Tag Food

Paradise Squashed

Michael 2 Comments

We are deep into the throes of PSL season although as previous rants of mine have shown, pumpkin flavoring goes far beyond latte, this year including potato chips. But I must admit, even though I detest almost everything else pumpkin, baked goods – pie, bread, rolls, cookies – made with real pumpkin is food heaven. But anybody who has made anything out of real pumpkin starting with that round, orange vegetable perched on the kitchen counter waiting to be dispatched by your biggest and strongest knife will tell you making those tasty tidbits is food hell! Thus the popularity of canned pumpkin. Well now, who else saw the breaking news earlier this week? Those cans touting 100% real pumpkin within typically contain 0% real pumpkin. Yes, canned pumpkin is not.

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Americans should be used to foods not being what they seem to be. Euphemisms abound in the grocery store. Pigs become pork, cows are turned into beef, and I don’t even want to think about capon. The vegetable world makes soy beans tofu and wants to rename every chili when sold dried versus fresh. Maybe that’s where it all started, with those chili peppers we know weren’t called peppers until Chris Columbus and his crews landed in the Caribbean and called everything pepper.

The mysterious case of the missing pumpkin in canned pumpkin is kind of like Columbus and his peppers. It’s not simply a matter of masking the fact that those roosters were crowing soprano before they became a five star restaurant entree. It really is something else in that can but we’ve spent 200 years calling it pumpkin so there will be no stopping now.

The mystery substance is no mystery at all. According to Emma Crist of MyRecipes, that orange stuff “is made from a variety of winter squash (think butternut, Golden Delicious, Hubbard, and more). Libby’s, the brand that produces about 85% of the country’s canned “pumpkin” filling, has actually developed a certain variety of squash that they grow, package, and distribute to supermarkets” and because the FDA won’t quibble over what variety of squash is used “it’s perfectly legal to label a food product as ‘pumpkin’ when, in reality, it’s made from a different variety of squash.”

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To clear that up, in a 1988 compliance guide the FDA states, “Since l938, we have consistently advised canners that we would not initiate regulatory action solely because of their using the designation “pumpkin” or “canned pumpkin” on labels for articles prepared from golden-fleshed, sweet squash, or mixtures of such squash with field pumpkins. The policy itself begins “In the labeling of articles prepared from golden-fleshed, sweet squash or mixtures of such squash and field pumpkin, we will consider the designation “pumpkin” to be in essential compliance with the “common or usual name” requirements.”

So there you have it. My only pumpkin refuge in a sea of pumpkin spiced latte is actually butternut squash pie. Oh well. Pass the whipped cream please. Umm, I mean the water, hydrogenated vegetable oil (including coconut and palm kernel oils), high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, skim milk, light cream (less than 2%), sodium caseinate, and natural and artificial flavor.

 

Food For Thought

Michael 2 Comments

It’s time to clean out the refrigerator. For me it’s that time every time this time of week. I’ll be getting ready to cook.

Perhaps I should start in the middle. When I was in the hospital, because of why I was there my sister naturally was also in the hospital. That took two members of my immediate family out of daily activities including, among other things, cooking. The other two spent much of their time at the hospital while were inpatients, limiting their available time for daily activities including, among other things, cooking. But friends and other relatives eased that burden by creating food chains or meal trains. When it became evident that I was destined for a much longer than anticipated hospital stay and recovery period, those friends and relatives along with friends of relatives and even relatives of friends presented us with the modern equivalent of hot casseroles, gift subscriptions to meal services. So many in fact that this Sunday we will be preparing the last of the gifted meals.

We in this case are my daughter and I. We’ve been spending a day a week almost every week since mid-June, first in her kitchen now in mine, preparing the following week’s meals. This is hardly unique. Much of the working world preps and even pre-cooks the upcoming week’s meals. Even when I was part of the working world I would do some manner of advance preparation. Then it was often a matter of my daughter and I chopping, seasoning, arranging, and storing in a suitable cooking vessel that day’s dinner before I went off to work and she to school each morning. Sometime after her return in the afternoon she cookrd and plated as I dragged myself in from another day at the rat races. (I always bet the #7 rat to win the 7th race by 7 lengths but he never came in.)

