Food restrictions

Going out to eat with friends or family is one of life’s greatest pleasures. At least it should be. But it turns into an exercise in frustration and mortification when that loved one has food restrictions.

Being gluten-free is child’s play in the face of folks who are trying to work a menu when they are avoiding dairy, nightshades, high-fructose corn syrup or sugar in any form, prefer their water filtered, and are currently avoiding eight major foods as part of an elimination diet.

This is when I’d like to eliminate them. Or disappear into the floor of the restaurant, after giving the server a sympathetic look and a massive tip.

We all thought Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally was a high-maintenance diner. While she might be the patron saint of these picky eaters, her requests for salad dressing or ice cream on the side seem downright quaint.

It’s great that as a society we’ve evolved to the point that we can cut out major food groups and pantry staples from our diet. It’s a modern first-world problem. The Irish weren’t in a position to cut out starches or any other foodstuff when the famine hit the Emerald Isle, for feck’s sake. And I bet a starving child in Burundi would be more than happy to down that lobster mac and cheese you just poo pooed, dairy, gluten and shellfish sensitivities be damned.

If you don’t want to eat something, navigate toward a more palatable dish on the menu or stay home and roast an organic chicken. Don’t ask the chef to change a dish he or she spent considerable time perfecting. And don’t broadcast your laundry list of food issues to the table. This type of extreme self care just comes off as an attempt to pull focus from what really matters—that lobster mac and cheese, of course. I’m packing Prilosec.

Bay shrimp

I love shrimp, I do. So the description of “bay shrimp,” found on menus at crusty country clubs everywhere, sounds delightful to me, like the shrimp had been surfing some tasty waves off the Baja Peninsula before it was netted.

So, so off base.

Rather, bay shrimp are teeny-tiny versions of a grown-ass shrimp. These embryos look like they should have had more time in the water to gestate and become fully cooked. As they are, they look like they should be sent off for stem cell research instead of dressed with ranch dressing or made into seafood salad.

In lieu of a scoop of Bay shrimp, I’ll take two to three grilled prawns, thank you very much. Drop that pink larvae on a decomposing body so it can get to work or ship it off to some fisherman so it can be used as bait for something more worthwhile.

(Photo: seattlefishcompany.com) 
-->

Ancient grains

Question: What is Amaranth?

1. A city in the Holy Land where Jesus reputedly lost his sandals
2. A flowering bulb similar to Amaryllis
3. The latest celebrity baby name
4. An gluten-free ancient grain

You probably have a frenemy who sings the praise of a gluten-free lifestyle when you’re tucking into Eggs Benny at brunch, so you know the answer is 4. You also know that ancient grains and their grassy-eyed acolytes need to be ground into a fine flour.

Along with spelt, ancient grains like quinoa and teff sound more like onomatopoeia describing a punch to the gut than a digestible alternative to wheat. And Quaker Oats had to go and get on the picky foodie bandwagon. They just rolled out quinoa granola bars. What’s next? Millet Pop Tarts? Kamut Krunch cereal?

Ancient grain devotees think there’s some magical quality associated with something that’s old, that rated a mention in the Bible. Newsflash: that prophet in Ezekiel eating millet? It didn’t give him the key to eternal life. Back in the BC days, they suffered a high infant mortality rate, plagues, short lifespan, and a host of problems that were not going to be cured by a bowl of wheat berry porridge. Now, if these foods had antibiotic-infused kernels that would keep my UTIs in check or heal a wound, I'd be the first in line to cook up this stuff for consumption or a poultice.

Ancient grains may be healthy but they’re not the way to the promised land. That’s what kale is for.

Desserts in jars

I love Anthropologie, I do, but I don't want to eat there.

These days, restaurants—so precious that I want to squeeze their white-washed and reclaimed wood cheeks—are squeezing all sorts of tasty cakes, crisps, puddings and brulées into Mason and Ball jars.

Adorable.

But what looks like a saccharine craft project becomes another kind of project, as I try to scrape, pull, and otherwise extract all of the tasty goodness out of the jar and into my piehole with a spoon or fork that doesn't have the same curvature. Serve my molten chocolate cake with a spatula, if you insist on stuffing it into a jar better suited for jam.

Let my dessert breathe on the plate, so I can breathe a sigh of relief.

(The idea for this post comes from a friend with the last name, ironically, of Mason.)

