9 Sep 2016

A Sweetened Condensed Milk Emergency.

by | posted in: Food | 24
A mug of tea that will make the world a better place, one sip at a time. Photo: Wikipedia.
A mug of tea that will make the world a better place, one sip at a time. Photo: Wikipedia.

 

First, an update:

There were literally thousands of people* who took the first-ever PaperGirl survey the other day and I have been analyzing the results. “Analyzing the results” means I am scrolling through the responses and looking at the pie charts Google creates from the data, smiling and getting misty-eyed because you’re hilarious, kind, thoughtful people. Several of you, judging by the ink blot question, are super deep. I like deep. (There’s still plenty of time to take the survey. The link in this paragraph will take you there.)

In other news, this morning, I realized that I did not remember to buy half-and-half for my morning tea. This is a problem.

Drinking tea with honey without adding any milky fluid doesn’t work for me. I’ll bet a food scientist could tell me why. She would poke her glasses up on her nose with her index finger and say,”Oh, yes, well, that’s simple. You see, when combined in 170-degree tea, your milk polymers bond with your honey polymers and create what’s known as the ‘Earl Grey Bliss Point’ (EGBP) flavor profile.”

I would slap her on the back and say, “I knew it! Thanks, doc!” And the scientist would look startled and charge me $2,045 for the hour she took to tell me why I like what I like.

It’s happened before that I have been without half-n-half and I have solved this in different ways. I’ll make black coffee, say. Or I’ll pull on some pants and go down to the Peet’s Coffee on the corner and get a latte, which is a real treat and the only thing that cheers me up at times like these. But I looked really bad this morning: mascara under my eyes, crazy hair, and I needed a shower after running around the 90-degree Chicago heat the day before. I couldn’t inflict myself upon the good people of Peet’s Coffee.

Did I have a can of milk in the pantry? Sometimes I have those for cooking various treats. I peered into the shelf. No dice. But what did I spy? What can of milky substance did I spy with my little, squinty, dry-contacted eye?

Sweetened condensed milk.

But that would be ridiculous, I thought. What is this, Over The Rainbow Magic Fairy Dust Land? Nobody puts sweet, thick, delicious, almost-dulce-de-leche sweetened condensed milk in their tea! In the morning! Before they eat breakfast!

Unless they do. Unless they have to. Unless it’s an emergency problem situation.  

It was so good. It was like, so good. Earl Grey Creme tea with sweetened condensed milk in it is something I could get used to. This is partly due to the flavor of the stuff, but also because I thought I’d better brew my tea extra dark so that it could handle the sweetness of the goo and the resulting beverage was rocket fuel. Woo! I rode my bike to class in like six seconds.

Sweetened condensed milk in your tea is officially PaperGirl Recommended.

 

*Please tell me there weren’t a handful of people who took the survey 1,000 times.

11 May 2015

Feed Me, Kansas City.

by | posted in: Food | 0
You're dead to me, pig. Photo: Wikipedia
You’re dead to me, pig. Image: Wikipedia

Last night, I ate a rack of barbeque ribs. The entire rack. And I have no regrets.

I don’t clean my plate too often. There’s usually something I can’t eat or something I don’t like as much as something else (sorry beets, but I am eating blue cheese instead of you.) So when the waiter comes to take away my plate, he’s gonna have to scrape stuff into the garbage. Now hang on: I’m not wasteful, I’m just not a plate-licker. Last night was an exception.

Mom and I are in Kansas City lecturing to the hundreds (!) of attractive, talented women of the Lee’s Summit Quilt Guild. We arrived around five o’clock yesterday and had time to have dinner together. This would have been terrific no matter what day it was, but it was Mother’s Day! It was super to be with Mom on Mother’s Day.

We went to Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza district; if you’ve never visited, you must make it there someday. The area is four miles south of downtown and is all cobblestones, terracotta tiles and fountains. The folks who designed it modeled the whole thing after Seville, Spain, so you get the picture. Have I mentioned lately how much I love the work I do, work that allows me to travel the great United States? Well, I’m mentioning it again.

We went to Houston’s for dinner. Houston’s has been in Kansas City for well over thirty years, maybe longer. (Research tells me they have a handful of locations in other cities, now.) The wait for a table was over an hour, but Mom and I spied a couple stools at the bar and nabbed them.

I saw this man eating this slab of meat and every fibre of my being screamed, “Eat that! Please eat that as soon as possible!” I ordered the barbeque pork ribs and skipped the coleslaw and fries for a side of broccoli. I know, I hate me, too.

I ate that slab of ribs like it was the first meal I had had in a month. I didn’t do the flip-top head thing and insert the entire slab, whole, into my face. If I could’ve I might’ve. Those ribs were so buttery, so succulent, I’m weeping as I write this. The sauce was the perfect balance of tangy and sweet and the sauce seemed to have soaked through the meat as it cooked: this was not meat painted with sauce. This was meat doing naughty, naughty things with sauce. This slab of ribs was sacrilegiously, slap-yo-mama good. All right, maybe I just haven’t had decent ribs in awhile, but I don’t think I was just rib-deprived. These were the Lord’s ribs.

