I hope everyone's ready to get a lot sicker a lot more often.

 

It's interesting how little I see from the mainstream food media these days since I stopped using Twitter some months back.

Not that I'm missing anything of substance. The vast majority is fluff pieces, any bits of harder-hitting reporting are elsewhere. Stuff like how desperately doomed most of the food production in the country is as regulatory standards for quality and safety get cut away.

Safe bet that a whoooole lot of people are going to realize how easy it is for foodborne illnesses to find their way into their supper. More than likely while they're dying after contracting them. I know how to prevent them, where to look for them, and how long I have before I start avoiding buying certain things. There's a tier list based on ease of contamination, severity of danger, and a host of other factors that I consider when looking at the months and years ahead. Here's a freebie: Don't buy salad greens.

Alongside this we have the backyard gardeners who have no idea what it's like to actually grow enough food to live off of. People that have never seen how much wheat it takes to mill into flour, and haven't a clue how to do the milling.

I'm lucky to live in a climate where I can grow damn near anything I please, but there's no possible way I could grow enough food to feed myself- I know this because I because I actually know how to do it- something near nobody willing to opine on such things can say.

In Memoriam

You were always game for anything, grinning like a goofus the whole time.

You deserved better last years than the ones I know you had.

That sorrow will stay with me forever.

Goodbye, Tiger. Uncle Wolfy loves you, now and always.

In Theory

...this is supposed to be a mostly profession-oriented blog. I am a master culinarian, recipe developer, teacher, nutritionist, and food safety analyst.

I am also a great deal more than that.

Given the state of things, however, oversharing is dangerous.

Paranoia and pragmatism now means peace of mind later. 

I've got my disaster bag prepped and ready.

Can't save everyone. Don't want to. Shouldn't have to- and most aren't capable of deserving it anyway.

I'll do what I can.

What a mess.

 

All those cuts to Meals on Wheels apparently went out over the last 24 hours or so.

So let me tell you, gentle reader, of the last 48.

Yesterday, I began to track down the family of a senior who died five years ago when mail showed up for her estate. Yes. They died in the first covid wave, amidst so many others. And disappeared. 

Today, I delivered a route, as I always do when a delivery crew fails to show. Someone who I'd spoken to on Monday didn't answer when I knocked. Thinking they might not yet be home, I called their contact number and got family. Poor man was on total life support, surrounded by loved ones. 

He died while I was on the line. I spent the next twenty minutes consoling half a dozen people I've never met as they broke down together.

This is the stuff they're taking away the funding for. Not hard to guess why- beyond the simple cruelty and ignorance, at least. Hungry people get angry, they get aggressive, they get things happening. People like this don't. They're already on the last of their resources. They'll simply fade and die, unknown and forgotten. Often, I joke that the motto of our center should be "Forgotten But Not Gone". I don't forget easily.

"To ignore the plight of those one could conceivably save is not wisdom, it is indolence"

In a world steeped in malice, I think those words ring true for those who seek a better world.

Why? Simple.

"For those we have lost. For those we can yet save."

And so I battle onward. As best I might.

Girl Scout Cookies: What's New?

 

It's been a looooong time since I had the chance to get ahold of any Girl Scout cookies. I'm not going to do any major digging into the changes that have happened even since I was in high school with Girl Scouts, but... I remember when these cookies were 3 bucks a box, and the boxes were definitely a fair bit bigger.

No sense in beating around the bush about price and proper valuation though. Other things I remember offhand... there are a couple bakeries that produce all the cookies, and they're thousands of miles apart, which is why some cookies have different names in different parts of the US. Out here in California, the Shortbread I knew growing up is called a Trefoil. Makes perfect sense looking at it, but still. Different suppliers, different name to protect all the companies from copyright blather. (Not that copywrites actually matter in the food world, but on the corporate side they pretend.)

I picked up a few boxes. Though apparently they're not all even boxes any more!

The order sheet was my only information, and so I went with what made some appeal to my preferences. I got a box of the iconic Thin Mints, and two other types that are wholly new to me. A gluten-free Caramel Chocolate Chip, and crispy chocolate, caramel-cored curiosities called Adventurefuls. 

Now one thing that threw me was the vastly different weights of the three varieties. 5oz, 6 1/2oz, and 9oz. That's no small discrepancy, and it's... interesting that the GF cookies are the lightest. The ingredients couldn't possibly be that much more expensive. The different packaging could account for some of the difference, but what was wrong with the classic two-channel sleeved box? That's the big thing I was wondering about when I went ahead and opened them all to have a proper look.

And then came the taste test.

The Caramel Chocolate Chip are interesting. They're very crunchy, but also extremely light. The use of oat flour as a primary gives them a texture and flavor vaguely reminiscent of a peanut butter cookie, which is a sandiness I find rather unpleasant. The caramel flavor is heavy and cloying, as one-note and artificial as it gets. You can't even taste the chocolate chips- though admittedly there aren't many. These are to Famous Amos as Oreo are to Hydrox. They tried, but it's just not quite right. Yes, even without the cachet of being the actual original in the genre, the Hydrox was a far superior cookie to Oreo. Given some of the horrorshow flavors Oreo has tried bringing to bear, it seems an apt comparison.

The Adventurefuls were a very different sort of unfortunate. "Brownie-inspired cookies with caramel-flavored creme and a hint of sea salt". Jibberish. (If a Brownie inspired this, she'll never make a proper Girl Scout, let alone the Gold Award.) It's supposed to be a chocolate 'thumbprint' style cookie, a shallow well that's filled with faux caramel, then decorated with pretty chocolate stripes. Or they would have been, had anything about the designs worked right. 