So you see, meal prepping is in our blood, or at least on our resumes. Little things like my daughter’s own entry into the working world and my entry into the limited lifting and standing world, coupled with the fact that we no longer live in the same house, make daily prep pretty inconvenient. But the once a week plan has really made life much easier for me.

Something else it’s made me is it’s made me think how fortunate I am to have a daughter who is willing to give up one of her two free days each week to spend with her father. It’s also made me realize that if there are a few others like her out there maybe this world isn’t destined for global annihilation as soon as the last of the Baby Boomers leaves it. The few hours it takes us to chop and season, arrange and cook, store and clean up make for some pretty quality time. And so does the eating and sitting and chatting and re-bonding after.

A family dinner really is a gift. Even a bunch of them all at once.

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Build Me Up, Margarine Cup?

Michael 5 Comments

Over the weekend I happened across a protracted online discussion regarding a new (to me) product by Melt (also new to me), uh, drum roll — butter (not new to me) (I thought).

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Apparently Melt’s “butter” is what us old guys call margarine. Except instead of corn, soybean, canola, or olive oil, it’s made of this year’s designer oils including coconut and sunflower.

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The discussion centered around that the product is labeled butter. Not butter substitute, not vegetable spread, not even “plant butter” ala Country Crock’s vegan spread. Butter. Unlike most of the European countries and Canada, the U.S. does not have a standard for what can be called milk, butter, or a variety of other dairy products. The “for” group pointed to almond milk, soy bacon, and veggie cheese. The “anti” group pointed to almond milk, soy bacon, and veggie cheese. The logic seems to be that each of those products specify its source in the product name and thus does not mislead the consumer.

Personally I have a problem with calling a non-dairy product butter, although I and millions of other carnivores do it routinely when we reach for that tastiest of all spreads, peanut butter. But again, peanut butter isn’t going to be mistaken for the stuff you create sauces with or turn to into cookies (peanut butter cookies, which also use butter butter, notwithstanding). We also confuse issues with the inaccurately named buttermilk, which unlike almond milk is not made with its modifier, and let’s not even talk about head cheese.

So what’s the solution to this confusion. If I had one I’d be chairman of a high powered, and high price, think tank, not writing a blog on a free domain. Maybe we should get back to calling things what they really are, like beef and pork and sausage. But then would even the most hard core meat eater go for “cow,” “pig,” and “your guess is as good as mine?”

 

Cereal Killer

Michael 5 Comments

They are magically delicious. They are often the first real solid foods you eat. They’re great. They are the stuff dreams are made of. Wait! No, those are jewel encrusted golden birds from Malta. But that other stuff, yeah, that they are. And they are cereal.

Today is National Cereal Day. Look, every day is something and today the needle points to those grains used for food, often breakfast, such as wheat, oats, or corn. (Thank you Mr. Merriam. Or Mr. Webster. Can anybody tell those guys apart?)

Can you imagine your life without cereal? Probably not. Even if you aren’t a cereal eater now, you once were. Hot, smooth cereals like cooked creamy rice or wheat are often a baby’s first step from “baby food” to the stuff in the house everybody else eats. Those round oat thingies (Cheerios by name) are most toddlers’ favorite snack and few parents of the youngsters leave home without them. And you confirmed anti-cereal zealots, don’t tell me you don’t have a canister of oatmeal or a box of corn flakes somewhere in that kitchen with the idea that they are just to make cookies or to bread chicken.

cerealI’ll admit I’m not a big boxed cereal eater myself today but I have a decent chunk of pantry space devoted to the foodstuff. Hot cereal is different. I always have multiple containers of old fashioned oats on hand for breakfast, lunch, sometimes dinner, often cookies, just as often bars, and occasionally muffins. But those other cereals usually end up masquerading as “a heathy snack.”

Oddly my favorite cereal from childhood rarely visits my old man kitchen. And it wasn’t even a typical kid brand like Cap’n Crunch. My favorite cereal growing up was plain corn flakes. I’d have a bowl of flakes with a half a banana sliced into it and whole milk. The banana’s other half would go into my school lunch unless somebody got to it first for another breakfast add in. That was breakfast more days than not until I set off for college.

I tried to look up the most popular cereal. I found 5 polls all published within a month of each other, and all wildly different. I guess the most popular depends on where you are, what company is sponsoring the poll, or how honest you feel like being when asked if you prefer Kashi or Fruity Pebbles and your whole pilates class (or bowling team (no judgement here)) is listening.