(photo: cynthiashaffer.typepad.com)

Thanksgiving control freaks

Folks love Thanksgiving for a buttload of reasons: family, football, food. I love Thanksgiving because I like to eat myself sick. But as I get older, I realize that for many, it's not about food, it's about control, and not in an awesome Janet Jackson way. Let me explain.
I traveled with my pal to her parents' home for Thanksgiving a few years back. Cousins, siblings, parents, and friends gathered around a perfectly appointed table for a perfectly planned-out meal. This was the kind of house that had enough matching chairs and china for a party of 12.

It was a little schmancy for me but I wasn't going to complain because, hey, stuffing! And I was too busy trying to figure out which fork to use for the mâche with satsuma and crystallized pansies. I helped serve the turkey, which had been carved offsite in the kitchen, and was gently admonished to serve from each person's left.

Well, at least I hadn't spilled anything…yet.

All this was fine, as my discomfort was about to be alleviated by dessert. One of the cousins brought a scrumptious apple pie and I couldn't wait to tuck into it, perhaps with a cup of coffee. 

Then time stopped.

The lovely, albeit tightly-wound, hostess appeared in the doorway holding a Le Creuset casserole dish. Poached. Pears. In. Port.

It was at this moment that I climbed back down the social ladder and stepped onto the firm ground of the lower middle class. I may not have money, but I do have taste. Thanksgiving dessert should involve pie, cake, crisp, cobbler, cookies, mousse, brûlée, ice cream, or some combination thereof. It should never ever consist solely of baked fruit in fortified wine. There were children at the table, for the love of Myles Standish.

Where was the pie, you ask?

Good question. I found it later, squirreled away on top of the fridge. My only saving grace is that it tasted amazing at 11pm with a cold glass of milk under the cover of darkness. This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful that while I veer into the land of the obsessive-compulsive, I'm generous enough to allow other people to bring things to the table, be it a talent, an idea, or a pie. If someone asks if they can bring something to dinner, say yes. While Thanksgiving often means cock-blocking the kitchen for many hosts and hostesses, it should be about abundance and generosity. Sure, that shot-in-the-ass green bean casserole might not pair well with your sav blanc, but someone made it out of tradition and/or love so pass the dish to your neighbor and reach for your ramekin of emmentaler gratin instead.

For the record, this year I'm making salted caramel pie and a fruit crisp. In recent years, I've made this sweet potato cheesecake from Kingfish Cafe, which is always a big hit. 

(photo: taylor.pt) 

Blow Pops

Rifling through my Halloween candy got me to thinking about what sweet treats have been a party in my mouth and what candy needs to be kicked to the curb.
I'll always break for the 100 Grand Bar, Milk Duds, a Tootsie Pop, M&Ms, and an Almond Joy.

But I have no patience for the wastes of space that are Jujubes, Dum Dums, Three Musketeers, Skittles and the aptly named Blow Pop.

Much like cross-pollinated food, Blow Pops are the Frankenstein of candy and decidedly NOT greater than the sum of its parts.

Back in the day, I couldn't wait to go to my brothers' Little League games. The concessions table fucking rocked. Pixy Stix, candy bars, Double Bubble, suckers. With all these choices, I reached for a Blow Pop. In its festive wrapper and promise of two candies in one, my 7-year-old self was powerless to resist.

As I popped it into my mouth, everything was initially a-okay. But as I wore away the candy shell, it collapsed into the bubble gum center.

Blow me.

While I always enjoyed peanut butter in my chocolate, I didn't like shards of hard candy comingling with my gum. The two textures were confusing to my young palate and left me wishing my lollipop would pick a lane. A Blow Pop is my personal cautionary tale to dial back the greedy. I mean, look what happened to all those grubby-fingered little punks who visited Willy Wonka's factory.

Less is more.

(photo: stanton-grade-three.blogspot.com)

Unsalted nuts

Auntie Mame wisely observed that “Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!” Well, I’d amend that to say that, in 2012, life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are eating unsalted nuts on their way to their CrossFit class.

Like a dinner roll, nuts are a vehicle for something else. Rolls need to be buttered and my nuts need to be salted. Come to think of it, my buttered rolls need to be salted, too.

These days, many diets sing the praises of nuts, saying they are great sources of protein and energy. So I snack. Trader Joe’s trail mixes, almonds, pistachios—these all have a place in my laptop or workout bag.

But whether or not I’m sweating out the sodium and electrolytes, I need salty nuts. Yes, I meant to say that. Salt in any form is necessary to enjoy a handful of toasted pecans or a schmear of almond butter.

Eschew the raw cashew and unsalted pistachio. They may provide fuel but so do packets of GU energy gel and you don’t see me squeezing that stuff into my gob, do you? I want to enjoy every single thing I put into my mouth, not munch on boring, flavorless nuts in the name of health. I may be fit, but unsalted nuts make me sick. I’m bringing some flavor back into my life, one honey-roasted peanut at a time.

