Anger Is the Best Sauce

Eat Your Greens

2010-03-02T13:43:00.000-08:00

I am willing to stipulate that McDonalds barely qualifies as food anymore. And the abuse meted out there is less amusing than the sass at Weiner Circle. However, McDonalds will always have my number because they make the Shamrock Shake. They're only available for a few weeks in March here in the States, so the novelty alone keeps me coming back. If I lived in Ireland, where they're rumored to be available year round, I'd probably never want one of these vaguely mouthwash flavored shakes. Instead, they mean Spring to me, a birthday tradition that costs less than $3. I don't approve of the new parfait style presentation, but I'm not really a fan of whipped cream. And I haven't a prayer of getting that maraschino cherry out with my straw (which they forgot to give me, sigh). Fancy and McDonalds don't go together, but I'd rather suck down one of these than a Green River or green beer.

Starbucks breeds coffee narcissists

2009-11-17T13:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a controversial admission: I go to Starbucks sometimes, like today, when I wanted a breakfast sandwich. (Usually I go to the Ing Direct Cafe where I can get Peets for $1, but their sandwiches blow and it's about the same price to get a sandwich and coffee at Sbux).

Here's what I don't get- the stupid ways people order their drinks when there's twenty people waiting in line at 8:55 am, and probably running late for work.

Extra hot hot chocolate!

130 degree soy latte!

And best of all, NO FOAM SKINNY LATTE WITH ONE PUMP OF GINGERBREAD SYRUP AND ONE PUMP OF VANILLA, but I should expect that from a woman wearing stiletto boots at 8:55 AM, which is an unfortunately common sort of fashion choice in the hateful yuppy neighborhood I work in.

But seriously, what kind of unique and special snowflake does she think she is that she needs the barista to scrape the foam off her latte when 20 other people are waiting for drinks? Why does Starbucks enable these baby people to make these ridiculous requests? What ever happened to ordering off the menu?

Also, what the fuck is up with people ordering "wet" cappucino? Isn't a "wet" cappucino basically a latte?

And why do you need your drink to be a specific temperature, anyway? Since when is "hot" not good enough?

Milwaukee is hella great!

2009-11-16T07:27:00.000-08:00

Milwaukee is pretty much an awesome day trip if you live in Chicago, because it's only 1.5 hrs away from Chicago, and it's a lot like Chicago while not being Chicago. That is to say, a fun Midwestern town with lots of hipster stuff and yummy food.

I somehow never managed to make it to Milwaukee in my 4 years of living in Chicago because on two separate occasions I've made plans to go with a boyfriend and wound up breaking up with the boyfriend right before the trip. Fortunately my friends Chris and Suzy (a couple) managed to not break up with each other or friend dump me prior to this trip, so perhaps Milwaukee is not cursed after all.

We decided to skip the Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha since we'd all already been there before. (To the uninitiated: it's a store that sells a lot of cheese that looks sort of like a 70's rec room concept of a Castle on the outside). We arrived in MWKE around 10:30am to discover that Google had given us seriously WRONG directions to the Art Museum. Fortunately, Suzy has an Iphone. I had been warned by several people of the ridonculousness of the MWKE Art Museum, and they weren't kidding. It looks like it might either fly/sail away, exacerbated by it's placement on Lake Michigan:

We saw the Warhol exhibit, some German pimp goblets, still life with octopi, and a clock that featured a figurine of Jesus being flogged. Awesome.

By noon we were super hungry to we headed towards Cafe Lulu, a place that notorious Milwaukeean Mike Brenner had reccomended. I had an amazing burger called "The Half Pound Heart Attack." It was smothered in bacon and gorgonzola and was probably the best damn burger I've eaten in recent memory that was not from Kuma's. The sides of homemade potato chips and asian slaw didn't hurt either. The three of us split a piece of cherry pie and then it was onward.

The Bay View district is clearly hipster central, so we stopped at a couple vintage and antique stores over the course of our day.

Here is Chris and Suzy admiring Vintageous:

The Fox River Antiques Mall was pretty goddam insane: three floors of...stuff. I liked the "french telephone" that was basically a baroque end table that doubled as a really big telephone. I would totally buy it if I were a hooker. And also these accordians, "Marv" and "Judith":

We attempted to tour the Lakefront Brewery and/or the Pabst Mansion but by 3pm it was too late/the tours were sold out. I did get a shot of the brewery tanks though (and the whimsically colored mash tuns):

We considered having beers in the tasting room but it was a virtual mobscene and smelled unpleasantly of arm pit. So we opted to go to the grocery store at stock up on beer instead!

Allow me to take a moment to comment on how FRIGGIN CHEAP Milwaukee is. Both of our meals cost us under $30 (not counting tip) for 3 people. Sales tax is 5%, half of Chicago's brutal 11% (plus additional taxes on booze), so we decided to stock up on yummy local beers that are not readily available in Chicago. I went for a 6 pack of the Lakefront Pumpkin Lager (haven't tried it yet), a 12 pack of the New Glarus Spotted Cow, which tastes a lot like Blanche De Bruxelles, which is to say a Weiss beer without the funky clove and citrus notes, a bottle of New Glarus Belgian Red Cherry Ale, and 16 oz bottles of Sprecher Hefeweizen, Octoberfest and Winter Ale. Since I am aggressively drinking less these days, these are staying OUT of my fridge and being saved for special occasions like thanksgiving and parties. I think all this friggin' beer ran me about $35 total. Yowza.

The liquor store also had this super unappetizing concoction for sale:

I choose celibacy.

We stopped for Mexican Lattes and Cider at Stone Creek Coffee (which Chris re-dubbed "Stone Cock Coffee") to formulate dinner plans. We asked the barista for dinner suggestions and he offered up the Palomino and it's tofu buffalo wings, but since the three of us are meatatarians, we opted for Honey Pie, which had received an angry review from a vegan on yelp, which we figured was a good sign. Their logo is a pig wearing a napkin around its neck if that's any indication.

I ordered the celery root slaw (yum) and Chris and I shared an entree of beer cheese soup, beer braised brussel sprouts, apricot glazed pork chop and horseradish mashed potatoes and Suzy had a sausage sandwich. I give it a B= the food was tasty, but not as superlative as the burgers at Cafe Lulu.

After dinner, I tried to talk Chris and Suzy into posing over a church railing titanic-style as some sort of post modern statement on religion, but my inner Tyra was denied. Also, we walked past a really amazing Chinese Restaurant/Polka Lounge called the "Eternal Well" en route to our final destination- a bar called "At Random."

I have an otherwise thankless ex to thank for tipping me off to this place, because it's frigging awesome. It's the kind of place that Don Draper might go to meet a mistress if Mad Men was set in Wisconsin. Dim, smoky, lots of twinkly lights, intimate green vinyl booths, Sinatra on the stereo, an entire menu of ice cream drinks, and it looks like the bartenders have been working there since the fifties. A truly amazing and authentic slice of classic Midwest culture.

(I yanked this photo from Yelp).

I had a chambord/vodka/chocolate ice cream sort of concoction, Suzy had a Singapore Sling, and Chris had a Grasshopper. It was too dark to get any great shots (that's the point, I guess), but here's the top of my drink with a little cookie that says "yes" on it. Chris's cookie said "maybe." I am still trying to figure out what that cookie was implying by "yes."

I think the YES is to Milwaukee being awesome! Let's go back anytime!

Stuff I have eaten and drunk lately

2009-11-13T07:50:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've done a proper update because shit has been crazy, but I think it's time to SHARE!

1.
I have drastically cut back my alcohol consumption for personal reasons lately, but I am still willing to make an exception for certain things, such as Ben Schiller's cocktails (And he just won Wednesday's "Sweet Sixteen of Mixology" battle so kudos!). I was a huge fan of Ben's work at In Fine Spirits in Andersonville, and now he's migrated to Boka. I went there for a Plymouth Gin pairing dinner back in April and had some ridiculously chocolately/savory dessert that I still can't stop thinking about. Anyway, I requested something gin with a low alcohol content, and Ben whisked up this lovely little confection with Gin, grapefruit juice, an egg white and a bunch of other stuff, but the little hearts are too friggin cute for words. Next time I will order dessert too!

2. I am semi indifferent to the cult of Rick Bayless because of the time he served me some tough and pedestrian beef chili thing at Chicago Gourmet two years ago. And the wack, fishy tasting swordfish I had at a Tequila Pairing Dinner at Frontera a while back. I was willing to try Xoco though since it's supposed to be more casual, hence less of a $$ risk, and less wait time. It's reasonably close to work and I was having a craptastic day and decided it was necessary to placate myself with carbohydrates. I got it to go, and my wait time was about 15 mins, which not that bad considering how hot the hype is, and the fact that I spent 2 hours waiting at Hot Doug's last weekend (more on that later). And while Xoco is supposedly cheaper and more casual, a "Cubana" sandwich and an order of churros set me back almost $17. Ouch, considering that the sandwiches at Cafecito are also friggin amazing (try the Guava-Q sometime) and cost half as much. My verdict? The sandwich was indeed super tasty, with it's melted together press of"Smoked Maple Creek pork loin and bacon, black beans, avocado, artisan Jack cheese, chipotle mustard," and the accompanying salsa was also fantastic. It was big enough for 2 meals if I wasn't pmsing. The churros, on the other hand.....GREASY. Yes, I realize they're fried food, but I feel like I was eating a sugar coated grease-dipped sponge. Ah well, I satisfied my curiosity. Definitely would come back for another sandwich or to try the AM coffees and hot chocolates.

3. You already know why Hot Doug's makes me angry, but I haven't been in a few years (because they're always closed or there's a line around the block) but I recently had business in that part of town and decided to suck it up and wait. Fortunately I had a 4" thick smutty novel to keep me entertained (besides eavesdropping on the yuppies behind me) because I stood in line for TWO HOURS. TWO HOURS. No hot dog is 2 hours worth of delicious. I mean, at Kumas you might wait 2 hours for a burger, but at least you're usually seated after the first hour and you can get drunk while you wait.

That said, Hot Doug's is awesome, the food is awesome, they were playing Gary Numan when I finally made it through the door, but the wait is just fucking bogus. I actually debated ordering two sausages to justify the wait but in reality was not that hungry. I decided to try the controversial fois gras sausage that got Doug Sohn slapped with a city fine during the short lived Chicago fois gras ban. I also decided to give duck fat fries a second try since the first time I concluded that they didn't taste that different from the regular fries my vegetarian friend had ordered. And um, they still don't. Sorry. The fois gras sausage was delicious, but a bit of overkill- it really didn't need BOTH aioli and honking slabs of fois gras on top- it would have benefited from some acidic element to cut through all that fat. My gall bladder hated me all day. So, I enjoyed it, but I won't be waiting in line for 2 hours again any time soon.

4. I never made it to Schwa because my life went to shit that week and I wasn't feeling up to it, but the ladies at Chicago Bites did, and blogged about it.

5. The potato pancakes at Eleven City Diner are beyond awful, and I still don't know where to go for good Jewish Deli food in this city. (Manny's I guess?)

6. The Koldunai meat dumpling at Healthy Food Lithuania were pretty amazing, and that place is like stepping into a bizarro time warp.

7. I'm going to Milwaukee on Saturday and New Orleans in January and have every intention of stuffing my face with praline bacon and muffalettas and crawfish etoufee and whatnot.

2009-10-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

Last week, Bianca and I went to Tre Kronor, a place I had driven past many times, but never visited. Swedish cuisine is the food of my childhood Christmases, so I have fairly high standards. Hell, I don't even like Italian meatballs because they taste wrong to me. Meatballs are my litmus test for Scandinavian dining.
Tre Kronor is a small restaurant on the northwest side, full of charm and murals. Perhaps there is a law that all Scandinavian restaurants must have twee folk art painted on the wall. It didn't bother me at Tre Kronor, because the adorable actor/waiter who served us made a joke about seating us with the elves. He also recited a truly impressive list of artisan sodas, including several made with wine grapes that we suspected were expensive, but didn't ask.
Bianca ordered a salmon dish that looked fantastic, even though I do not eat fish. I ordered the meatballs, which were on par with the ones my Grandmother used to make. Perfect, walnut sized meatballs, allowed to stand on their own instead of drowning in gravy, were served with airy mashed potatoes. The well-edited menu features food that actual Swedes would recognize, with a decent showing of seafood and other favorites. Unlike a certain Swedish chain here in town, Tre Kronor's excellent meatballs did not give me the screaming shits.
I definitely recommend Tre Kronor. If you are looking for a little Scandinavian nostalgia, you could do a bit of Christmas shopping at the Swedish Store (clogs for everyone!), have some meatballs and sublime chocolate mousse, take a short cab ride to Andersonville, and end up drunk on glogg, making out with an actor at Simon's while Sufjan Stevens plays on the jukebox.