So we’ll do an informal poll. What is your favorite cereal? Ahh, still no judgement.

 

 

But It’s Just One Day Off

Michael 2 Comments

Somebody figured out that 17 million people did not go to work today (Monday, Feb. 4) in the US specifically because of the Super Bowl. Maybe they had over-celebrated the winners. Perhaps they were overcome with despair for the losers. Maybe they were replaying their favorite commercials on YouTube. Or they were just big immature babies and felt they needed a day off because of the killer hangover from a 9 hour tailgate party.

Seventeen million people are a lot of people to call off at one time. The current American workforce stands at about 154 million. That means 11% of that group just blew off their responsibilities for a football game. Not to play in one. Not to go to one. Not to watch their children in one. But to recover from one. No, not to recover from playing in one. To “recover” from watching one.

That’s dedication. (Sarcasm!) I hope they remember today three months from now when their request for extra days off to extend their upcoming vacation is denied. Or six months from now when they try to turn a Tuesday Fourth of July into a five day weekend and are docked for having already used up all their sick days for the year. Or ten months from now when their Christmas bonus is light, or non-existent. Or next week when the bosses figure out they did just fine with 11% fewer people.

BWings“You mad?” you say? Sort of. More disappointed about what people have come to think is important enough to put their welfare at risk and not just by taking an extra day off. The average super bowl party host will spend as much as the average American family spends on Thanksgiving but mostly on chicken wings and beer. About 1.3 billion chicken wings were consumed Sunday, washed down with 325 million gallons of beer. Some of that beer found its way into people with a history of bad judgement around alcohol. Drinking violations by repeat drunk drivers ordered to stay sober jumps an average of 22% on Super Bowl Sunday, compared to usual Sunday violation rates. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) puts Super Bowl Sunday among the deadliest traffic accident days with other “holidays” like Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick’s Day.

Super Sunday? Sorry. I don’t see it. But I almost took today off. Fortunately I had a good talk with myself and convinced me to post today anyway. Now everybody go on and get back to work. The other 89% can’t keep it up without you forever.

 

Worth The Squeeze?

Michael 4 Comments

Last week had me scratching my head a bit and not due to dandruff or tiny livestock. Maybe you can help explain this.

Full pulp, some pulp, no pulp. Typically I drink Florida orange juice, not from concentrate, because I like the taste. I really mean Florida orange juice or at least juices labeled as a product of the USA and hopefully that doesn’t include California. (But that’s a different post.)

Many orange juice products also include juice from Mexico and Argentina and although I like am not anti-immigrant, I prefer those immigrants not show up in my breakfast juice glass. Really, I can pick up a difference in taste. It might not be the juice. It could other things added to it because we all know that anything that says it’s 100% of something really means “all of it give or take a little.” Anyway, my go to OJ is with the Florida labeled variety with added calcium because I can use all the help I can get and no pulp because … why. Well, what I grabbed was a carton of juice with added calcium and some pulp. Oops!

OJ.pngWhat’s the deal with pulp? Is it to make you believe you are actually sitting on a patio in Florida under the orange trees with the juicer nearby on the table still wet from a fresh squeezing? And why the different levels of pulp in the juice. Full? Some? Extra? How much is some? How much more is full? Is extra more than full? What about just “with pulp” not further specified? Is full really full if it still pours? Can I get a carton of just pulp and eat my juice in the morning? Or would that involve a trip to the produce section? Help!!!

Only orange juice puts the consumer through this selection process. Apple juice is apple juice and there’s a lot more pulp involved with those little orbs. Cranberry juice bottlers don’t ask if you want it skin or skinless. Pineapple juicers don’t give you the option of with or without core. Grapefruits are pretty much like big, tart oranges and that juice is offered as just grapefruit juice options not available.

Maybe orange juice has something to hide behind those strands of what I guess are supposed to be the stuff left over from the pressing. I’d think if there is a ounce of pulp to every glass of juice then my glass just shrunk to 7 ounces. Not cool.  How about the bottlers of my favorite breakfast juice just stick to putting juice in those bottles before I start to question whether that juice is worth that squeeze.

Thank you reading. I needed to get that off my chest. And my back teeth, too. Yuck!

 

 

Who Said So?