(photo: ifyouwriteit.com)

Restaurants that don't put salt on the tables

Saturday, I had the most amazing meal at the newest hot spot in town. Brick walls, warm candlelight, waiters with Ira Glass eyewear and corresponding attitude, hour-long waits. You know the place.

This time, the food lived up to the hype. We ordered the tasting menu and soon, a dizzying array of appetizers hit our table, followed by homemade spaghetti. Then came two entrees, one of which was pork cheeks, a dish that will dance through my dreams. Two desserts brought up the rear and went straight to my rear.

All in all, a perfect evening.

Well, except for one tiny little thing that forced me to bust out a four-letter word.

Salt.

Much like my personality, my palate runs toward the salty side. While I usually order dishes based on how the chef wants them prepared, I also want the right to season my food to my palate's preference. I want to sprinkle bread with sea salt after I dip it in olive oil. I want to add a pinch to the Bolognese sauce, which, while full of flavor, was a little too Healthy Choice for my taste buds.

But there was no shaker or cellar in sight. Like a napkin and silverware, salt on the table should be a given. Don't make me ask for it and don't arch your judgmental foodie eyebrow at me when I do. While I may be rubbing salt in the wounded ego of Chef Fancy-Pants, it's definitely preferable to punching you where your taste receptors don't shine.

(photo: luxist.com)

White pizza

I have similar feelings about white pizza as I do about white chocolate and white-bean chili.

In a word, imposter.

White pizza a big round tasty breadstick but it’s not pizza. I may not be Italian but I’ve eaten a buttload of pizza during the course of la mia dolce vita. A perfect pizza, with chewy crust, bubbling cheese, and a tangy tomato sauce, can cause me to temporarily lose my mind, only to find it right next to an empty pizza box or tray. I have been known to hoover the whole thing, be it a thick Chicago-style pizza from Gino’s East or a homemade jobber with a cornmeal-dusted crust and fresh sauce.

A white pizza, however, has never inspired me to do more than flip the page on the menu and order another carafe of chianti. I need some color in my life and if I can’t get it from my pizza, I’ll just drink my dinner instead. I’m not saying it’s not tasty but when faced with a choice between a pizze bianche or a tomato pie, why would I ever choose the white one? Olive oil is an oil, not a sauce.

I call bullshit on white pizza.

(photo: emerilware.com)

Vegan baked goods

The farmers market in my neighborhood is a delicious place of magic, wonder, and things to delight the senses. I love to peruse the stalls, sampling soups and spreads and breads. The vegan bakery looks so charming, like etsy was blended with anthropologie and shot through with a dash of country café. 

So I suspend my disbelief and reach for a peach muffin.

Five dollars lighter, I lick my lips and prepare to make my oral assault. What’s that? How is it? Ummm, hmmm, gaaaaa, uhhh, kakakaaaaaaaa.

Hey, thanks for that sip of organic goat’s milk. Whew. I forgot there for a minute that sawdust is vegan.

I’m pretty particular when it comes to breads, pastries, pies, and baked goods. Since I don’t eat them every day, I want to make sure that when I do, it transports me to my grandmother’s kitchen, an authentic pâtisserie, or a dessert cart at a four-star restaurant.

I don’t want to conjure up the lumber yard, lawn clippings, or a wood chipper.

When it comes to baked goods, no butter + no eggs = no dice. There’s a lot to be said for going vegan, sure, but melt-in-your-mouth muffins and flaky croissants sure as shit isn’t a vegan baker’s sweet spot.

(photo: espressoandcream.com)

Cake pops

They’re cute, sure. Adorable, in fact.

However.

The Zooey Deschanel of desserts, this twee treat gives me a toothache just thinking about its sweetness. Generally made of boxed (i.e. processed) cake mix and sugar, lots of sugar, these pops are more precious than playful. They are edible craft projects. When a recipe calls for an edible ink pen, the dessert becomes a fondon’t in my cookbook.

All this could perhaps be forgiven if the cake pop actually tasted amazeballs. It doesn’t. Sorry to skewer this treat trend, but I’d rather be knee-deep in a piece of pie.

(photo: bakerella.com)

Gwyneth Paltrow’s un-selfconsciousness

Darling girl of the flatironed hair and the clothes-hanger frame, I’ve defended you. I’ve often quite liked you as a person and an actress. I, for one, wasn’t happy to see your head gifted to Morgan Freeman in Seven. I think you are talented, chic, in tune. You even look good in a jumpsuit.