2009-10-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

I have reservations at Schwa tonight with some mysterious Chicago Food bloggers. I am excited. That is all!

Iron Cupcake Challenge!

2009-07-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

I'm going to participate, should be fun. I just hope the challenges don't get too esoteric.

This is Chicago, not Communist Russia

2009-07-20T07:32:00.001-07:00

In the 3+ years I've lived in Chicago, I've eaten at Hot Doug's ONCE. That's because it's always either CLOSED at the owner's whim, or the line looks like the photo above.

To the unacquainted, Hot Doug's is sort of a Chicago Legend- they serve traditional Chicago style hot dogs, but also fancy stuff like $8 elk sausage topped with port derby cheese or fois gras or whatever, and duck fat fries (which didn't impress me to be honest- they tasted like regular fries to me). The one time I ate there it was pretty good, but the bottom line, for me, is that it's a hot dog, not the second coming of Christ.

I am personally of the opinion that the Chicago food scene is not as great as it thinks it is (certainly not compared to the coasts or New Orleans), comfort food and ethnic hole in the walls tends to be the strong suit here. And so, Hot Doug's has perfected the hot dog, which is fantastic- and I realize that having weird hours and a line around the block keeps the hype hot and helps people feel like they're having an exclusive experience- it's good for business. And Kuma's (the best burgers in town) operates on a similar principal- you wait an hour for your table and another hour for your burger.

The thing than annoys me about this, though, is it's treating hamburgers and hot dogs like this elite privilege- and seriously...no. Just, no. Thank you, Hot Doug's and Kuma's for raising hot dogs and hamburgers to an art form, but would it kill you to have a slightly bigger dining room or a second location? There's a dearth of really good quality, cheap food in this city, so there's no need to contribute to the issue of accessibility.

Confession: I decided not to wait in this line, and got a chicken sandwich at Wendy's instead, which is maybe a once a year indulgence. I'm not proud of this, but on the other hand I didn't have to wait an hour for a hot dog, either.

Having a foodie moment

2009-07-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

Todays lupper:

arugula tossed w/ lemon juice and olive oil, pepper, petit basque and parmesan cheeses

goat cheese, fig, pistachio and red onion in phyllo dough

roasted wild caught salmon

chocolate souffle w/ whipped cream (trying the trader joe's kind which comes in an actual ceramic ramekin

Tomorrows breakfast (if I can get up early!)

Italian sausage

Purple potatoes sauteed in duck fat (I have to use it up!) with red onions

more arugula (I got a big bag of it)

Cappuccino

Seriously, living in Chicago most of the time I'd rather cook for myself if I have the time and money.

Can't buy me love

2009-07-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm no longer writing doing promotional writing about boozing (to my credit, most of the places and things I wrote about I genuinely liked), I feel like I have a greater license to openly mock stuff in the booze industry that I find abhorrent. Wait, I used to do that anyway.

Back when I was working as a journalist I got on a bunch of PR lists, including the mostly annoying but occasionally useful Thrillist and Urban Daddy. (Technically I'm still a freelancer, I'm just busy working a day job and going to the gym and having sex and stuff instead of spending most of my time whoring out my writing for paltry sums that come monthsor even years late). As if the name Urban Daddy wasn't creepy enough on it's own (I've spent too much time in the kink scene, I guess), they brag about how the service is strictly editorial and how you can't buy Daddy's Love (tm), then they go on and send email blasts entitled "Sponsored Love" anyway. Sponsored Love means an advertiser is paying them to shill for their product, but it could easily be a euphemism for the Girlfriend Experience, IMHO.

I digress. UD sent me some Stolichnaya "Sponsored Love" today. I will pre-empt this with saying that I am a rare creature in the world of booze snobbery because I LOVE vodka. Not the way that Patsy from AbFab loves vodka, but my go-to "safe" drink is vodka with seltzer and lime (or a cherry if it's vanilla vodka), because it never makes me sick, and it's impossible to fuck up.

I am exceedingly fond of Stoli in particular because I drank it as a teenager (sweet memories!) and also because their blackberry vodka is quite possibly the best goddam thing on earth (though the vanilla ain't bad either). I like some of their pseudo soviet midcentury design:

However, there are some major flaws to their ad campaign....

1. The "Everybody is somebody's secret" catch phrase. You're trying to use infidelity as a selling point for your vodka? Really? It's like the Ashley Madison of liquor campaigns, and it leaves me feeling equally icky.

2. The impressively WACK cocktail recipes they sent out with the email blast. The recipes on the website are not quite as embarassingly bad, but the ones that UD sent were pure fail:

Stoli Double-O Seven
Ingredients: 1 part Stoli Ohranj, 1 part lemon-lime soda and a splash of orange juice
Directions: Shake and serve over ice.
Best enjoyed at: the after-hours speakeasy

Now, I am not hating on simple recipes. Bridget Albert's jalapeno simple syrup with Absolut Mango and fresh squeezed OJ? Fuck yes. But vodka and sprite is NOT a cocktail, not even if you add a splash of orange juice. If you need a recipe to make this, you are an idiot.

And, um...SPEAKEASY? Bitch please. More like Best enjoyed at: a high school party where someone had a fake ID, and nobody can't stand the taste of alcohol.

Wait, I think it was pepsi and vodka that we drank in highschool. (shudders)

Mo' summer eats (and drinks)

2009-07-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

I have not been blogging much lately because I have a 9-5 job and a gym membership now. Technically I could take advantage of downtime at work to blog, but I usually don't. But today I am!

I am trying to cut back on my booze consumption since 2008 was sort of a year long fiesta de drunko... Beer in particular. But I couldn't resist an invite to the Louis Glunz summer beer preview. I don't have the list of beers on hand, so I will work from memory.

If you buy one beer this summer, get the Samuel Smith's Organic Strawberry Ale. Holy shit, this is the most amazing beer I've had in ages. I know a lot of fruit beers suck, this one does not. It tastes like fresh, wild strawberries. Only boozier. So good.

Also good: Magic Hat Wacko, O'Fallon Wheach (peach beer), Blanche Du Bruxelles (seriously the best belgium beer ever and I am picky about belgians), and well, I will have to check my list to remember the rest I tried and liked.

I also had some amazing Jim Beam cocktails at a pig roast hosted by Lush Wine and Spirits- can't say much for the pig though, the serving was tiny and the fat was tough and undercooked. Bleah. Dying for Puerto Rican lechon now. Though I was deeply disappointed by the thing Sabor Latino called a jibarito at Taste of Chicago this year. Not to mention the thing Blue Bayou (which has awesome creole/cajun food) called a Muffaletta. There's got to be some tactic to having Taste not suck, but apparently hitting up the booths of your favorite restaurants is not it. On the upside, they had the creepy delicious fruit-punch-meets-cream soda blue Mountain Dew. Not that I'm a pop drinker, but it's good. JJ and I made up for the crappy food by getting ice cream at Margies. Drool. (shush, I'm going to the gym everyday!)

I've also ventured into Farmer's Market land again, since I have cash again. I was actually un-wowed and overwhelmed by a recent trip to the sprawling Green City Market but have developed an affinity to the tuesday market in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art, which is close to where I work, and conveniently free on Tuesdays. Every cheese I've gotten from the cheese booth there has been to die for- I have some kind of apricot jam infused brie thing that I am very excited about right now. And it's big enough to have variety but not so big as to overwhelm. And I got a bouquet of flowers for $3! Win, win, win.

More recent food win: Japanese curry topped with fried green tomatoes. Panko fried green tomatoes are the greatest thing on earth. I'm also going to attempt paejon (korean green onion pancakes) with garlic chives. yummm....

Summer in Chicago

2009-06-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

I have discovered I might have an intolerance for chicken, of all things. I barely ate chicken for about 2 months because Chef Ex-Boyfriend hates it, and I'm largely indifferent to it unless it's fried. Anyway I had a buffalo chicken sandwich at the Cobra lounge last weekend and proceeded to fart and burp all night. Sexy, right? I figured it was the buffalo-ness of it. But then I had a grilled chicken salad (that I made at home) last night and same deal. This would be lame if it's true because chicken is such a cheap source of protein and I no longer have a boyfriend who takes me out for steak all the time. *sigh*

I've been (mostly) white flour/white sugar free this past week and feeling good about it. I discovered the joy that is agave sweetened coconut milk ice cream (I ate a serving and left the rest with a friend whose birthday it was). I also enjoyed the hell out of a Chicago summer favorite following Satan's own Bikram Yoga: Corn in a cup (elotes) with mayo, fakebutter, cheese and hot sauce, as well as a big cup of sliced pineapple, papaya and watermelon from the lady with a cart by the Kimball brown line station. MMmmmm, Elotes.

Sad times for a foodie

2009-06-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

My culinary adventuring has been somewhat on hiatus lately for two reasons:

1. Chef Boyfriend is now Chef Ex Boyfriend.

2. I'm giving up (most) white sugar and (all) white flour for the month of June to attempt to drop some of the 60 odd pounds I have gained since moving to Chicago. (The Midwest will make you a fat fuck if you're not careful, and I'm not careful). I've done this feat on various occasions and I will tell you that eliminating cookies from your diet will make you a bitch and give you headaches. (The 77% dark chocolate stays, dammit. But it's not enough).

On the other hand, it makes a plain yogurt and fruit parfait taste like a mutherfucking hot fudge sundae. And if I can fit into the pants I wore last year, it will be worth it.

Fuck, I want some!

2009-05-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

Nutella, whiskey and candied bacon ice cream.

I want to hate the whole bacon trend, but bacon is really that good. Although I prefer it straight up, no chaser.

HT to Rachel KB.

Meat wrapped in dough!

2009-05-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Christo made me what I dubbed a "greek burrito"- lamb, peas and carrots seasoned with cinnamon and wrapped in phyllo. He also breaded the leftovers and fried them the next day served with a port reduction, which I thought was overkill but one does not question Chef Boyfriend's culinary vision quest.

Oh yeah, he decided we needed a "starch" (since phyllo is not starch?) with our meal and made delicious sweet potato latkes which I drunkenly devoured leftovers of at 2am. Relatively healthy salad not pictured.

Today, my Polish friend Justyna and I went to Bosnian-owned Pizzeria Bravo at Lawrence and Spaulding on a quest for burek, a signature Bosnian dish (with muslim origins) that is essentially seasoned ground beef or cheese stuffed into a tube of flaky dough and coiled into a spiral. The owner Asim had already turned off the ovens for the day (his restaurant is mad old world like that), but was cool enough to give us a couple of frozen burek for free! We had a cocktail with the Asim and the patrons and talked about Balkan culture for the better part of the hour (Justyna traveled all over Bosnia, and I am a total nerd for Balkan music and history).

mmmm, burek.

Choice quotes from the evening:

"Kosovo is not part of Bosnia...It's a different space, like Star Trek."

"How do you explain what it's like to find pieces of children in a trash can?" (In reference to the war in the early '90s....yikes)

Anyway, we made out way back to my apartment eventually and baked our cheese and meat bureks...they were delicious!

Now enjoy some surreal Bosnian pop with your Burek:

My favorite new DIY cocktails

2009-05-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

Reed's ginger beer+rum (with fresh lime and grated ginger).

Mango jarritos+rum

Rice milk+ rum (Yvonne dubbed this a "White Asian," but it tastes like Brandy Milk Punch)

hmmm, I think I like rum. I blame Val, Cat, and James.

I feel trashy for admitting this, but...

2009-05-21T16:32:00.001-07:00

raspberry jam on a peanutbutter cookie is the bomb!

Lunch

2009-05-21T16:16:00.001-07:00

I've decided sub-par food photography is the hallmark of this blog.

That's rice pasta topped with shrimp, sliced marinated yellow peppers, a sauce made of tomato/pepper soup reduced with cream and plymouth gin, and topped with shredded greek cheese.

Drinky fun at IWSB '09

2009-05-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

Booze trade show= board meeting with drunk people

I decided to check out day two of the annual International Wine Spirits and Beer Event at McCormick Place monday. This is a big boozy trade show that's part of the National Restaurant Association show, which in itself is kind of overwhelming and ridiculous.

