Match: Brooklyn Brunch Showdown

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brunch contendersOne storm was brewing in the west, and another was brewing between the three contenders in the Brooklyn Brunch Showdown. “Please,” one contender whispered to me off the record, “bring on these brunch amateurs.” But despite some brash displays of confidence, it was shaping up as a Grub Match far too close for anyone to call. In this Olympic season of eating, would Peaches, Beast or Café Luluc take home the gold? We were about to find out. Continue reading →

Food for the Sporting Life

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power barsThe people earnestly contemplating the wall of power bars at the grocery store used to make me roll my eyes. What’s the point, anyway? A meal should not come in the form of a bar, and I was skeptical of how they were really any different than taking a handful of vitamins. But now that I’m training for a marathon next fall, I’ve had to change my tune. A little.

I have come to accept the fact that runners really do need a burst of carbohydrates to keep their muscles limber and electrolytes to keep them from retching. If I don’t get these things within thirty minutes of finishing a run, I’ll be limping up and down the subway steps the next day like a three-legged turtle. And sometimes a proper meal is too far away to be practical. So here are some of the highlights of my reluctant foray into power foods.

Power Bar: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip flavor, Carbohydrates: 42g, Protein: 16g, Calories: 240
Like Kleenex or Xerox, this was the bar that gave its name to a whole category of products, so it seemed like a good place to start. The taste and texture were pleasing, but man, was there a lot of it. Continue reading →

Beers to That! The Drink to Clink

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One happy day my fridge looked like this!

Sitting on the deck, my knuckles scraped, shins bruised, and hair everywhere, the bottle of beer in my hands could have been a flute of Dom Perignon. But it wasn’t; it was better. It was, in fact, an IPA Maximus from Lagunitas, because that is what you drink after a day of moving everything you own and everything your Significant Other owns across town in 90-degree weather. You don’t drink champagne after that.

You don’t drink champagne after your kickball team won its first game ever and you don’t drink it when you’ve lost every one. You don’t drink bubbly after working out in your garden all afternoon. You don’t fall onto the couch after an exhausting day at work and take a long draw from a bottle of champagne. That’s ridiculous, right? But champagne remains known as the beverage of celebrations. I’d like to challenge that assumption.

Beer has a reputation for being the proud drink of the common man, and I feel there’s nothing wrong with that characterization. But I’d like to suggest that beer is also, more than any other beverage, the drink America celebrates with. From the “Champagne of Beers” all the way up to your finest Belgian Double, beer is the drink to clink for every accomplishment, small or large. Because some days, just getting through the last hour of work and making it home to sit in pajamas and eat mac and cheese out of the pan is as much an achievement as getting married or winning the lottery. Beer is everybody’s drink for everyday victories.

When Ben got up off the deck and offered to bring me another IPA, I accepted eagerly, knowing we still had a lot of moving and organizing to do, being relieved to have the big part of the move complete, and feeling so happy to be right there, right then, with that beer.

Eric’s Grub Match Pick, Beast

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Eric's Grub Match Pick

Chicken = Grub Match secret weapon

Our final contender in the Brooklyn Brunch Showdown is smooth operator and chicken whisperer, Eric Lidman. He explained to us the beauty of potato salad and why he (and his dog) consider Beast in Prospect Heights a true neighborhood gem. Here’s more from Eric:

You’re headed to a deserted island to live on grass and coconut milk–what’s your last meal before you go? Full breakfast—eggs, bacon, cheese, fresh bread with butter and preserves, cheese, fruit, yogurt, cheese … breakfast, it’s not just for, um, breakfast anymore.

You’ve come into uncountable gobs of money—who do you hire as your personal chef? Batali, if I had to choose…though I’d resurrect Julia Child, if at all possible…

What’s the single most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten? Dinner, October 2011, Adour at the St. Regis Hotel … lobster bisque, beef cap bordelaise with bone marrow, poached rhubarb with yogurt cream and strawberries, all washed down with a 1964 French cabernet …I almost passed out when I finished.

Have you ever worked at a restaurant? Burger King, for 2 shifts. I was fired for inadvertently closing the burger steamer lid on my supervisor’s hand. Continue reading →

Summer Cocktail Spectacular

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cocktailTemperatures are once again rising like a flock of seagulls on the wing. It’s important to hydrate…and why not throw in a little gin while you’re at it? We’re calling on all you gifted mixologists out there to cool our sweaty brows.

Send your signature summer cocktail recipes to submission@pitchknives.com. We’ll try the ones we like best and rate them according to taste, creativity and capacity to refresh.

It’s only right that the winners receive a token of our gratitude. What will it be? An artful swizzle stick? A crocheted beer coozie? A hand-mixed glass of Shannon’s signature cocktail, the Bee’s Knees? You’ll just have to win to find out.

So get to it! Shake, stir, and please, please chill. The address for entries is, one more time, submissions@pitchknives.com.

Concrete Jungle: The Kids, Various Neighbors, Garretta’s Laugh, & a Hundred-Plus Sunflowers in a Hurricane of Enthusiasm

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Two Sundays back Shannon and I followed through on an idea I cooked up last winter.  We would start seeds indoors, organize a children’s morning in our community garden across the street, and lead a hand’s-on, dirt-on-the-knees lesson in, well, all things Plant.

So I started some sunflowers inside, staggered the timing so we had one about six inches tall with its new yellow face and five just green, half-inch sprouts with plump leaves.  We armed ourselves with about a hundred seeds of sunflowers of various heights and colors, two boxes of crayons, and a big bottle of tangerine orange juice.

We had, as we explained to Garretta, our neighbor and grandmother of our first four participants, an educational program.  The explanatory exchange went something like this:

Jason & Shannon: Okay, kids, let’s talk a little about plants for a—

Garretta: You four get on over to that plot and start pulling those weeds!

(Kids shoot from the picnic bench like bees are at their butts.)

Jason & Shannon: Well, first let’s talk about roots. See—

Garretta: Pull those weeds because we aren’t gonna be here all day; we have to go to that park to play in the water.

Jason & Shannon: Damn, Garretta, we have an educational program planned here!

Garretta:  Ha-ha-ha-ha….. Continue reading →