However.

No longer are you the Apple of my eye, a sartorial Moses leading us to the promised land where we vacation with Valentino, cook with Batali, and rock out with Beyoncé. What you are is delusional. You don’t have delusions of grandeur; rather, you—of the famous parents, even more famous godfather, and Spence pedigree—think you’re just like us plebs.

If only.

It started with goop, your unctuous, ooky website and e-newsletter that offers up your picks for a fabulous soup-to-nuts lifestyle. It continued with your self-congratulatory cookbook My Father’s Daughter. “We've got a wood-burning pizza oven in the garden—a luxury, I know, but it's one of the best investments I've ever made.” Fuck you and your macrobiotic, organic, Michael Pollan-approved diet. Now, you’ve launched goop city, an app of twee drawings and footage of you Julie McCoying it—in stilettos, no less—all over Manhattan.

Groucho Marx reputedly said, “I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” Well, Gwynnie, you already assume you’re a card-carrying member of Average Joe middle America. And I think you and I both know that a woman who sleeps with a rock star in her bed and an Oscar on the mantle is not exactly a mere mortal. Go back to Mount Olympus and leave us be with our Cheez Whiz.

20-minute coffee prep

I don't know what's going on back there but this isn’t the Manhattan Project. It's a flippin' cup of coffee. While your coffee contraption looks like it was made by Skynet, I'm pretty sure it's not going to enable time travel. And it sure as hell isn't going to help me get back the 20 minutes I've been waiting patiently by the sugar station. What it—and you—are doing, however, is terminating my patience.

You don’t need to take the scenic route to get to my drink destination. Really. Just jump on the espressoway and knock that shit out. Don't wax rhapsodic about your special blend that was picked by monkeys on the north face of a mountain in Columbia. Don't spam me with your disdain for my decaf order. And while I appreciate your java jive, I don't need or want you to craft a flower or devil or my silhouette in my cappuccino's microfroth.

And when you take that long, you're setting up unreasonable expectations. If I don’t have an orgasm on my first foamy sip, your fine art of grinding, steaming, and frothing is lost on me. And that's truly a shame.

(photo: webdesignerdepot.com)

Oatmeal raisin cookies

Mmm, a delicious golden-brown cookie, studded with scrumptuous bits and pieces. Just what the sweet tooth ordered. I reach for the treat, sink my teeth into its chewy goodness, and FREAK MY SHIT OUT.

Goddamn raisins.

As far as I’m concerned, a raisin is a poor man’s chocolate chip when it comes to an oatmeal cookie (and maybe everything else). I grew up eating my grandma’s cowboy cookie recipe, which my mother invariably burnt every time. However, dunked in ice-cold 2-percent, crispy chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies became sublimely soggy and the Hershey’s bittersweet chips made my little heart beat a little faster.

I have since perfected the recipe and it’s pretty much the only cookie I make. When I’m at a café or friend’s house, I am drawn to the plate of oatmeal cookies. Obviously, those little brown specs are chocolate chips. Why would you use anything else? More often than I’d like to admit, I feel betrayed by the baker, tricked by the bait-and-switch.

Chocolate always bests raisins in the Rochambeau of baked goods.

(photo: levainbakery.com)

Calorie-laden beverages

I've long suspected Starbucks mochachocalattes are chock full of death but like most people, didn’t think that hoovering one once in a while was a big whoop.

I was reading my Glamour mag in the tub as I’m wont to do when I came across this atrosh fact (see photo). One 32-ounce Dunkin Donuts Coffee Coolatta® with cream plus whipped cream is—wait for it—904 calories and 57 grams of fat. NINE HUNDRED FOUR FATASS, ARTERY-CLOGGING, LOVE-HANDLE-INDUCING CALORIES! There’s not even any booze in it! A company has to work hard to add that many calories to a cup. If you’re on a diet and counting calories, that’s 3/4ths of your day’s total caloric intake. I’m all for personal responsibility, but chucklehead companies like Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks are reprehensible for putting this gutbomb on the menu.

With a nod to Jeff Foxworthy, you might be drinking your doom if…

• there’s whipped cream on top of cream
• the cup could be used as a planter or a punch bowl
• if the beverage® has a registered symbol after its name
  
• the beverage’s name is nothing found in a dictionary
• the drink contains nothing found in nature

I know this isn’t exactly a laff riot, but neither is your health.

Lactose intolerants in denial

This anything-but-cheesey post comes from my brilliant and hilarious friend Karrie Kohlhaas (she's the force behind ThoughShot Consulting, in case you need any small-business consulting). I love it almost as much as I love cheese. Urp.