I covered IWSB for the Reader Food Blog last year when I was a young and green booze journalist, so I was able to score a press pass this year as well. The event seemed somewhat less impressive and scaled back this year, I don't know if that's because I'm jaded and pickier, or because of the economy. I think there was only one beer company in attendance, which makes me sad. I was also sick-ish which meant I was lazy and went for the last hour of IWSB and skipped the somewhat overwhelming NRA show. There was a candy conference in the same building, and these creepy billboards were one of the highlights of my visit:

Is it just me, or is this billboard inexplicably gay?

Since when is getting "jacked up" a good thing?

Tradeshows are weird- the atmosphere is kind of tense because everyone is there to hustle- and I'm less about the business end of things and more interested in being a connoisseur (hence, I am a writer and not a sales person). It was great to see some of my favorite industry folks were there though- Sonya Kassebaum of North Shore Distillery (who make awesome vodka, gin, absinthe and aquavit) was kind enough to share her secret stash of mole with me- a clear spirit infused with chocolate, cinnamon and peppers- their infusions are to die for. I also saw a couple of my favorite bartenders- award winning ex drunk punk mixologist Charles Joly of the Drawing Room and Daniel De Oliveira, (who is a super awesome dude and dead ringer for Jonathan Rhys Meyers), the bartender who mixed drinks for the fantastic Plymouth Gin pairing dinner at Boka, who was helping out at the Domaine De Canton liqueur booth.

Other highlights- chocolate infused cognac served by a French dude who addressed me in French but ignored my feeble responses in same, apple pie liqueur, and Polish raspberry mead. I also tried Veev, which the salesman pitched as being made from "acai, the most nutritious fruit on the planet." when I asked if any of that nutrition made it to the bottle of vodka, he sheepishly admitted it didn't. Why must I be a hater? I just don't see the point of taking something like healthy like acai or quinoa and making it into vodka if it doesn't actually retain any nutritional properties in the bottle. I like that Veev totally sounds like something Oprah would call her vagina, though.

Stuff I've cooked recently

2009-05-15T14:52:00.001-07:00

1. making peanut butter cookies using the "from a machine" peanut butter at whole foods and raw sugar results in a very different texture than expected, though it grew on me. I told Christo they turned out weird, then offered to bring him some and he said "you make a lousy salesperson...you should have said they have a unique and innovative texture." LOL.

2. Beer chicken! Pictured above w/ rice and collard greens. The recipe comes from a person I hate, via a person I love. It's easy to make- brown onions, green peppers and garlic with chicken seasoned with salt, pepper and cumin (or cumin adobo from Goya). Then pour on a can of diced tomatoes and a 2 cans of beer and let that fucker simmer for 30 minutes. It's great, and cheap! Yum.

Awesome stuff I've eaten in the past month or so...PART ONE

2009-05-14T21:42:00.000-07:00

This is to kind of make up for the last post. I've had a lot of incredible meals in previous weeks and I wanted to catch up and discuss STUFF I'VE BEEN EATING. But this has to be a two-parter because I have a lot to catch up on.

MEALS OUT:

Brasserie Jo
Chef boyfriend (CB) likes French food so we went here for dinner a while back.

Drinks: Both of the wines I had with my food were excellent, though I don't remember what they were called.

Food: Seriously the best bread and butter I've had in ages. Weird but true. The goat cheese and beets salad was good, had my first ever escargot, and CB's skate dish was excellent. My steak frites was terrible however- the steak was pounded thin and I had to request aioli w/ the frites which was disappointingly bland (I guess the whole garlic aioli thing is more of a Belgian thing). We shared a HUGE creme brulee that was a bit heavy headed for my tastes- I like a pale, creamy custard flecked with vanilla beans.

Service: Good, but also a little heavy handed- the waiter came to the table to fold CB's napkin while he was having a cigarette.

Hot Chocolate
We went here for my Birthday dinner. I've been here twice before for brunch, and once for a beer pairing dinner that was phenomenal.

Drinks: Amazing. The chocolate martini was the chocolatey-est creamiest chocolate martini I've ever had, and very indicative of Mindy Segal's signature style with chocolate. And CB loved his old fashioned.

Food: The grilled octopus was fantastic, but the beans that accompanied it were a touch undercooked. The asparagus salad was a touch spare, would have liked more veggies with it, though I loved the crispy pork belly- it reminded me a lot of the stuff I used to eat at cafes in Kyoto, actually. We had some sort of steak thing as entree that was ok, but I don't actually remember it well enough to comment. Dessert was disappointingly meh, I had some citrus cheesecake/key lime combo and CB's chocolate banana profiterole was like a dessert with ADD- too many elements between the chocolate, bananas, ice cream, pate choux, etc. I would have stuck with just the chocolate martini for dessert.

Service: Good. They actually moved the table so we could sit side by side and canoodle.

MEALS IN:

Japanese Dinner- I did most of the cooking for this. Perfect miso soup, kimchee sesame natto (fermented soy beans), which I love but CB hated, Rappini goma ae (rappini with sweet sesame sauce), hiya yakko tofu (soft tofu topped with ginger, green onions and soy sauce), gyoza, and plain and red caviar inarizushi (the later was CB's creation). I think we drank IPA with it.

Pork loin dinner- App of thin pork loin wrapped around greek cheese, topped with prune and basalmic vinegar reduction, salad with roasted pears, main course of roasted pork loin served with with heavenly whipped parsnips/celery root with fennel seed (which I have been unable to recreate successfully) and carrots roasted and served with tomato/red bell pepper reduction. Consumed with copious quantities of prosecco (champagne). So good.

Shrimp/flank steak dinner- french bread with hand shaken butter with cumin, heirloom tomato salad with yellow pepper based homemade 1,000 island dressing, shrimp roasted in red pepper/tomato soup and broiled with greek cheese, flank steak, am I missing anything? Dessert: crepes I made w/ vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and toasted coconut. Served with a delicious sparkling pinot grigio.

CB is a helluva cook and I am a lucky 'ho!

Also, I swear I'm gonna start taking more (and better) food photos.

The great culinary disappointment that is Chicago

2009-05-03T21:47:00.001-07:00

It seems the more I eat out in Chicago, the less impressed I am by the food. ESPECIALLY the mid/high end stuff. It's so easy to drop a huge wad of money on dinner and come out with maybe one of two things that were excellent and the rest that's an overpriced, resounding MEH. I'm a good cook and my dude is a good cook, I don't want to spend money unless I know it's going to be better or more labor intensive than what I can do at home.

Maybe I'm overly critical (I've spent the past year working as a food writer, and my boyfriend's a chef, so we're a couple of hard to please motherfuckers), but I can't recall being so consistently disappointed by restaurants in the Bay Area or Japan (where I lived for years) or in other great food cities like New Orleans and New York. I don't have a lot of spare cash, so if I spend a lot eating out, I expect something fantastic, and I don't think that's unrealistic. My visits to Chicago prior to moving here, were memorable, but not for the food.

That said, I do think Chicago has strengths as a food city, but it's not fine dining. Chicago rules when it comes to comfort food and basics- ethnic hole in the wall joints (particularly puerto rican and cuban), slavic buffets, street food like the elotes carts, pizza (but even then, there's a ton of shit pizza in this city- I have no idea how Gino's East stays in business), hot dogs (notably Hot Doug's), hamburgers (Kuma's), coffee (Metropolitan and Intelligensia), ironically granola (Milk and Honey) and booze- there are good local breweries and distilleries and great cocktailers. But a few exceptions, yuppy food, brunch, baked goods (so many overpriced bakeries selling bland, dry cupcakes and you can't even get a good donut due to Dunkin Donut's dominance) all suck compared to other cities. I guess it's still the Midwest and there just isn't the same access to good ingredients and sufficient demand to create truly great food. (And I'm sure there are many who would be happy to tell me I'm full of shit, but I am admittedly biased). There's just too much fucking pretense and not enough craftsmanship.

Birthday goodies!

2009-04-27T03:48:00.000-07:00

My friend Julia and I had our joint birthday party Saturday night, with a mustache/unibrow theme (the majority of guests sported either a mustache and or a unibrow, mine were made from red glitter)

We sort of like like creepy female reincarnations of John Waters and Divine here.

Anyhow, Julia's girlfriend Syreeta is a pro baker and cake decorator, and my dear friend Vally Val (a frequent AITBS contributor) is also an accomplished home baker, so we had good peeps in our corner.

This is a fruit mosaic cake depicting an owl that Syreeta made Julia, who has a fondness for owls. She also made a "parfait bucket" (not shown) full of stuff leftover from making the cake.

This was the delicious, from scratch sponge cake Vally Val made and I decorated with whipped cream and strawberries and blackberries. (No less than three people exclaimed "you made you own birthday cake?" as if I were some kind of Dickensian orphan. First of all, I didn't bake it, and secondly, I wanted to decorate it myself. So there). It was hella delicious. In the background you can see the plate full of delicious "savory cheesecake" that Syreeta whipped up as well. I don't know what all the went into it other than it had a roasted red pepper and facon topping, and a cheez-it crust but it exceedingly good.

Syreeta was also genius enough to make mustache cookies. Some of you may remember her Liberace cookies from an earlier post. I love the coconut "hair."

These pics were taken by Leda because a certain party guest who will remain nameless totally deleted all the pics from my camera by "accident." A tragic accident indeed!

Awesome chef tip

2009-04-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

Dating a chef is a double-edged knife, if you will- one one hand he's always telling me I chop things wrong, on the other hand, he can show me how to chop things right.

The one tip that he's given me that's been invaluable is peeling fresh ginger with the tip of a spoon. It works way better than any other technique I've tried and means I'm way more likely to use fresh ginger in my food and beverages. Add a microplaner and I'm in heaven.

Photos of stuff I ate

2009-04-23T10:30:00.000-07:00

My resolution, as a food blogger, is to take more pictures of food, instead of just writing about it since I am now the owner of two cameras (when it rains, it pours!) Well, plus the one built into my laptop. But here's the thing- does photographing your meal detract from the experience of eating, or add to it? I'm not sure.

Here's a picture of the brunch I ate on my last day in Cleveland:

"Creme brulee" french toast that had a sort of candied orange flavored sweet cream cheese, sprinkled with candied nuts, home fries, bacon and two of Andrew's "fried scrambled eggs" fritters that made me feel ill all day long (bad frying oil wrecks me). Still the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland is a great spot for brunch, but get there after 1, when they can legally sell the hard booze (they had to modify my coffee drink since they can't legally sell vanilla vodka before 1pm).

This is my friend Andrew's British crocodile leather flask that he is exceedingly proud of. I asked him if using crocodile leather was illegal and he said that they farm them for this purpose. Barbaric yet fascinating.

Chocolates from Cleveland's Lilly. My favorite was the "After Midnight," the round cocoa coated one- bitter chocolate with stout. I am a sucker for a traditional bitter truffle.

Back in Chicago, here's today's lunch:

Rye toast w/ cream cheese and cucumbers, soft boiled eggs with salt and pepper. Eating this alternately makes me feel british, or elderly, but it's a nice simple lunch regardless.

Stuff I ate in Cleveland

2009-04-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

A Ramos Gin Fizz at the Velvet Tango Room, Andrew had an Old Fashioned

At the West Side Market:

A Belgian Liege waffle, which is made from a dough containing pearl sugar that melts and caramelizes on the surface
Dark chocolate dipped marshmallows on a skewer
Lemon peel, mango ginger and blueberry stilton cheeses
An Italian Sausage sandwich with grilled peppers and onions, dijon mustard and barbecue sauce

Most of this stuff was shared w/ Andrew.

In Amish Country:

Cheese curds. Mmmmmm.
Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer.
Coffee spiked with rum from Andrew's flask.
Stale maple candy.

At the Hickory Inn, AKA "The Hick":

A fried fish sandwich with curly fries (also shared with Andrew)
Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold Beer. Only $1.75 for a mug!

At Andrew's house:

Baguette with sweet butter
Strawberries
A salad of blanched kale, cucumbers tomatoes and greek yogurt (that I made)
Soyaki marinated chicken strips with basmati rice and peanut satay sauce

At La Cave:

Dogfish Head Aprihop (apricot IPA, possibly my favorite new beer)

Brunch at the Beachwood Ballroom:

Boozy coffee
"Creme Brulee" french toast w/ orange flavored creamcheese and candied nut sprinkles
home fries
bacon
sausage
Deep fried scrambled eggs with curry mayo (hm)

At Lucky's:

Turkey sandwich
Vivienne Provence tea that has lavender and rose petals
A Lilly truffle containing bacon and maple butter

I also bought a pink silk tie, victorian schoolmarm shoes, a coffee service (creamer and sugar bowl on a tray), a Martin Denny exotica album, stockings, body butter, an Amish romance novel, an Amish shotglass and probably some other crap.

bacon blanket!

