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One Show at a Time

You know how Mork would occasionally (ok, maybe it was once) show up on Happy Days for no good reason? And I’m pretty sure Laverne & Shirley crossed over too despite the shows being set in different decades. It was misguided and wrong, characters need to stay in their own settings. I recently experienced the foodie equivalent.

Eh, I guess there wasn’t any time travel/messing with eras in this circumstance. Maybe it was more like when you were a kid and you’d see your teacher at the grocery store. That was always unsettling. It was getting late, a little past midnight on a Sunday and I was trying to prepare for a new Monday earlier rise. We were watching a recording of One Plate at a Time and Rick Bayless was in the Yucatan talking about his friend Jacques and how he has a condo in Playa del Carmen and great things happen when Jacques around, and I was like who is this Jacques douche. And then Rick answered my question, "Jacques is, well he’s your other favorite public television chef, Jacques Pepin."

Baylesspepin

WTF?! I seriously thought I was hallucinating. I'm not sure if it was because I was tired, but this was seriously the most laugh out loud funny thing I'd seen on TV in a long time. Jacques is supposed to be in Connecticut cooking fast food his way, not wearing a tunic and a dude necklace and eating nopales. The cross-breeding was just bizarre. I almost expected Ming Tsai, who’s also fond of the dude necklace, to show up call everyone “guys” and work some east meets west magic with black beans and fermented black beans. Ok, now I’m totally being a public television food geek.

I've never associated Bayless with Pepin, though a commonality is that they both have/had shows and books where they cook with their red-headed daughters—no one seems to remember Cooking with Claudine from the mid-‘90s. Somehow both One Plate at a Time and Fast Food My Way have developed into our favorite DVRd food picks, though. I’d never thought about Pepin one way or the other, but James is hooked on his show and I’ve been getting sucked in. I was never crazy about Rick Bayless either, we kind of started watching him as a joke because he's so stonerish, but his grown up hippy style has grown on us and now I’m gung ho on going to Mexico.

Hope Things Turn Around for U Soon

News006c A Tuesday New York Post with some Braunstein nonsense on the cover has been sitting on my coffee table for a few days but it wasn’t until this afternoon that I actually scrutinized it. Despite being home sick, I was filled with vim and vigor after eyeballing the photo of his victim’s mirror that he had scrawled on before leaving.

“BYE – HOPE THINGS TURN AROUND FOR U SOON” written on a mirror (the same cheapo mirror/medicine cabinet that I have and also had at my previous dwelling. I think 90% of NYC apartments have that tri-paneled, ugly thing with white trim) after chloroforming and performing unseemly acts for 13 hours is like the funniest, flippest thing I’ve ever seen. So upbeat, and a great sentiment for many situations, big and small.

The caring message could apply to high profile crap like the mean daddy Baldwin call or the Virginia Tech rampage or it could be used to smooth over asinine NYC-centric problems.  “Sorry you were outbid on a condo—bye, hope things turn around for u soon,” sorry you’re 41 and can’t conceive, sorry you can’t get a table at Waverly Inn. Or better yet, sorry your mom died because the crowds at Waverly Inn blocked her ambulance. Braunstein’s the new Hallmark.

Kristall Clear

Img_pear_2 I love to eat but I don’t really love weekday lunch. At my relatively still new job people make use of their full hour and aren’t big desk eaters. That’s wise, I’m trying to get there. I’m simply a desk eater because I can’t deal with crowds and the 12-2 crush raises my blood pressure (for real—I’d like to believe this study mentioned in the NY Times last week about dark chocolate being as effective as beta blockers in controlling blood pressure. They specifically mentioned atenolol, which is what I take because I seem to have the health level of a sedentary middle-aged man who has smoked and eaten red meat his entire life).

I just ran across the street to grab a bagel at Au Bon Pain who doesn’t make even remotely good bagels but there aren’t a lot of options around Broad and Beaver streets. It’s always frenzied and I start getting all distracted and unable to make a decision and thought I should get a seltzer because I was getting tired of the tap water I’d been lugging around in a Poland Springs bottle (I usually get a couple weeks out of each bottle before I start worrying about germs). I didn’t see any club soda so I blindly grabbed an inoffensive, clear, sparkling pear beverage in a glass bottle. I was a little bummed to realize it contained sugar after I sat down but it was fairly light and more fruity, plus, how often do you find a pear soda?