Your dairy air is dangerous. I know, you loooove ice cream and cottage cheese, but lactose transforms your insides into a Dr. Seussian smell factory. It's time to get real about your digestion, honey. Can't you feel the pressure against your abdominal wall as gasses mushroom and multiply within the twisting tubes of your inner world?

Don't you wonder why people steer clear of you?

Here's a clue: It's awkward to feel compelled to casually cover one's nose and mouth with the top of one's shirt when sharing a seat on the bus or standing behind you in line at the grocery store. This is not a personal health issue; you are an environmental hazard. Enzymes: get some, before the EPA classifies you as a SuperFund Project.

(photo: cvmbs.colostate.edu)

TIWTPITF: The Indian version

TIWTPITF goes international today. My friends Kathy and Dustin have been traveling through India and have compiled the following list of things they want to punch in the bindi. Namaste.

1. Indian light switches. You have to press them in a counter-intuitive way to turn them on, they're not marked so half of them do nothing, and there are a million switches on one plate. Well, maybe 8. But we counted 38 switches just in our room. You can't just plug something into an outlet. You have turn the switch to the outlet on. Otherwise, you'll be charging your camera battery for 8 hours and it won't do a damn thing.

2. Amul Butter. This is a popular company (and probably a monopoly). The butter comes in little single serving packages—you know, like at the pancake house. They're on the table for breakfast. The only thing is you can never open the fucking things. Wouldn't you think that the design to open them would be a no brainer? Usually one of the servers comes over and opens it for me. The helpless American.

3. Car horns. Obviously there is no regulation. They all sound differently: duck quacks, farts, musical, and screeching. It's the last that is the most horrible, especially when you're riding in an open tuk tuk and the horn blowing maniac is right next to you. They show no restraint or control.

Foodies

Don’t sniff it, don’t eyeball it, don’t comment on how it’s plated like a pagoda or a Zen garden, don’t detail the 39 steps it took to make it, don’t start comparing it to the meal you had at El Bulli, and don’t complain about the new chef while alternately giving me his culinary CV.

I don’t want to hear it. I just want to eat it.

I love food as much as the next person. I like food the way Homer likes his doughnuts and burgers and junk food aisle, oh my.

But a food snob I am not. You’ll never find me asking whether my Copper River salmon was gill-netted and bled and dressed on site. I’ll never lift a fiddlehead fern and wax rhapsodic about hunting the zenmai in East Asia during a trip with Anthony Bourdain. I’ll fork that fern and put it where it belongs: my belly.

Don’t put nettle pasta on a pedestal, put it in your piehole. After all, it’s food. You’re supposed to eat it, not dissect it.

Sometimes, I just want to eat a box of mac and cheese, and not the Annie’s kind. And I don’t need you to tell me how to zest it up with Emmentaler cheese and Linguiça. Don’t take the comfort out of my food or I might have to bust out the mandoline and create a new dish of hurt.

(photo: mmonroedesigninspiration.wordpress.com)

Mushy ice cream

I like my ice cream like I like my men: sweet, satisfying, and firm.

It always stumps me when folks take ice cream out to soften before serving. So you might sprain your wrist scooping out some rock-hard Rocky Road. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And the reward is a bowl or cone of delicious, headache-inducing ice cream.

When it starts melting as soon as it hits the bowl or dripping down the cone, it’s dead to me. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I’ll still suck it down through a straw, but I won’t be happy about it. If I wanted a milkshake, I would have gotten the blender out. If I wanted soft-serve, I would beeline to the closest DQ. Ice cream is supposed to be hard and cold—after all, it’s called ICE cream. The harder it is to begin with, the slower I can eat it. If it's already at a mushy stage when it hits the bowl, it's just going to dissolve into a puddle of dairy unless I shovel it into my piehole stat.

It may go without saying, but I'll have my scoop of ice cream next to my warm piece of pie, thank you. Better yet, can you put it in a separate bowl?

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonfever0)

Burger King

I don’t know about other plebians, but I like my monarch to be regal, a bit stately even. I want them to sit on a throne, not an electric bull. I want them to issue edicts, not throw a Frisbee or work the pole. He's behaving more like the Hamburglar than a to-the-strip mall-born Burger King.

This crowned creepshow slinks around, focusing on silly shenanigans instead of smacking down insurgents and knighting rock stars like a proper king. He’s a royal pain in the ass and gives me a whopper of a stomach ache. I’d punch him in the face, but I’m pretty sure I’d hurt myself, what with the shiny, happy plastic that is his head.