2009-04-16T07:48:00.001-07:00

My boyfriend Christo made this for a libertarian tax protest and gave it to me as a present afterwards. It's pretty fucking amazing.

caviar inari

2009-04-12T01:28:00.000-07:00

So it's been way too long since I've updated (despite the fact that I was functionally unemployed through February). In recent news, I've started ~~boning~~ dating a corporate chef, which is great because he doesn't work restaurant hours but he has access to great ingredients and cares about food as much as I do.

We had a living room Japanese food picnic last night- I made miso soup, hiya yakko (chilled tofu w. ginger, green onions and lemon soy sauce), rappini w. sesame sauce, natto (fermented soybeans) with kimchee which my bf tried and hated (most people find it unpalatable but I like it cos I'm weird), pickles, gyoza and two kinds of inari:

(I have a new digital camera that makes everything blue. I'll figure it out eventually).

He seasoned the rice on the red inari with a sauce he crafted from red lumpfish caviar (he brought me a full jar and it was too salty for me to enjoy straight), lemon juice, egg yolk, olive oil and garlic, and although I was initially dubious, it was really fucking good.

Of course he got all hardcore and garnished it too. I heart food industry people.

2009-04-11T14:38:00.001-07:00

Accidentally got a box full of these included in an order of cookies from Alliance. I can only wonder about the group of people who were disappointed to get a box full of normal ones.

Wash your mouth with Chocolate

2009-04-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

I'm addicted to chocolate. And I'm very picky about the chocolate I eat. I rarely eat anything below 70% cacao, and I'm frustrated by how hard it is to find dark chocolate with nuts or other flavors mixed in. I got excited when I discovered that Jade Chocolates has a cinnamon ylang ylang coconut flavored bar. So I bought it, and I tasted it. Oddly sweet and mild, and then suddenly I feel like I've eaten a bar of soap. I never really registered what the ylang ylang smell was in fancy soaps, but now I know. It's exactly like how this chocolate tastes. Uuughh! Some weird flavor combinations should be avoided.

Nutritional stupidity

2009-03-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

Shit that people have tried to convince me is "healthy" that is total bullshit...

-Splenda, and other artifically sweeteners- Sugar and HFCS are not good for you, but this crap, while less caloric, is far worse. Anything that is derived synthetically in a laboratory is NOT good for you, because it makes your body go WTF.

-Fat free dairy products. Seriously guys- if you want to reduce calories in your diet, just eat more vegetables in proportion to other stuff. But ferchrissakes don't get the "fat free" version that your body can't digest. Worst culprits are shit like fat free 1/2 and 1/2 which is loaded with creepy corn syrup solids. (fat free froyo is actually kind of a guilty pleasure for me because I would prefer that it were NOT fat free).

-Vegan cupcakes. It's still a fucking cupcake. Using margarine instead of butter does not magically make this health food.

-Seitan. Celiac's and gluten intolerances are so friggin' common that eating concentrated wheat gluten seems hardly an improvement on real meat if you're omnivorously inclined.

-Soy. Hard to digest (unless it's fermented like miso and natto) and chock full of phytoestrogens- that block of tofu is the same as a dose of premarin. Yum!

That said, I love bacon, cupcakes, coffee and cheese. But at least I'm educated about the actual nutritional pros and cons of the stuff I eat.

Weirdly delicious things I cook on a whim

2009-03-10T21:46:00.001-07:00

I love making pancakes with stuff in them. I usually make them with rice flour since I dont keep wheat flour around (I would be tempted to make cookies all the time if I did).

Today I made pancakes with chopped 72% chocolate, cloves cinnamon and nutmeg, and I put raw sugar on the wet part to caramelize because I was craving belgian waffles with pearl sugar.

It was so fucking good. Like gingerbread, except no ginger.

6 of 10

2009-02-27T11:13:00.000-08:00

Stopped in McDonald's last night before class because I wanted McNuggets (hush) and lo and behold....the 6 piece McNugget is no longer featured on the regular menu, you have to look to the kid's menu and order a 6 piece (a "Mighty Kids" meal option in lieu of the 4 piece) and hope the cashier will just let you get the nuggets and not the whole Happy Meal. The regular menu now features a 10 piece McNugget option. That's right-TEN of them. When I worked at McD's 6 piece was the standard, 9 piece was if one was raging hungry and 20 piece was family size. Now 10 is the norm. Yet, my McNugget box featured the nutritional information, calories, fat, sodium, etc.

So in a nutshell, the portions of unhealthy food are now larger but come with proof of how unhealthy they are. Discuss.

oh for fuck's sake

2009-02-20T12:21:00.000-08:00

Seriously?

Here's an idea....eat something plant based.

demos part 2

2009-02-13T18:16:00.000-08:00

So I'm doing demos for my green drink today. I forgot my big jar of powder, so I'm using my free sample packages to mix the drink, and feeling stingy with the samples. I get this whiny woman who is going over all the ingredients in the product with me and why this wouldn't be a good product for her. A store employee walks by, and is excited about the product. She's heard about it and wants to try it. I feel grateful and generous after the whiny lady, so I give her one of my coveted free sample packages. The whiny lady begins to walk away but sees me give the free sample to the employee, suddenly comes back wanting a free sample. I ask about everything she said earlier, and she lamely tries to back track. I explain that I'm almost out of product and that I'm reserving the samples to people whom I believe are potential customers. I can tell she was really mad at me, but she couldn't really cover her tracks, and I made up my mind that no way in hell would she get a sample from me. Maybe it was mean, but I can't believe how full of shit people can be.

I'll keep this quick.

2009-02-13T05:45:00.000-08:00

You know what I hate?

The Skinny Bitch books.

There's good bitches (assertive women) and there's bad bitches (women who are perpetually in a bad mood because they're on some crazy diet espoused by a former modeling agent and model-turned nutritionist that makes them low blood sugar and cranky.)

I'd be a bitch too, if all I ate for breakfast was a piece of melon.

The diet they espouse is a vegan one- and while that diet may work for some people (it does not work for ME, and I have snarky to back me up with the why), it bothers me that they are espousing it for PREGNANT WOMEN as well, (they have a whole book about how to be a pregnant "skinny bitch") who have unique nutritional needs that are a LOT harder to meet with a vegan diet. I'm also really sick of people who think soy is healthier than organic dairy or goat milk- it's difficult for the human body to digest and it contains phyto-estrogens that can really fuck with your hormone levels. I realize that nutrition is controversial and everybody's body is different, but it annoys that people drink the koolaid without doing the research.

If people cared half as much about actual nutrition as they did about about being skinny, they'd have a lot more success. Want a good book about how to eat? Try Dr. Mark Hyman's Ultrametabolism instead. He's an actual DOCTOR and not a former modeling agent.

I've got to stop feeling sorry for vegetables.

2009-02-09T16:42:00.000-08:00

I bought these creepy, albino looking yellow carrot sticks at Stanley's today (they're supposed to be yellow), because I felt sorry for them, knowing that most people probably pick the orange ones instead. But only after checking that they had the same nutritional content.

Who grows yellow carrots anyway? They remind me of that kid's book "bunnicula" about the vampire rabbit!

Watching old people act like little kids

2009-02-08T12:56:00.001-08:00

I have been making extra cash giving demos for a green nutrition powder called Green Vibrance. I mix it with water and apple juice, serve free samples and talk about it to people in health food stores. I'm promoting a product I feel good about, show off my nutrition skills, hand out the occasional business card and I'm giving people little hits of something really nutritious, something I really get a kick out of.

What is most interesting is the variety of reactions when people try it. It's purpose is to be jam packed with nutrients, and fairly bland tasting. It doesn't try to imitate any particular flavor, and it does taste planty. Most people under 40 think it's palatable. A toddler of a friend of mine was bogarting her momma's cup. Most people over 50 stand there and look afraid for a few seconds, take a sip and make dramatic eeewww faces. (Why do these people stop at my booth if they are so phobic?) And then there are those who take a sip, make an indecisive confused face and then make the yucky face once I mention sea vegetables. I figure I'm introducing the concept of eating things primarily because they make us feel good to a larger population. Everything you eat doesn't have to be chocolate flavored or disguised as a candy bar. We have to try it the first time and maybe go eewww before it can become familiar and part of what is "normal."

from buns to bagels

2009-02-05T09:11:00.000-08:00

Nevermind the whole "why are there 8 buns to a pack and 10 hot dogs to a pack?" question; what I want to know is why-despite blueberry bagels being avaiable just about anyplace offering more than plain bagels-strawberry cream cheese is the dominant other flavor instead of oh, I dunno.....BLUEBERRY?

2009-02-03T18:36:00.000-08:00

I do not like lambics. I want to get that out of the way up front. I do like a flavored beer from time to time. Since we're having an unofficial beer week here at Hangry Central, I'd like to share. Bianca and I went to Lush Wines recently. Well, not that recently, because I'm a bit of a beer horder. She helped me pick out a couple of curious brews: Hitachino Nest Commemorative Ale 2009 and Founders Rubeus. We gravitated towards the beer case in a wine shop, because we're a couple of classy dames.
One of my pals, a well known lambic lover, saw me carrying the bottles away and told me she found the Rubeus disappointing. That only strengthened my resolve to like it. I don't know that I'd buy a suitcase of it, but it makes a nice after dinner beer. It looks like a rose in the glass, but tastes like a good beer with a handful raspberries thrown in. None of that syrupy sweetness found in a lambic.
The Hitachino Nest was a revelation. It's spicy and complex and has an owl on the bottle. How could a girl not love that? The label reveals that Commemorative Ale is brewed with vanilla, coriander, orange peel, nutmeg, and cinnamon. In other words, everything involved in making a kick ass batch of Christmas cookies.
The third flavored beer on my tasting list was a bit of an accident. It followed me home from a tasting at the liquor warehouse around Christmas 2007. Beers, like beaujolais, are best drunk young. I'd forgotten most of a six pack of Sam Adams Cherry Ale at the back of the fridge. Feeling thirsty and broke, I decided to pop one open. Wow. A year in the fridge definitely improved this cherry and wheat ale, bringing the cherry to the front with no skunky aftertaste. It's not bad fresh, but definitely improves with age.

Beer Jello: Experiment One

2009-01-31T16:06:00.000-08:00

For a week now, I've been ranting about beer jello. Last night I finally got off my ass and made some.

I decided to go with Goose Island 312 "Urban Wheat Ale" and apricot jello, since apricot wheat beer tends to be good.

I began by boiling the beer (I used all beer, no water for maximum flavor and alcohol content), though I'm not sure if the boiling cooked off any of the alcohol content. I dissolved the jello into the hot beer:

Then I stirred in cold beer, and poured the mix into mini pilsner glasses (I have a lot from attending beer fests):

and chilled until firm. There was no problem getting the beer to gel properly.

Verdict on the final product? Tasty!

My guinea pigs were Amanda (who said she'd eaten the legendary Japanese beer jello) and Bob, my bartender at the Cardinal Tap Room who would probably eat anything I gave him. The apricot flavor overshadowed the beer taste for the most part, but there was distinct hoppiness that made the whole dessert suprisingly pleasant.

I have many more experiments in mind, especially using unflavored gelatin so I can control the sweetness and flavors...But this was pretty darn successful for a first try!

not kosher, not vegan, not healthy but damn does it look good

2009-01-29T11:12:00.001-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/dining/28bacon.html?_r=1&8dpc

Ideally I would have a slice of this accompanied by sliced raw tomatoes, my bacon bread and a nice scotch.

Vegan Mystery

2009-01-25T08:50:00.000-08:00

Can someone please explain to me why everyone in the Chicago BD/SM scene is vegan?

They sure like those disgusting vegan cupcakes, though. Syreeta makes hers using a depression era recipe from the bad old days when people couldn't get actual animal products.

a toast!

2009-01-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all the holiday breads I made I have branched out into white bread (the homemade kind has so much more "ooomph" and flavor to it), bacon bread, herb bread and french bread. I am thinking of only having homemade bread in my home from now on-time will tell.
I found a recipe for making butter. Yes, butter. I am going to make my own butter and spread it on my own homemade bread and have the best frickin' toast the world has ever seen.

Beer jello shots!