I attempted to read about the faux gastro pub craze in New York and tried not to let the bustling around me bug me out (why do I have beta blockers when I really need tranquilizers?). It wasn’t until I got back to the office that I realized my name was in the Swedish brand of all natural fruit soda.

I know, big deal if your name is John or something but I’ve never been blessed with namesake anything, (though in Budget Travel I discovered a Buenos Aires boutique hotel called Krista) not even things meant to be personalized. I even see Krystal, which seems unusual, more than Krista. Off the top of my head, there are burgers, a Filipino (one of the other Krista Garcias in the world is a teenager in the Philippines) mini chain in NYC (hmm, looks like they just closed their Manhattan branch) and a new bar I just noticed Saturday on Queens Blvd.

So now I love Kristall soda even though I normally hate soda. Oh my god, I just found out something horrifying about Kristall: they also produce a beverage called Julmust. I have no idea how it tastes, but with hops and malt extract listed it sounds suspiciously close to my least favorite foodstuff in the universe that I just mentioned yesterday, malta. Kristall clearly has a dark side.

Beefing up the Selection

Western_beef_new_ads

It’s just a grocery store but I’ve always had a thing for Western Beef, at least the Ridgewood headquarters. It’s not remotely fancy, I can’t get my Kashi bars or Fage yogurt, just Quaker and Danon, but it’s certainly a notch above Associated or C-Town (Friday the NY Post had a funny full page ad where C-Town price compared a pile of around 25 Krasdale items to the name brands and showed how you’d save like $75).

Western_beef_new_international_aisl

I was excited this past weekend to see that WB has revamped/reorganized its “ethnic” offerings, which consists of a bounty of Latin American and Caribbean brands with a few Eastern European items tossed in. You’re shit out of luck if need anything Asian besides Kikkoman or Roland duck sauce (in humungous jars). I don’t know that they increased their offerings but they’ve tidied up the shelves, erected mini flags from countries of origin and put signs out front advertising their diverse products. I thought they might’ve actually alphabetized since Argentina was first, but then Peru snuck in near the start of the aisle and all rhyme or reason went out the window.

Western_beef_many_maltas

They also tidied up an entire row devoted the only other foodstuff in existence (besides melon) that I can't abide. Malta is an acquired taste that I just can't acquire. 

TriguisarI couldn’t resist this little Colombian box of Triguisar. I'm sure it is seasoning, though the translation reads "economic dehydrated mixed condiments" that consist of cumin, pepper, garlic, annatto, something they translate as curcuma (ah, turmeric), yellow dye, corn starch and corn rice. I’m not convinced of its tastiness but like the straightforward directions, “it should be cooked with the foods.”

Not only was the Western Beef so bizarrely empty that I could wheel the cart around unimpeded, the same non-crowdedness occurred at Target the same Saturday afternoon. We got a parking spot next to the door instead of having to drive in circles and there were actually shopping carts instead of the usual empty patch of dirty carpet where they’re supposed to be. It kind of freaked me out. Plus, instead of the normal reggaeton blasting at WB interspersed with an angry employee yelling for his keys, soft jazz was lilting from the speakers. New management or something more malevolent?

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Alma

1/2 I’m still not al fresco crazed or warm weather loving and I still kind of hate eating outdoors (which is hard to reconcile with my love of street food and blazingly hot countries) but it was balmy, not hot for those few days last week. Plus, Alma is walking distance from my apartment so it didn’t take much effort to get there and up on their roof deck.

You kind of have to ignore the stevedoring (I’m still not sure what this exactly) that stands between you and the reason for eating at Alma: the up close Manhattan views. Some would say the skyline overshadows the food but it’s fine for what it is.

I shared a chorizo, potato and goat cheese quesadilla, which was good enough to prompt James to recreate it a few nights later. I didn't taste the poblano relleno but it photographed a little better than the quesadilla so there it is. 

I also had a simple grilled shrimp dish with cucumber-mango salsa, pickled red onions and chipotle sauce. Warm corn tortillas come on the side. I’m always distressed that I’m given too many and then I worry about wasting (at realer Mexican restaurants you’ll frequently get an impossible stack). This was the first time the opposite happened and could’ve used an extra. Oh well. (4/24/07)

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