Anyway, I ate the whole thing, bone by bone. I sucked the things dry. The broccoli felt a little left out until I was done with my plate and then they got their big moment when I used the stuff to wipe up the sauce. I realize I may have painted an undignified, unladylike picture of me with BBQ sauce all over my face, panting over a plate of bones. This is my fault. I tried to dab the corners of my mouth with my white linen napkin but if anyone sitting close had looked at me closely, they would’ve seen wolverine in my eyes.

I go to Chicago next week (I know), then Wisconsin for my sister’s wedding (I know!) and then it’s to St. Louis for a BabyLock event. Looks like I need to attack polish sausage, cheese, and toasted ravioli, in that order. Until those pit stops, fasting on water is perhaps wise.

6 Sep 2014

A Problematic Crouton.

by | posted in: Art, Food | 1
Judgemental croutons, since there are no pics of the Top Chef show on Wikipedia. But there are croutons.
Judgemental croutons, since there are no pics of the Top Chef show on Wikipedia. There are croutons, though.

 

While designing and sewing together my latest quilt — a complicated affair — I took in a little Top Chef on Hulu. I watched the entirety of Season 9 and enjoyed it, but I’ve had enough of that show for a while. I’m pushing my plate away. I’m dabbing the corners of my mouth with my cloth napkin. I’m telling the waiter to not serve me any more…metaphors.

Top Chef is a great show. I watched 17 episodes back to back over the course of about ten days as I stitched and snipped through the evenings. It’s good television. But either the show changed or I forgot just how grave it all is, and by the last four episodes, the vacuum of food-centric seriousness began to (cheese) grate on me.

The judges got to me first. Each judge is a talented and successful food industry person who has earned his/her opinion on kumquat, fried caper blossoms, fried caper kumquat blossoms, etc., etc. You’ve got restaurateurs, cookbook authors, chefs, vintners, celebrities in their industry — hard workers all, at the top of their game. Plus, the three main host/judges, Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi, and Gail Simmons, have been conducting Top Chef for years. They not only know food, wine, and chef-i-ness, they know Top Chef.

But all this success and knowledge is diminished after too long in hyper-focus. I don’t know if that hyper-focus is the nature of the show itself or the nature of watching an entire season in about as much time as it takes to roast a turkey. Either way, let’s look at some examples of what started to burn me out.

Example 1 
Gail Simmons, pained, looks at Contestant X, who is also pained. Simmons then looks at Tom Colicchio, then back at Contestant X. “That crouton was…problematic,” Simmons says, and folds her hands. Contestant X deflates, stares hard at ground.

Example 2
Tom Colicchio, pained, looks at agonized, pained Contestants Y and Z. “I just don’t understand,” Colicchio says, earnestly baffled. “Where was the cohesion? I’m eating arugula, I’m eating cod. The cod and the arugula were not having a conversation. That was upsetting.” Contestants Y and Z shuffle feet, mumble something about the oven not being hot enough. Colicchio doesn’t blink.

Look, I get that the stakes are high. There’s a lot riding on the competition and it is a cooking show. But the problematic croutons feel silly at a certain point.

The contestants started getting to me next, but not because I decided I didn’t like them personally. I make a small portion of my living being on television, and I know firsthand how unfair it is to pass judgment on people you have never met simply because they show up on a screen in your home. A few edited minutes on camera hardly illustrates the grand symphony of one human’s experience, so judge not.

In fact, it was precisely this human shrinkage that I couldn’t get over. I’m certain the show’s audience sees 10-15% of what’s filmed in a day of Top Chef activity, and I got more and more frustrated at the style of editing we the audience are made to endure. Let’s say this is an actual sentence said by a contestant on Day 26 of the competition:

“There are no useable cherries in this bag. What the heck am I supposed to do with this? Oh, wait. Phew! Here they are! Gosh, I was really worried for a second. Sorry, that was uncalled for. Hey, does anyone have any lip balm? It’s windy on this mountaintop where we have to cook fresh fish that we caught ourselves with one hand behind our back. I really need some lip balm because I’m concerned that my lip is cracking.”

What you get on the show is this:

“There are no useable cherries in this bag. What the heck am I supposed to do with this?… I was really worried… It’s windy… We have to cook… I’m cracking.”

The fractured image I was getting of the contestants, the characters I was seeing as shaped by the producers and line editors, it all just stopped working for me.

I love to cook and I love to sew and I love to see talented people doing what they love. Therefore, I enjoy shows like Project Runway and Top Chef, because it’s interesting to watch real people do hard things that they (usually) love to do. But it’s only fashion, and it’s only food, and it’s just a bit much after so many hours, even when I’m busy doing my own art. Maybe some people live in a world where they mete out an episode a week for themselves, even while entire seasons are at their fingertips, but I am not those people. I go big when I’m home.