2009-01-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

So, I misunderstood a text from my friend Jamal today and thought he said Piece, the bar where he works is now serving beer jello shots. Apparently he meant to say that tonight they're serving beer AND jello shots. But now I have a bee in my bonnet to make beer jello shots!

I think the key would be to use a cheap pilsner with raspberry jello, ala framboise lambic, or the polish tradition of lacing beer with raspberry syrup. But everyone who I've proposed this idea to has thought this is a really bad idea. But there are recipes online!

People have no sense of adventure! Except for the Japanese, who apparently sell a beer gelatin dessert pictured above (that I somehow missed when I was living there, but they also make beer soft serve, so this doesn't shock me one bit).

My friend is Syreeta is a genius

2009-01-13T23:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, Kirstin was afraid she killed the blog with the ham dick (she didn't, it's fierce), so I decided it's time for the first post of '09....with cake dick!

I have gained a bazillion pounds since moving to Chicago (and am attempting for the umpteenth time to get back down to my California weight), and I blame this on the fact that two of my best friends (Vally Val being one of them) are bakers. The other is Syreeta, who is a pro decorator who runs a cake biz called sugar and vice. I heart Syreeta a whole lot. Check out the cake she made for Samantha's birthday above.

Anyway, she hosted a Liberace party last saturday and made LIBERACE COOKIES!!!! They were far more perfect before I brought them home in a baggie, so use your imagination:

She works at a bakery all day then comes home and bakes these for us! There were also piano cookies (which I ate, oops!) Mmmm, black frosting.

Syreeta gets props for having MAD SUGAR SKILLZ.

2008-12-27T20:01:00.000-08:00

see more pwn and owned pictures

Christmas Breakfast

2008-12-26T12:03:00.000-08:00

I rocked Christmas Breakfast bachelorette style (my Dad was tasteful enough to call me up and point out that I'm the only one of three sisters who is not in a committed relationship- thanks for rubbing it in, Dad!!) But I wanted to do something special, so I surveyed the contents of the fridge and realized I had the makings of Latkes, since I'm SUCH A JEW.

My friend Esther (who is a Jew, and an exceedingly lovely one), gave me a recipe for rice cooker applesauce (she lives in Japan), so I got up, turned on the rice cooker and went back to bed for a couple hours. It's super easy- throw cored/peeled (I didnt peel mine because they're organic) apples into a rice cooker with some water/sugar/spices/whatever, turn the rice cooker on, and voila! (I've also heard that you can bake a cake in a rice cooker but I never had much luck in that regard).

I used the Epicurious Latke recipe (with garlic, because it didn't have onions, and I added a little flour to make it stick together), and also made some DIY turkey sausage (add spices to ground turkey and fry it up), and fresh spinach sauteed with garlic. My meal was the bomb diggity!

For dinner I went to my ex-husband's house, as is my holiday tradition. He's a pretty good cook, even if he sticks to a limited meat and potatoes repetoire. He made some damn good lasagne, which we had with cream soda and some kinda so-so garlic bread (I pride myself on making damn good garlic bread with rosemary and parmesan and loads of fresh garlic and butter). Then we watched Season 4 of Weeds and he gave me a 30 day bus pass for Christmas, which is seriously an amazing present!!! Also, I have a ton of leftover lasagne in the fridge. YUM!

2008-12-24T19:41:00.001-08:00

Like Vally Val, I faced a non-Grandma Christmas this year. My Grandmother came down with pneumonia this week, so my aunt and I cooked our traditional Swedish dinner today. I don't know how my Grandmother has done it all these years. There were three of us working in the kitchen today (two restaurant pros), and we were still exhausted. And none of us are eighty years old.

I cooked my Grandmother's Swedish meatballs today, without the recipe, for a family of people who look forward to her meatballs all year. No pressure. Like any good cook, I drank a little. I also didn't measure anything. It took years to get the recipe out of my Grandmother, so I used to treat it like a sacrament. I'd measure everything carefully and they never turned out like hers. Well, how often do you see your Grandmother measure ingredients when she's making an old family recipe? I eyeballed everything today, and swore that anyone who complained about the cooking would get a carving fork in the eye. Fortunately, the meatballs were met with contented silence and chewing. My Grandmother even bragged to my Dad that I can make meatballs. I feel like I passed a secret adult test.

A few facts about Swedish meatballs:

* They should never have tomato in them. That's Italian.
* Some recipes call for just beef, but I like a 50/50 beef and pork combo.
* White sauce is the only acceptable gravy. Anything from a packet and you might as well just phone it in. They sell frozen meatballs at Ikea now.
* You must eat lingonberries with your Swedish meatballs. My younger cousins don't get this. They think it's weird to eat fruit and meat at the same time, but they eat Chinese food. Maybe it's just weird to have them separate on your plate. Several spoonfuls of lingonberries on the plate is ideal, so that you can drag the meatballs through them. A bit of twirling action with the fork is good, but you don't want to be accused of playing with your food. This is an especially useful way to avoid awkward eye contact and dodge unwanted personal questions.

pick up your beans and go

2008-12-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

Due to her failing health Christmas will, for the first time ever, not be at Granny's :(

I called my aunt and uncle and asked them what I could bring (Granny and I had agreed on me supplying the salad but I make no assumptions and I am in charge of "green beans". I know they are expecting a bag of frozen beans. They will be getting fresh grean beans with onion and bacon. I know I will be asked what is in the green beans, I know it.

The New Middle American Diet

2008-12-20T14:48:00.000-08:00

I live a pretty healthy, sheltered food life in the SF Bay Area. Discovering a "new food" usually means trying something from another culture like pupusasas (a tortilla stuffed with cheese from El Salvador) rather than a the latest exploding neon colored kids cereal. But I am mesmerized when I see the newest colorful inventions when I visit the big chain grocery stores, like the H.E.B. in the Huston suburb where I am now.
Every thing stops when I see the neon colored cakes. I can hear my nutrition professors sneer in the back of my mind, but my inner six year old wants to stare up close. A cake with a dinosaur bursting out of a volcano! A pink castle cake with princesses doll on each plastic tower! Cakes shaped like pirate ships! Oh my God! You want to play with them, not eat them! The frosting is so bright it looks like play dough. I am in an alternate universe, where image is everything, and the question of what it's made out of is unimportant. Even the pictures on the boxed cake mixes are more vivid than any cake I've made. Andy Worhol would be proud.
I can see how people who think this is food would be afraid to cook. This stuff is to the whole grain chocolate and cherry scones I enjoyed for my birthday what porn stars are to the average, attractive woman. Real food doesn't look like that, and you can get a real complex if you confuse image with reality. It's fun to pretend, just remember that it's not real.

Intimacy

2008-12-18T20:14:00.001-08:00

1) I had a professor once who said, "Eating is the most intimate thing you can do with your clothes on." You're taking something into a bodily orifice and accepting it, trusting it. Supposedly it brings people together. Like sex.

2) Hate-fucking. Common occurrence. People that hate each other bump uglies.

3) If two people hate each other, and they eat a meal together, what happens? Is it the same as hate-fucking? Like, some physical satisfaction, but also something frustrating?

not my kinda pie

2008-12-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

Someone brought this into work:

It was brought in half gone, it has remained untouched. This picture doesn't do it justice, its kind of greyish in color and looks like it contains styrofoam. It looks like its starting to disintegrate. I bet it will burst into flames if air hits it.

I, on the other hand, made this because I'm a bad ass:

4 Part Post!

2008-12-12T12:52:00.000-08:00

A few recent items of note:

1. Dollar burger night at Big Chicks is fucking amazing. They'll put brie on your burger for a buck extra!

That's Chris and I keeping it real at Big Chicks, naturally.

2. I finally visited the legendary "Pasta Truck" after reading my friend Chris's many paeans to the humble truck where he eats lunch every day. I assume it's linked to some restaurant somewhere, they serve pasta meals in foil take out containers, plus bread and a drink for $4. I had shells with gorgonzola, spinach and some kind of creamy tomatoey sauce. I am not a huge pasta lover as I try to avoid eating huge quantities of white flour, but I gotta hand it to pasta truck- I was not hungry for eight hours after eating it, and for my broke, hypoglycemic ass that's kind of amazing. I did however wind up with impressive indigestion but that might have been the three cups of coffee I had. Come to think of it, that might be why I didn't get hungry, either. I may have to try the ravioli some time.

3. My new favorite drink? The separator. Shosh is responsible for getting me into this one, someone(who?) blogged about it for Mixology Monday and she asked me to get one and write about it. I had it for the first time at Club Foot with my friend Jamal, who also hails from the Yay Area. It's a White Russian with cognac or brandy in lieu of vodka, so named because the Kahlua seperates out from the cream and brandy. And fuck, it's good, if a bit rich.

4. I have managed to avoid my typical winter diet of cookies, popcorn and hot chocolate in favor of living on nabe, Japanese style winter stew. I use a kimchee and miso base for mine. Typically I'll sautee ground turkey on the bottom of the sauce pan (or make meatballs w. garlic and ginger), bring the water to the boil w. whatever vegetables I'm using (frozen pre chopped ones are easy), dried wakame, fresh kimchee w. juice, then once the water's hot, mix in some miso that's been pre-mixed with a little water. Good shit, healthy + easy.

Chocolate fest

2008-12-07T18:00:00.000-08:00

I attended the chocolate festival at Chocolatier Blue tonight. I wavered as to whether I would go- strapped for cash, chocolate isn't good for me, I'm designing a talk on how to avoid sugar and I don't want to feel like a hypocrite, etc. After writing for several hours only a couple of blocks away, I grabbed my credit card and decided to attend. I walked into the tiny shop, which was filled with about 2o other people. Everyone looked awkward, I half expected everyone to start grabbing candy behind the counter. The pretty, young counter girl sold tickets to those of us who hadn't bought them in advance. On the back of the tickets was a list of different truffles and desserts which would be checked off as we collected our booty. We entered the festival through a driveway and into a lovely patio edged with roses. I was always irritated by the odd experience of eating mind stoppingly delicious chocolate while standing on the street in front of the Firestone next to the store. This, however, was the perfect environment for enjoying amazing chocolate. Several tables were laid out with each dessert. They projected Willy Wonka a brick wall with the sound off, and a jazz combo played nearby. I was pretty hungry, and eating six truffles, a cup of hot chocolate and two desserts didn't seem like the best idea, besides I had arrived alone. Some of the other guests were beginning to annoy me, so I drank the chocolate and carried the rest of the booty home to share with the boyfriend and house mate, who helped me taste everything. The verdict is out, even Scott who doesn't like sweets verified that it was the best chocolate ever. What can I say, I don't like to drink alone.

white people manage to screw up white food

2008-12-06T15:44:00.000-08:00

Just got back from a baby shower in Indiana. It was held in a church activity room so I should've known better and stopped off at Subway. Hell, beef jerky from a gas station would've been better than what was served. With the exception of the baked goods, NOTHING was homemade. The only vegetable type matter I could find was celery sticks and salsa. For some reason there was onion dip but no potato chips. Warm 2 liters of pop were out. There was no ice. Potato salad and cole slaw were still in the tubs from Jewel they had been bought in.

Don't get me wrong, I am casual. I have served friends tater tots and frozen pizza from Aldi but that was just friends getting together, hanging out in my living room in lieu of a bar. When I have served tater tots to dinner guests you bet your hot ass the meat loaf I made was HOMEMADE and tasty and there was gravy (seriously, tater tots with gravy kicks ass). But for a shower I would expect things kicked up a notch or two.

Christmas will be interesting. I told Granny I will bring salad and I've already been ordered to not spend alot of money like I did last time (I think I spent all of $10 on salad for 10+ people which I think is pretty reasonable). She suggested salad in a bag. Not gonna do it. I also volunteered to bring a side dish. I understand Granny is in her late 80s and I don't expect her to cook but let me if I am willing! She is already talking of just having "one large dish". I know we're going to have a Christmas casserole, I just know it. I'm bringing laxatives for all.

Ads that annoy

2008-11-30T18:30:00.000-08:00

Although I am a sex positive feminist, certain types of blatently sexual advertising annoys the shit out of me. Such as the above Cabana Cachaca ad (there's a whole gallery of sprawling nudes on their site). Brazilian! Like a waxed pussy! CLEVER RIGHT???? CLEVER AND SEXY!

Or not.

Really, you gotta wonder how the Brazilians feel about having their entire nation reduced to genital waxing. I think the only logical revenge is to dub anal bleaching "getting an American."