The cookies arrived half-melted, some stuck together, and the box wasn't even full! The picture is missing two but I'd only eaten one. That pretend caramel flavor overpowered almost everything here too, except for the cookie hidden underneath it all. Hard and crispy, it has the feel and texture of the Thin Mint base cookie- which is probably why the camouflage. Can't make it too obvious they're double dipping on a winner, even when it turns into a loser- which this definitely is.

Well, that was a bust- and at seven bucks a box, it was an expensive one! Mathing it out by the weights listed on the boxes, the cookies were about 16 bucks a pound. I've paid more for cookies, but they were waaaaaay better cookies. Like the local place Butter Pecan, where the cookies are actually worth that kind of price.

Sorry, girls. I'm not buying again.

Book Review: "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles", by Jennifer 8 Lee

 

Back when I first penned this review, I decided I'd keep it simple- The Fortune Cookie Chronicles turned out to be an excellent book. It strives to answer some of the most common questions that come up when "Chinese Food" is a topic of conversation. As it happens, that's rather a lot, being that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than any two fast food chains combined.

Little factoids like that (Or that the 8 in her name is deliberate, but not for shock value- 8’s a lucky number in China.) are sprinkled all through the book- tidbits of passing interest backed up by research, and deftly tucked into the narrative. The storytelling laid beside the bald facts is poignant, stirring, and leaves definitive impressions at various levels of depth. Equal parts reporting, blog post, vignette, and amateur food critic, each section gives answers and information that not only serves to bolster your current understanding, but compound it as you read on. You'll think back as you near the end of the book and absentmindedly apply bits of info from the beginning to form a more complete picture. That's not as easy a trick to pull off as it sounds, considering your average college textbook. Likewise, it isn't something I say lightly.

Full disclosure though, a drafted manuscript that used similar research to address several of the book's major topics was sitting on my harddrive when this book came out. Jennifer beat me handily to getting things published (benefits of being a journalist and reporter rather than a chef I suppose), but in hindsight I don't mind a bit. She did an excellent job from start to finish.  Not speaking Mandarin or Cantonese myself, her net was a wider cast than mine, and I was very pleased at the surpassing thoroughness of her efforts- though some of my contacts in Japan might have been useful to her. Her list of notes and bibliographical references is also quite comprehensive- for those with a scholarly bent, that section alone is worth digging into. She's done a LOT of legwork, dredging up old manuscripts, translations, even court documents detailing the struggle of Asian-Americans to find citizenship and some measure of stability here in the United States. These days, I have to wonder how many more new versions of the very same struggles are going to be written and referenced in the months and years to come as the nation backslides into horrors thought banished for good.

There's one major problem with reviewing a manuscript as well constructed as this- most every enticing soundbite and succinctly distilled phrase has already found its way onto either the cover or the dust jacket.

So- if you've ever wondered who General Tso was, or why his chicken seems to be everywhere. If you're Jewish, and have memories of Chinese food every December around Christmas. If you've ever wondered where that Chinese Takeout Box came from, how the fortune cookie came about, or who wrote all those fortunes, or ever played the lucky numbers on the back. Any of that, plus all sorts of other satisfied curiosities work together to let me recommend this book with some real enthusiasm.

St. Patrick's Day- a Primer, Perhaps?

I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about Irish food. It's not a part of the world that's on my culinary radar. Fair bit of what I do know isn't about restaurants, hotels, or other such things. It's details about farms, ranches, orchards, distilleries- the places the food and drink come from.

Looking at it from the outside, it seems to me like most of the detail-oriented expertise in Irish food gets spent before it hits the kitchen. Whether properly true or not, it certainly isn't a bad thing- lets the resulting prepared food showcase itself, in a manner akin to what you might see in Japan. The cultural emphasis on starting from the best place possible seems to fit well enough- there's not a lot done to most of of the ingredients because there's no need to do anything. Season properly, cook till appropriately tender and flavorful, and that's it. Even humble vegetables like cabbage can be absolutely delicious. I actually used to serve cabbage quarters as a side dish, cooked in rendered lamb fat till browned all over, then steamed just long enough to bring out the sweetness of the deeper-set leaves. A real delight.

Now, tomorrow is different. Nobody celebrating over here across the pond will be a historian wearing blue. They're all going to be garbed in green, gilded, glittery, and Guinnessed to the gills. Going out to eat will be easy, because any holiday-specific menus you're likely to see are likely to focus on a handful of relatively simple, familiar things. 

Corned Beef and Cabbage (Many don't corn their own.)

Bangers and Mashed (Colcannon if they're feeling ambitious.)

Cottage Pie (Shepherd's Pie if you're lucky and find a place serving lamb.)

Guinness Stew (Beef, maybe lamb. Mirepoix, turnips, parsnips, potato, peas.) 

Beer and whisky will be all over the place. Guinness will show up at both ends of the meal. Expect to see a lot of Guinness chocolate cake with Baileys Irish Creme frosting), or served as an admittedly excellent float with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of chocolate or coffee syrup. Whisk(e)y will also likely show up in whipped cream, caramel sauces, and anywhere else it can be shoehorned in. Not a bad thing. It's delicious. 

I suppose that's some of the idea why people get so enthused about it, but personally... I don't think the risk of going out is worth the bother. St. Patrick's Day is much like New Year's Eve, where everyone who doesn't normally party decides to give it a go. All too easily they party too hard, get careless, and then wake up somewhere they really shouldn't be. 

If you do go out, be careful, cautious, and be sure to shower before bed.

Sláinte!