Michael 2 Comments

This Saturday is National Coffee Day. It might have been the brain child of somebody at Maxwell House but since it seems to have been celebrated only since 2005 or so, chances are better it was the work of those Starbucks people.  Or maybe not.

Did you know you can find a food to celebrate every day of the year? Some days two or three! Did you ever wonder where they all come from? Cynically, I used to think they are all promotional activities of a company that produces the particular celebrant. But I recently discovered that’s not always the case. In fact it seems to be not often the case.

CuppaThe key that this might be true is is the description of those many heralded food stuffs’ celebratory dates. Quite often they read “probably first observed in…” or “not much is known about the origins of…”. Really? We can pinpoint the day and time Dunkin’ Donuts becomes Dunkin’ (Start of Business, Jan. 1, 2019; parent company will continue to be known as Dunkin’ Brands (in case you really needed to know)) but not when Coffee Day became a day when all those chains that push coffee will push free coffee (probably with an additional purchase) that day. But if it was one of those, would they (it?) not have registered or trademarked or whatevered “Coffee Day” so all caffeine addicts would have to beat paths to their doors and thus take full and sole (or sole and full, even) advantage of those additional purchases?

Maybe they didn’t. Um, they being them, those companies, or associations or user groups or other sort of official folk. Maybe it was John-Bryan Hopkins, founder of the Foodimentary website. In a 2004 interview with Money, he said he created hundreds of such “holidays.” When Foodimentary.com went live in 2006, “there were already around 175 food-related holidays. ‘I filled in the rest,’ he said, to ensure there was at least one food holiday for every day of the year.”

So do we thank Mr. Hopkins for Coffee Day, or International Tea Day (December 15) for non-coffee-drinkers (coffee non-drinkers?)? I don’t know, but thanks to him, if it wasn’t before it is now possible to wake up any day of the year and say to yourself “Self, what makes today unlike any other day, food wise that is?” and have an answer.

By the way, if you can’t wait for Saturday to guzzle a mug full of your favorite stimulant, Friday is Drink a Beer Day.🍺

Cold Comfort (Food)

Michael 4 Comments

We are moving toward the end of summer and harvest time seems to be in full swing at the local farmers’ markets. A modest investment in fresh produce turned into a couple days spinning circles in my tiny kitchen meal prepping for the next few weeks.

I always try to have something ready to eat on the days when I get home from dialysis. My scheduled time at the clinic is 11:30 which puts me back home around 5 in the afternoon. That’s the perfect time to start dinner except the last thing I want to do after dialysis is … well, anything.

During the summer I spend most of my cooking time in front of the grill on the patio. There it is easy to throw on extra of whatever I’m cooking and pack up a second meal that I would heat up for a future dialysis day dinner (DDD). In the winter, not unlike so many kitchens, mine plays host to casseroles, stews, and chilies. All yield multiple meals that can be refrigerated or frozen for use on those days when the thought of actually preparing a meal is more exhausting that actually preparing a meal.

But now we’ve entered that in between season. Eventually even I tire of my fabulous smoked chicken thighs with grilled zucchini planks and I’m not ready for Italian sausage and acorn squash casserole. What to do? Take some of that farmers’ market bounty and turn it into frozen dinners or sides. So yesterday I did just that, blanching beans, stuffing peppers, rolling cabbage leaves, and more. Now I have a freezer full of DDDs.

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The Original

What makes any of this blog worthy? Because today celebrates the birthday of the classic American frozen dinner, Swanson TV Dinner. Yep, Sept 10, 1953 the frozen turkey dinner hit the markets and Swanson figured they’d sell maybe 5,000 of them. The first year they sold over 10 million dinners and created a new market niche.

In 1962 Swanson stopped labeling them as the “TV Dinner” but the term stuck and anybody who ever adjusted a pair of rabbit ears (go ask your grandfather) still calls any frozen meal a TV dinner.

So I’m happy to say I have celebrated National TV Dinner Day with gusto and with gustatory appropriateness (or appropriate gustatoriness).

And it’s been a pleasure to post about anything actually older than me!

More is Less

Michael 2 Comments

It is said everybody has a number. That might be a number of dollars to commit an otherwise distasteful physical act, or a number of times the car stalls before you break down and finance a new one, or perhaps the number of proposals before you finally say yes. For me it was the number of ways to prepare avocado. And the number is 73.