Still is it worse than Vincent Gallo's douchetarded Belvedere ads? The jury is out.

Foods that inspire fear and loathing.

2008-11-25T20:52:00.000-08:00

1. Crisco. Edible vaseline.

2. 100 calorie snack packs. Nice try at portion control, but these packs usually contain tasteless mini oreos or some such crap.

3. Speaking of, Oreos. Dry cookies filled with crisco frosting.

4. The Krispy Kremes with the "kreme" filling. More crisco filling. Why anyone chooses these over custard filled is beyond me.

5. Non-dairy creamer. Read the ingredients and you'll never use it again.

6. "diet" junk food like snackwells. See #2.

7. Swiss miss, or any cocoa that is made with water in lieu of milk.

8. Baloney. Does anyone like this? The smell makes me ill.

9. Most American-made drug store candy. Makes my teeth hurt to think of it.

10. Soda. I can't drink it without feeling artificial sweetener or corn syrup guilt.

lame ass eating

2008-11-24T07:50:00.000-08:00

Some of my co-workers eat the lamest food. If I see one more person prissily heating up instant oatmeal for breakfast or taking way too much care to microwave a frickin' Lean Cuisine I'm going to lob Scotch Eggs and my Huge Salads That Cause Unsolicited Comments (tm) over their cubical walls in the hopes they will remember they have taste buds for a reason. Gah!

What the hell is a banoffee pie?

2008-11-21T19:08:00.000-08:00

For some reason, the expression "Banoffee pie" has been running through my head on an almost constant basis for the past day or so, like some weird linguistic earworm.

I googled it, and it's a British banana/cream/dulce de leche pie. Sounds good, don't think I've ever eaten it. Am curious how this phrase implanted itself in my head only to reemerge at this moment. Is it a sign from the universe? A message from a departed ancestor?

Queen of saturated fats Paula Deen has a recipe for it.

Maybe I'll make one for Thanksgiving dinner.

too darn hot

2008-11-21T18:06:00.000-08:00

I hate overly hot food. A slight steam is acceptable in the case of tea, coffee and soup but I want to be able to sip or slurp it within a minute. I do not understand some peoples' insistence upon mouth blisteringly hot food. Is there any flavor left at that temperature? What is the appeal? Cool it!

Rutabaga cheese fries

2008-11-18T14:39:00.000-08:00

So, I am ashamed to say that I stole this recipe for sweet potato fries from the friggin' Barefoot Contessa:

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled
2 tablespoons good olive oil
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus extra for sprinkling
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Halve the sweet potatoes lengthwise and cut each half into 3 long spears. Place them on a sheet pan and toss with the olive oil. Spread the potatoes in one layer. Combine the brown sugar, salt, and pepper and sprinkle on the potatoes. Bake for 15 minutes and then turn with a spatula. Bake for another 5 to 10 minutes, until lightly browned. Sprinkle lightly with salt and serve hot.

Only I made it with rutabagas and parsnips too, and the rutabagas and parsnips actually turned out better (firmer) than the sweet potatoes.

Here's another recipe from someone else. Really friggin' good, esp. with melted cheese!

Food trends that do/don't justify the hype

2008-11-18T10:21:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a food item becomes so hyped that it almost becomes a guilty pleasure (which is why I tend to get into wildly popular TV shows years after they're wildly popular- allows me a more objective assessment). Here's my opinion of what is and isn't worth the hype.

Guilty pleasures:

1. Donuts- Chicago is sadly unrepresented in this category- Who can resist a warm donut? The market is dominated by Dunkin' Donuts, which frankly sucks compared to Krispy Kreme, Voodoo Donuts in Portland, or the mom n' pop shops in Berkeley (notably King Pin on Telegraph ave...omg). Mindy Segal at hot chocolate does buffalo milk ricotta donuts that are pretty tasty though.

2. Bacon- What is it about bacon and hipsters? I know the occasional Kosher Jew and vegetarian who make exceptions for it too. Bacon has become a parody of itself with bacon chocolate, bacon toffee, bacon apple pie, bacon salt, all you can eat bacon brunch- and yet, it's still that good. Salty meat crack.

3. Craft Beer- am I a pretentious yuppie douche for preferring craft beer? All I know is six months ago I didn't give a damn about beer and now I'm obsessed. And Goose Island makes it easy to indulge since even friggin Giordano's carries it.

4. Brioche anything- really, as pretentious as brioche is, it usually is hell of delicious.

5. Fois Gras- yes, it's cruel. So is factory farming.

Undecided

6. Sushi- Sushi is for the most part a sad joke in Chicago, and not worth eating. But take me to Itto Sushi or the burbs and it's on. And yes, I secretly like those cream cheese and tempura rolls.

7. $3 Truffles at Vosges or Coco Rouge- delicious, but not really in my budget.

8. Pork belly- zomg delicious but KILLS my gallbladder.

Skip it

9. "Truffled" anything- can you actually taste the truffles? Was it worth the extra $5?

10. Duck fat fries- I really want to like these. But honestly, I don't taste the difference.

Unrelatedly- this is the midwest, and I am seriously befuddled by how many SKINNY chefs, bakers and brewmasters I know here. Probably because they run around like a chicken with its head cut off producing their wares and I just sit around and eat them.

Scotch Eggs!

2008-11-18T10:13:00.001-08:00

Just as delicious as I thought they would be.

Sconetastic

2008-11-17T10:56:00.000-08:00

Here is our splendid dish of walnut prune scones! Something I will definitely make again on my own. I keep imagining how good they would be with dried cherries and dark chocolate pieces. I loved the technique we used to shape them- fill a 1/3 cup with scone batter (it's fairly thick and mold able) and fling it on to the cookie sheet so they hold the scone shape. I think my biggest danger is to eat them all myself, I'll have to keep them in mind for parties.

Nut milk for all!

2008-11-16T21:47:00.000-08:00

I taught a cooking class with my good friend Lauren who runs a nut milk cottage business called Nutmoo. I've led three cooking classes over the last two months- I can't seem to get more than two participants for a class. Fortunately we always have a lot of fun, and I still make a little something since all I have to pay for are the ingredients. It was awesome playing assistant, having a partner (if we get along well) is always so much more pleasant than going at it alone. It's like having a co-host for a party. You can actually relax and enjoy the party instead of freaking out about whether there's enough ice. I'll have photos soon (Thank you fiancee, resident photographer) but meanwhile here are directions for nutmilk. We also made awesome gluten free, vegan walnut prune scones. The directions are a bit long, but I'll post them if people are interested.

Nut Milk

4 ounces of nuts (about 1/2 cup of walnuts)
Filtered water to cover the nuts
3 cups additional water
Pinch of salt
1 Tablespoon of agave nectar or sweeten to taste

Soak the nuts and refrigerate overnight
Pour off the water
Combine nuts and 3 cups of water in a blender and allow to blend on high between 5-10 minutes depending how powerful your blender is. The mixture is ready when it becomes very opaque and the ground nuts will be very fine. Increasing the ratio of nuts to water will make a richer milk. Strain the mixture with an nut milk straining bag (These are available online. An extra fine hops straining bag from your local brewing supply store will also work.) This bag can be used numerous times.
Add salt and agave nectar, and stir thoroughly. Keep chilled, it should be good for about a week. You can replace some flour for the leftover ground nuts next time you bake.

Enjoy!

<24

2008-11-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

I did it. I got everything made and the benefit was a success and I've think I've got an idea of a good outlet for my love of baking and generally puttering around the kitchen.

I'm starting a blog about it, just go to my profile and click on it if you are interested.

Scotch is the new echinacea

2008-11-09T16:03:00.000-08:00

Fighting germs the fun way!

Twice in the past month I've felt a cold coming on, drank some barrel aged spirits and was magically healed.

The first time was after a distributor gave me some really strong single malt scotch and rum (I wind up puking but my cold was gone).

Then yesterday my nose was running all day and I felt tired and gross, but JR and I made it to the Festival of Barrel Aged Beers anyway. A dozen tastes later, I was fine. And those were strong beers- some were like 13%, and tasted like chinese medicine. (Unrelatedly, putting your boobs on the beer tank is a super effective way to get quicker service from servers, but I didn't tell you that).

I've also noticed that I almost never get sick since I started drinking more frequently for my jobs. My question is- is it the antibacterial properties of the booze, or something in the barrels that knocked out my burgeoning colds?

(I'm sure that Snarky Nutritionist could counterpoint about how booze wrecks your liver and immune system, but I'm super pleased that I'm not sick today!!!)

Baking Fool

2008-11-08T15:16:00.000-08:00

I have taken it upon myself to prepare the following for a bakesale tonight:

Candy Brownies
Oatmeal, Apricot & Raisin Cookies
Pecan Shortbread
Triple Chip Cookies
Banana Split Cupcakes
Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cupcakes

The last batch of oatmeal cookies is baking. All that is left to do is make the frosting,stuff, frost and decorate the cupcakes.

Chocolate cereal is not a health food

2008-11-06T18:41:00.001-08:00

I saw cereal that had pieces of chocolate in it today at Trader Joe's. Not chocolate flavored puffs, actual pieces of chocolate. And it was claiming to be healthy because it was fortified with inulin, a trendy low glycemic chemical normally found in artichokes (not chocolate.) It's all about finding ways to let us eat candy all day and pretend it's healthy. Almost as good as the fat-free half and half I saw, which was made out of five different types of creepy. I swear, if a food has "healthy" printed on it in big letters, it's probably worse than the "bad" stuff.

this situation must be remedied

2008-11-06T07:27:00.000-08:00

I just learned of the existence of (much less known the glory of experiencing)the marvel that is the Scotch Egg:

A hard boiled egg coated in sausage and then DEEP FRIED. Fuck yes. I need to try one of these.

Apple pie

2008-11-03T22:08:00.000-08:00

My friend J.R. and I went apple picking yesterday, except the trees were all finished, we did buy a ton of apples though (plus cider and cider donuts yummmm) so I made an apple pie tonight, which will be consumed tomorrow (I like it better when it's sit for a day) after a dinner of Cornish Game Hen, Asparagus, Sweet Potato Fries and Goose Island Honkers Ale (oh, Goose Island, maker of affordable, delicious local beer!)

I forgot how difficult pie crust is to make (at least if it's been a few years), so it wound up taking up way more of my evening than planned, but hopefully the result will be worth it? I'm going to bed now.

In defense of vodka, part two.

2008-10-30T13:04:00.000-07:00

I don't care that vodka is bland (that's what makes the flavored stoli so delightful with soda!), I drink it and I remain level headed and alert with no hangover the next day. (To be honest I'm not that crazy about being drunk, so being clearheaded is a plus for me).

After spending the next morning puking, miserable and headachey after an interviewee (who was a lovely man), gave me samples of two scotches, two bourbons, and rum (and mind you these were small pours in snifters of high quality, high proof spirits, and I hadn't eaten much that day), I'm going to have to say I'll stick to vodka, even if it makes me hopelessly uncool.

Scotch= wood dissolved in alcohol!!!! I understand why people like it and can even appreciate it from a connoisseur's viewpoint but I absolutely hate what it does to my body.

Bleaghhh.

2008-10-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

Letting you all know I've started a nutrition blog of my own here: http://eatfeelbetter.blogspot.com/

Dick food

2008-10-26T23:50:00.001-07:00

Stuff I ate at a bachelorette party last night:

-dick pasta salad (with ham and mayonnaise)

-blowjob shots (amaretto, bailey's, whipped cream, no hands)

-dick cake (actually I didn't eat any)

-cocktail franks with beans

-olives and gherkins threaded on a toothpick to look like dick n' balls

-hot wings

-doritos

I also got fake-fucked by a stripper named "black magic" with a monstrously big dick. It was ridiculous. I really don't get the whole bachelorette party thing but it was fun in a horrible way. I had the WORST heartburn after though. I guess dick doesn't agree with me.

Some shameless self promotion.

2008-10-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

My article about Japanese food in Chicago is on the cover of the Time Out Chicago site today.

It also gets mentioned here. I feelz famous!

Check it out!

Two things I hate today, food journalist edition

2008-10-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

1. PR people and press releases.

No, I am not impressed that Lil Wayne sips your champagne at douchebag nightclubs. (My hatred of douchebag nightclubs and the cult of empty conspicuous consumption could occupy a whole other post). I get a lot of press releases as a food writer, and most of them suck. It's as if they're written to make a product or place less appealing. There are three reasons places seem to hire PR people:

1. Because the scale of their business is so massive that it doesnt make sense to handle marketing inhouse. This is probably the only valid reason, though it's not actually the most common one.

2. Restaurant/product wants to appear foofoo and important. Me= not impressed. When I schedule interviews with bar people I have much more positive initial impression if I set up the appointment with them directly. Yesterday, I had an interviewee "forget" his appointment his PR person scheduled for him. See how well that worked out?

3. Their product sucks or their business is slow and they're trying to drum up interest. This doesn't work so great either because most editors and writers have a natural aversion to press releases.

I do sympathise with PR people to a degree, because being a freelancer and sending queries is a very similar (and frustrating) process. The problem is writers/editors receive so much CRAP that is totally irrelevant that something the good stuff falls through the cracks. And most editors already have an idea of what they want, and it's probably not what you're selling.

2. Booze snobbery: in defense of vodka.

The past six months have been a crash course in booze appreciation for me. Quite frankly, I didn't drink much prior to becoming a booze writer, though a lot of this was due to being poor. I'd enjoy the occasional $6 bottle of Trader Joes wine, and a vanilla vodka soda or PBR on the occasional occasion of going to a bar with friends. $11 cocktails, craft beer and artisanal spirits were simply not in my budget.

The interesting thing about being a journalist is you can basically live at the poverty level and pretend that you're not desperately broke through the miracle of press passes. I've been forced to learn a lot about booze very quickly, which is actually a lot of fun and quite interesting. At this point I'm fairly indifferent to wine, have developed a passion for fancy beer, and have mixed feelings about the whole mixology craze since I find that it's a- get ready for this- MIXED BAG! For every FUCKING AMAZING $11 cocktail I've tried, there have been 3 or 4 just kinda ok ones.

So here's the thing. I LOVE Stoli Vanil, and Stoli Blackberry. I love Stoli Vanil with Dr. Pepper and vanilla ice cream. I especially love it with soda, a smidge of grenadine, and a zillion maraschino cherries, and yes, I realize that's basically a glorified Shirley Temple, and I don't care. However, I have quickly discovered that in the land of pretentious boozeology, vodka is a big socially unacceptable NO NO. While I understand why people adore and adulate whiskeys for all their variation and complexity, blah blah, but I personally don't enjoy the taste of whiskey enough to care. I am not pretending that vodka is the same thing as whiskey. It's a clear, refreshing base spirit that allows other flavors to shine. It's the tofu of the beverage world! Would you accuse an order of thai deep fried tofu of being un-delicious simply because it doesn't have the gameyness of a lamb chop?

Ok, see this is what I don't get- the same mixologists who bag on vodka secretly like it! Regard the following excerpt from Jeffrey Morgenthaler's blog:

I badmouth the spirit in private and trash it in public. I grimace every time you order a vodka martini - “Shaken, up, with three olives” - at my bar. For all of the shit I’ve talked over the years, vodka is my number one guilty pleasure drink - I will always accept a vodka on the rocks after work. I’ll drink a Screwdriver at the airport, and a Greyhound when I get on the plane. And if you’ve got a bottle in your freezer, you’ll catch me stealing straight shots right out of the frosty bottle neck. I love the stuff.

So can we just accept that vodka, while flavorless, is a perfectly acceptable base spirit that is wonderful for infusing with other flavors? Furthermore, there IS a difference when you spend a bit more money on vodka- good vodka tastes smoother, and gives me less of a hangover. Of course, we're talking the difference between well vodka and stoli, but like I said, I'm poor. I can't help but wonder if part of the vodka stigma is the fact that vodka is frequently drunk by women and Eastern European peasants, which makes me wonder if there's some secret sexist/classist agenda going on here.

And while we're at it, mint, vanilla and cucumber (three ingredients a nameless mixologist professed to avoid yesterday since their "overused") are all delicious components in a cocktail and should not be eschewed, dammit.

Meet Natto

2008-10-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

Natto is what happened when some crazy Japanese person decided to eat the rotting horse feed in some edo-era stable. Natto is a blob of fermented soybeans with a disgustingly stringy texture, that has the same appeal as smelly rotting cheeses- it's good while at the same time disgusting. Most Americans and many Japanese refuse to eat it. It made me throw up to look at it until I developed a taste for it (like many other bizarre Japanese foods that I now crave, like pickled plum, grated mountain yam and burdock root).

I've come to realize I can eat almost anything as long as it's not sketchy meat. (Sketchy meat wrecks my digestion, so it may be a self-preservation thing). But rotten soybeans and fruit that smells like dirty ass? Bring it on!

Speaking of sketchy meat, Mike Sula at the Reader posted the menu for his pig dinner (the Reader bought some kind of heirloom pig with the express intent of butchering and eating it- I guess it's supposed to be some kind of environmentally positive gesture but it's the sort of gesture that would have angry vegans throwing bricks in my hometown of Berkeley.) Anyway, I am less sad about not being able to attend this event because if I tried to eat my way through that much pork, combined with wine, no less, my digestive system would probably stage a hostile revolt (which happened after eating pork belly at Hot Chocolate, as delicious as it was). My digestive system adores probiotics laden natto on the other hand. So that was your TMI for the day.

Ethical Dilemma

2008-10-15T10:02:00.001-07:00

I really want to support the independent coffeeshop by my house over starbucks, but they're making it really hard to.

First off, their shit is kind of pricy which I could accept if it were good, but it's not that good. My mocha is too hot and tastes like it was made with swiss miss. My bagel is flaky, not chewy (the sure sign of a goyish bagel) and burnt. Where's the love?

Maybe I should just go to an independent coffeeshop in another neighborhood. Sigh.

What's a Carnivore to do?

2008-10-09T22:26:00.000-07:00

I keep falling back and forth between throwing myself completely into marketing my latest weight loss/detox/nutrition program and wanting to giving it all up for a nice, boring day job. I've been known to flip flop within the course of a day, hours even. It's all a matter of what kind of "hard" sounds less painful at the moment.

So I'm back on the business wagon after I got a couple of calls, both from vegans who found my phone number on my college website, thinking I'm the school, and wanting to sign up for my Healthy Holiday cooking class. This is ironic for so many reasons. Both of my professors not only promoted meat (free range, pasture raised organic of course), but also consumption of internal organs and told stories of how Native American hunters ate the raw adrenals of animals immediately after killing them. I still have trouble eating liver if it's not pate, but I can list five nutrients off of the top of my head that are impossible to get if you go vegan.

My class is geared towards avoiding food sensitivities (a lot of people in my field have difficulty choosing sexy, appealing titles for our programs) but I mention that the recipes are dairy and egg free. In my desperation for enrollment, I say yes, these classes are vegan (although it didn't occur to me until it was pointed out.) So I'm accepting dirty vegan money, supporting their anti-animal protein addiction. I'm terrified one of my professors will magically appear and start scolding me. My secret evil plan will be to have plenty of sublingual B12 and rice protein powder for the vegans to sample and purchase if they get faint or cranky, which I've discovered from experience is inevitable.

It will be nice to get one of these programs off the ground at least!

Hey Mon Sauces

2008-10-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

I was on youtube looking for the Hey Mon In Living Color sketch that pretty much describes my career (Mim always called it "being a jamaican job lady").

I found this instead. It's perhaps one of the most horrifyingly, embarrassingly low budget advertisements ever created.

Carribean Style Holiday Turkey! Oh my.

Booze hate

2008-10-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

#1. Bartenders who correct my pronounciation of a beer or beverage when I pronounce it correctly.

Me: Can I have a pint of schpahten?

Bartender (at a phony German bar in Lincoln Square!!!): You want a spay-ten?

(of course, Magaret at the 4am bar St. Pauli club down the road says schpahten, but tourists don't go there)

Me: One Mohjheet please.

Bartender: You mean Mah-deet?

Okay, so I'm a pretentious journalist from California, but if I actually know how to pronounce something correctly, I'm gonna. Just don't correct me back to the American pronounciation, dammit.

#2 Another thing that bugs:

This is a crappy photo booth photo, but it's a Belvedere vodka ad that says "Luxury Reborn" with A PICTURE OF VINCENT GALLO!!!!! How Vincent Gallo became a sex symbol (in his own mind, at least) when he clearly was born to be a wino is beyond me. This man is cut out for stuff like Night Train and Thunderbird, produced by E&J GALLO winery, not foofy top shelf vodka.

People of the world, I beg you- STOP GIVING VINCENT GALLO MONEY. He has nothing to offer you but self important pap!

convenience or perpetuating uselessness?

2008-10-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

NPR ran a bit on "food assembly" businesses, something I had never heard of as I am a grown up and cut up my own veggies and wash my own dishes. Basically rich people pay alot of money ($150 was a quote I heard on NPR) to prepare their meals for the week. The selling point is that one does not have to shop for the ingredients, prep the food or clean up afterwards and that it is healthier than frozen entrees. True but really, how hard is it to cook for oneself? Last night I managed to make (all homemade and the only shortcut was pre-chopped garlic) curried zucchini soup, tomato & cilantro rice, broiled salmon w/ green pepper and tofu w/brocolli; all in the span of about 2 hours. Oh and I made Feminist Popcorn too because I love the stuff and it travels well. I easily have enough meals to last me the rest of the week and I can assure you it didn't cost me $150 to buy all the ingredients. Yeah, I have to wash the dishes tonight but really-how lazy have folks become? Odds are one who can shell out $150 for one week's worth of meals has a dishwasher and can afford all the pre-sliced ingredients most higher end markets sell anyway.
I suspect its another opportunity to "network" (especially after checking out some of the websites Google led me to)or for the rich and busy and self-important to get a kick out of playing like they are regular people all the while still having disdain for them. Kinda like when the higher ups at my office have to pull their turn of dishwasher duty.

Japanese comfort food

2008-09-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

Or perhaps more accurately: food to make you poo.

They had burdock root (one of my favorite vegetables, so tender and stringy with its bizarre planty fragrance) at Mitsuwa, so I made kinpira gobo with grated gobo (burdock), julienned carrots and flavorless but chewy konnyaku yam paste. It's supposed to have sesame seeds too but I'm laying off those because of this stupid blood type diet book I read that says their bad for me (they also say tomatoes, pomegranates and persimmons are the devil, so what the fuck).

It's the kind of dish that's really just a mega infusion of fiber, but damn I love it, even if it looks like a bowl of worms.

Whine and Cheese: Chicago Gourmet

2008-09-27T17:27:00.000-07:00

I attended Chicago Gourmet at Millenium Park today, and I've got to say, I feel sorry for anyone who actually paid to attend this event (I had a press pass). The highlight of my day was watching Mayor Daley cook a Halibut (and I had to miss a beer and cheese workshop to see this, tragically). Allow me to outline the suckpoints of this event:

-It was touted as being the epicurean "Taste of Chicago." In truth, only a few tents offered food, in miniscule portions, and there was invariably an insane line at these stations. Fox and Obel get kudos for putting out a decent spread of cheeses, olives, meats and chocolate, but it still wasn't, ya know, a meal. You could spend a fraction of the ticket price here on a fantastic meal at somewhere like Hot Chocolate and be much better fed. A friend who attended the $250 gala opening dinner said that it also sucked, that there wasn't enough food and that people were standing around hungry. FOR $250. And the food that was being produced at the Chef's tables- stuff like chili and mac and cheese- was hardly sophisticated enough to justify the insanely high ticket price.

-I have realized that I vastly prefer beer to wine at this point. Which is not to say I don't enjoy wine, I just don't get the same geeky pleasure from imbibing it. Which is too bad, because this really should have been billed as a wine festival. I did get to try Goose Island's Matilda, which was awesome.

-The seminars seemed a little slipshod and poorly organized. I was also told I was "wrong" at the sake seminar when the instructor asked the difference between an Ale and a Lager and I replied longer fermentation time- the answer he was looking for was top fermentation vs. bottom fermentation, but to tell me I was wrong when my answer was in fact correct was kind of insulting especially since I was the only person in the room who raised their hand.

-An appetizer served at one station that appeared as though someone had jacked off on potato chip and honestly didn't taste much better. I'm still not sure what that spooge-like substance was.

-The Whole Foods "Family Village"- a tiny bargain priced gulag that I didn't have a chance to check out before it closed- I don't think it generated much interest

-Dunkin Donuts was a major sponsor. For a WINE AND GOURMET FOOD event. FTW?

Lest I seem overly negative, it was nice to see my colleague Julia from the Reader, hang out with Iron Chef America judge Louisa Chu, catch up with SakeOne rep Dewey Weddington, and taste Mindy Segal's (who hosted the fabulous beer dinner I attended on monday) fabulous cold chocolate drink.