Seventy-three ways to use an avocado was the subject line on the email. A trusted food magazine’s daily email with a new recipe, a reasonably thought out kitchen hack, and some cutesy new way to do something you’d not previously considered like perhaps how to juice concord grapes at home, had with that one subject crossed the line into click bait. And I wasn’t biting.

It was one thing to occasionally sneak in 5 ways to use a watermelon or six flavors to make your coffee. I’d gladly scroll my way through a half dozen ways to spice up my morning caffeine dose. But everybody knows there are only three things you can do with an avocado – chunk into a summer salad, spread onto a wrap, or turn into guacamole. Anything else is a pathetic attempt to create relevance or justify buying a Tesla. See avocado oil.

CensoredWhile we’re talking about Facebook (I did say click bait), did you hear about the spat going on between Dutch tourism and the harbinger of all things questionable? Apparently the Visit Flanders tourist bureau would like to advertise their museums on the site but because the video they prepared includes shots of paintings by Rubens, the site usually not known for decorum refuses to allow the video to post because Rubens painted, er, nude models. It seems the number for Facebook is 1/4, as in the number of inches wide the shoestring covering the nipple of a spring breaker frolicking on the beach must be to make the post “decent.”

Another number that seems to be is 29. As in dollars spent to be free. Once Wayfair was the only site that blatantly barked “the shipping is free” in their ads but it wasn’t unless you spent a minimum amount, theirs being $50. Not to be outdone, etailer after etailer is including free shipping as one of the perks of shopping with them. It just doesn’t happen to be completely free. Shipping charges still show up at checkout sometimes with a little note saying how much more you have to buy in order to qualify for free shipping. Usually that number is 29 less whatever you have already committed to your purchase. Completely free. At least they tell you how much free costs, unlike the infomercial people who will double your order for free. Just pay a separate fee.

So, what’s your number?

McReally

Michael 2 Comments

I really like sandwiches. I’ve done that bit before so I’ll not bore you twice with it. Maybe even three times. Anyway, I like sandwiches. Today I came close to a sandwich trifecta. I made an egg and sausage on English muffin for breakfast, for lunch I had grilled chicken with provolone and zucchini on a hoagie roll, and I came close to grilling a hamburger for dinner. Fortunately I came to my senses and grilled a pork chop instead and actually got to use a knife and fork for one meal.

But that hamburger got me thinking about the sandwich world. Every restaurant has sandwiches. Maybe not the Top of the Marque type places but I can’t afford them so they don’t count. Yes I said that. If you want them to count, put them in your blog. Anyway…every restaurant has sandwiches but it took one that nobody wants to admit patronizing to have made it an institution. New York delis notwithstanding. Of course that is McDonald’s. And I’m not getting any consideration from them for this.

The hamburger thought that popped into my head when that hamburger got me thinking was the Quarter Pounder. You know McDonald’s recently upgraded the Quarter Pounder. No? You didn’t? That’s right. Nobody actually goes to McDonald’s so of course you didn’t. That’s ok. I did. They recently upgraded the Quarter Pounder and a couple of weeks ago I had one. I’m not going to sit in my kitchen and ponder if I would rather fire up the grill and burger it on my own or make the trip down the road to cop dinner. But if I’m on the road and hungry, and an arch topped sign beckons, I could do another one of those.

McRibAh but there’s more to the story. The hamburger thought that popped into my head when that hamburger got me thinking wasn’t just about hamburgers. Because one of the hamburgers that thought popped was the venerable Quarter Pounder, that particular hamburger got me to think about a non-hamburger sandwich from that chain, the McRib. Or you prefer: the McRoo (inaccurate though since it contains no kangaroo meat although rumors do persist) or the McTripe (actually quite accurate since tripe is one of its 70+ ingredients) (sorry) or even the McOhNoI’dNever which is probably also inaccurate because they sell between 30 and 50 million whenever they are released and I only get one) (really).

It’s true. I am a McRibber. I don’t know why but every fall I start looking for the signs that the everything but the kitchen sink sandwich is coming back because I have to have my McPig Fix. Fortunately, unlike certain potatoes chops, I can stop at one. Fortunately because even I will admit they are weird and they also have over 400 calories and you don’t keep a boyish figure like mine (yeah, right) by chowing down on a bagful of those things.

Yes, I really like sandwiches. Even the marginal ones.