I just hope that if they do this event next year, they'll adjust the pricetag or hold it at a smaller venue. Or just bill it as a glorified winetasting, because that's basically what it was.

Bargain beer dinner...

2008-09-24T15:26:00.001-07:00

So I attended a super fabulous craft beer dinner on monday, and a thought occured to me- what foods would pair well with PBR and Schlitz? What could one cook with Sparks? I think I would have to appoint Vally Val as culinary chief in such an endeavor, since she has been known to make a spring suprise salad involving mayonaise, cheese and lemon jello, as well as my birthday Watergate Cake which involved Cool Whip and pistachio jello.

I'm thinking- frito pie and pbr. A sparks jello mold. A cake leavened with Miller Highlife! Schlitz pot roast.

How much do you want to bet I could get hipsters to pay money to attend my budget beer dinner? Although they'd probably just sneak in and eat all the food, then leave.

eat the rich

2008-09-23T11:27:00.000-07:00

I just paid almost $11 for hummus, a green pepper, 2 soggy heads of brocolli and some crackers because I didn't have time to pack lunch and didn't want to eat crap. Fuck that. No wonder poor people eat crappy food.

Great food quotes from the previous night

2008-09-23T09:41:00.000-07:00

"I had to stage an emergency mushroom visit!"

-Catherine Lambrecht of LTH Forum at the Louis Glunz Beer Culinary Council dinner at Hot Chocolate.

"Do you like your eggs scrambled or fried?"

"Over easy. Are you propositioning me?"

"I was trying to determine if you were a socialist, since they cannot stand the superiority of the yolk held above the white, and prefer scrambled eggs since both are mixed together equally."

-Conversation while drinking with Doug at Ronny's

A Blast from the Past

2008-09-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the late 80's/early 90's? When everybody and their fucking dog was afraid of salt?

Remember that? You got it in your mind?

It's back...and it's crazier than before.

For those of you out there who aren't chemistry nerds -- table salt, i.e. sodium-chloride molecules are one sodium atom (Na) and one chlorine atom (Cl) each. The molecules in question may be from France, pale gray and quite expensive, got at an impressively appointed kitchen shoppe, or it could be out of the blue-and-yellow canister with the little kid on, dead white and boring, got from the local mega-mart. You are getting one atom of Na and one atom of Cl. That's the deal. Sure, you could get a few molecules of something else. Particularly if the salt isn't pure, like the afore mentioned sel gris (grey sea salt), or Fluer de sel (course grey sea salt), or Indian black salt, and pink salt from various locations -- but, by and large you get NaCl. The level of trace elements is usually not high enough to appreciably effect the taste or texture of the salt.

So why, why, WHY is Campbell's billing it's "Healthy Request" soup as being low sodium, but better tasting because they use "natural sea salt?" As if NaCl molecules out of the sea is somehow healthier than a NaCl molecule out of the ground.

The stupid. It burns!

Soy rant

2008-09-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

So, my revulsion du jour is that disgusting crap "soy sauce" that you occasionally encounter with really bad takeout or in the generic house-brand packaging of your local grocery store (particularly if your local grocery store is in a central Texas town most famous for spawning a doomed would-be Messiah). The first three ingredients are water, salt, and caramel coloring, and there is usually no soy presence whatsoever. There is sometimes some "autolyzed yeast extract" (ARE YOU GIVING ME WATERY VEGEMITE AND TELLING ME IT'S SOY SAUCE?!), but sometimes it really is nothing but water, salt, fake colors, and fake flavors. It's really gross.

While I'm on it, I know that genuine wasabi is really expensive and delicate blah-blah-most-wasabi-is-just-horseradish, and I can deal with that. I'm actually not a wasabi snob. However, when it comes out of the little pouchlet looking like a baby ate two parts green Play-Doh and one part Burger King bun Play-Doh, then pooped it into my plastic takeout sushi tray, we have a problem. Come on, people. I agreed to accept green-tinted horseradish as a suitable condiment. Don't exploit my goodwill with sorbitol, corn oil, and Blue #1.

I know it's my fault for eating grocery store sushi, but where I live it's comparable to anything you could get at the two "sushi" "restaurants" at my disposal.

Taste test: Hitachino Nest Commemorative Ale

2008-09-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

I was recently at Mitsuwa shopping center doing research for an article I'm writing, and decided to pick up a bottle of Hitachino Nest Commemorative Ale, from Ibaraki. I am a budding beer nerd and lover of Japanese lagers like Sapporo and Asahi, so I was excited to try this craft beer in it's cute little retro owl adorned bottle. It was hard to choose just one since they make a milk stout, red rice ale and a white beer as well, but at $4 a pop my budget didn't allow it. (I had already dropped $80 at Ikea nearby).

The commemorative beer appears to be a new years themed beer from the Japanese writing on the label, and is "brewed with vanilla beans and spices, coriander, orange peel, nutmeg, cinnamon." It's an opaque amber colored ale with a nice, spicy taste reminescent of dried fruit and oranges, perfect for the Winter holidays. However, this beer also suffers from INSANE HEAD. The bottle had been sitting in my fridge, totally inert, and I pour A GLASS OF FOAM, which I make the mistake of sipping, resulting in THE WORLDS FOAMIEST BEER BELCH (seriously disgusting). It's a well known fact that Japanese bars (in Japan) serve you 50% head when you order draft beer, it's just how they roll. I always assumed they were just being cheap, but maybe that's how they like it and this beer WAS ENGINEERED TO HAVE MORE FOAM THAN BEER! It's a great beer but I recommend getting a really big glass and letting it sit a few minutes before drinking less you too experience the belch from hell!

I am looking forward to trying other varieties, assuming they are less head oriented.

My love hate thing with wraps

2008-09-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

I hate wraps. They're like some creepy yuppy version of a burrito. I hate going to a coffeeshop and that's all the have to eat. I don't hate sandwiches as much as I hate wraps, I just hate most of the sandwiches you get at restaurants because they're way too expensive for what you get. Milk and Honey is an exception, I had their ham and havarti sandwich while working renegade this weekend and it was crazy good.

So, I actually broke down and bought a package of whole grain wraps because I had v. little food at home and I wanted a hearty, healthy breakfast and decided I should give an egg and veggie wrap a try as a filling breakfast. And it was the bomb diggity! You throw the tortilla thing on a cookie sheet, load it with cheese, meat, whatever and stick it in the oven for a few minutes and voila! Now I am addicted though I still won't eat them while out.

My one disclaimer is the whole grain ones aren't really flexible enough to "wrap," maybe because I'm putting them in the oven which dries them out. I kind of just fold it around the filling to the best of my ability.

This morning I made myself a wrap with swiss cheese, sliced turkey, roasted beets and yams, fresh tomatoes and cottage cheese, because apparently I was channeling my grandma. It was pretty good but I wouldn't wish it on another person.

Don't Fuck with My Coffee

2008-09-11T15:22:00.000-07:00

I've been holed up sick (thanks for the "A Simple Cold Turns into The Plague at the Drop of Hat" gene Dad) so I've seen alot of TV and daytime TV at that. Saw alot of ads for flavored coffee non-dairy creamer. Ugh. If I want Blueberry Pie flavored coffee I will have a slice of blueberry pie with my coffee. Don't fuck with the beautiful flavor that is coffee. I can understand a bit of cinnamon or vanilla or things that can enhance coffee but don't add a bunch of chemicals to it and try to convince me its something else.
Hmmmm.......Is this some dieting ploy? I'm not going to want the chocolate fudge brownies if my coffee tastes like that? Never mind that the texture and temperature is way off. It reminds me of all the freaking yogurts that taste like anything besides yogurt. Fuck that, when I brave the effects of having dairy its usually for some good Greek yogurt and not some Creme Brulee Yoplait pink ribbon crap.

I'm going to make another toddy. In fact, I will share the recipe. Dad may have given me Prone to Upper Respitory Infections DNA but he made up for it by taking me to get antibiotics and making me a toddy :)

hot tea (herbal works if you want to be healthy about it)
lemon
honey
a shot of whiskey or scotch (as Dad said, "amber alcohol is your friend")

Mix, sip and feel a hell of a lot better.

Meet your authors at Renegade Craft Fair this weekend!

2008-09-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

The RENEGADE CRAFT FAIR is happening this weekend on Division St, between Damen and Hermitage. It is totally free and totally AWESOME. Last year was a blast and this year cool bands like Califone and Hey Willpower will be playing in the evening.

I will be running David Murray's awesome SEIBEI teeshirt booth all weekend long with the lovely Vally Val, and David himself will be in town Sunday! If you do not know Seibei, it's the teeshirt line behind the fabulous SANDWICH DINOSAUR shirts seen all over Chicago! He's got lots of new designs and some sweet assed dinosaur necklaces, so be sure to check that shit out! (and give me a hug and bring me some coffee, probably).

SEE YOU THERE!

You're an asshole and you don't even realize it.

2008-09-08T19:19:00.000-07:00

A while back I blogged about the cloying and obnoxious customer service policies of a certain restaurant I had privy to reading the employee manual for.

I just received a comment from a woman calling me classist for implying that the need to feel "loved" (if corporate douchebaggery can truly be called "love"- I know all about that one from working in the service industry) by a the man or woman who takes your dirty dishes away reflects a serious emotional insecurity.

Wow. Just wow.

Honey, that busser doesn't love you, he's just trying to get into your pants!

And honestly, I didn't see the service when I ate there. It took them ten minutes to bring us water, and our waitress spent the better part of the evening trying to work me for journalism contacts. If that's love, I'd rather be hated.

Eating well is the best revenge

2008-09-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

Last time I was at Mitsuwa, I stocked up on Kewpie Mayonnaise and Okonomiyaki Sauce to cook Okonomiyaki for my now ex-boyfriend. Then he dumped my ass. So I made Okonomiyaki for myself! I think it's officially a three-way tie between Kewpie Mayo, Okonomiyaki Sauce and Anger for the best Okonomiyaki topping.

Pet Peeve of the day

2008-09-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

People who can't tell the difference between a weak pour and a drink that's mixed so well that you can't taste the booze. Not being able to taste the alcohol is a good thing!

Unrelatedly I had a (smart) bartender tell me last night that I shouldn't freeze vodka because it "shocks" the spirit and you have to shake it or something. Though really I was kinda toasted when that conversation went down.

What Do I Hate?

2008-09-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

Vegan cookbooks.

I mean, is it so hard to write a book *without* trying to create more True Believers?

I'm not reading a cookbook for gospel, I'm reading cookbook for recipes and food information. I don't care how cool or enlightened or exceptional you think your life style is, I just want something interesting to do with beans.

So vegans, guess what? Your cookbooks universally suck. Go read Nigella Lawson, or M.F.K. Fisher, or Anthony Bourdain, or Julia Child, or Thomas Keller, or Michael Ruhlman or Jane Grigson, or Laurie Colwin, or Stefan Gates, or, or, or any number of food writers who really care about food and the way people eat. Learn something. Then come tell me about how cool you are.

Thank you very much

P.S. I'm drunk, don't mind me.

Impatient assed counter people take note:

2008-09-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

You wanna know what pisses me off? When I'm at a bakery or a cafe or something, checking out the drink list or the bakery case, and nobody's standing in line, and the counter person gets all impatient and demands my order within seconds then stands there looking irate until I make up my mind. I am the type of gal whose day is ruined if she orders the wrong thing due to pressure, and I actually prefer if there's a line because I can leisurely make up my mind. Seriously- give me five minutes, you can go back to texting your friends while I decide what I want, mmmkay?

Work-Related Food Hate

2008-08-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

For a bit of back-ground: I work in a movie theater that serves food, beer, and wine. Accordingly, we have a small, not very impressive wine list.

Now, I'm not here to defend our wine list. I know nothing about wine. If you ask me how the (whatever red wine) is -- I will tell you it has good body with notes of cherry and plum, and if you ask me about the (whatever white wine) I'll tell you it has a nice nose with notes of apple and pear. That's my standard line and it freely reflects my ignorance.

But the beer. That is a different story. We have a small, but mostly decent selection of beer, and I know something about them.

That said; I am ASTOUNDED how often some one will quiz me or a co-worker about the Merlot or the Chardonnay or the Shiraz or, or, or. Taste two or three...then buy a pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

WTF?

They pass over everything on the wine list, and everything good on the tap line to buy the cheapest, most watery, least beer-tasting-beer we sell.

Any thoughts on this one?