7 posts tagged “food”

The last few weeks have been about rediscovering the joys of steamed soybeans.  Of course now they’re called edamame and cost too much even in a freezer bag at HEB, which is one of the reasons I took so long to sample them again: pretentious rebranding sushi-lover crap when they’re just soybeans, fer chrissake.  Then again I don’t suppose most sushi-bar patrons, at least in this country, have ever encountered them in any other form before.  I just got lucky, I suppose.

When I was about 11 the former local garden-store mogul’s estate across the road got divided up and one of the plots purchased by an elderly couple who loved growing their own food.  It was they as much as my hippie siblings responsible for my mother’s sudden, all-pervasive, cataclysmic health-food kick the next year: it was bad enough that we were already banned Twinkies but did we have to start choking down the Dessicated Beef Liver pills now too?  All I knew was that seemingly without warning way too many of our shopping trips into West Chester centered around The Great Pumpkin (at the time, the only granola haven for miles around) and we were single-handedly keeping the Rodale Press in business.

Anyway, our neighbors’ main crop was soybeans – way too many for just themselves, so they gave us half or more of their crop each year.  All we had to do every fall was fetch the uprooted plants back to our house, pull the pods off them, steam the pods and shell the beans for the freezer.  For several years we had thawed soybeans with pretty much every dinner – no more peas, carrots, lima beans or what-have-you – and bad as the food was at Westtown, I was only too glad to start boarding there because nobody would hear of serving those little green fuckers.

(The stripping and shelling parts of the process were long and tedious sessions around the table on our back porch, all work done by my parents and myself; E. was still living with us then but rarely around when there was that kind of work to be done.  I don’t blame him.  We had at least one family crisis come and go over a mound of soybean pods, when I went off with some Young Friends for a weekend “conference” and was discovered to have gone to Atlantic City instead.  “If we’re going to be sitting around working this out, no reason not to keep our hands busy,” my father pronounced grimly.)

Once I left for college I promised I’d never eat a soybean again and have largely honored that all this time.  But one day recently I bought a bag just out of curiosity – and perhaps a need to get over myself – and thawed it out and had some ‘beans with a little butter and salt and pepper alongside a steak and baked potato and, lo and behold, I’ve wanted to eat little since.  Soybeans go great with everything, green and crunchy buggers that they are.  I forgot that not only do I really do like the taste as well as the crunch, but that they’re firm enough to deceive my constant cravings for starch-like materials.  

It’s an unexpected but welcome way of claiming a part of my earlier years thought long-lost – one little bite brings all the memories of that back porch and those late summers shelling on it back instantly, listening to my stations on the radio and hoping they’d play something my parents would like. My father winced at Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love” and said it sounded nothing like the Roberta Flack song of the same name that I knew he really liked.  Well, he gave it a shot at least.

I wonder what else we have that’s our childhood in just a taste or two?

My friend Steph says that I’m picky about… “well, just about everything.”  Well.  We’ll just see about that, young lady.

The rules for the following list: bolded items are ones you've eaten; struck-out items you would never consider eating.

My own additions to the rules: italics denote stuff I think I've tried but don’t remember exactly when.  Bold + strike-out = never fucking again.  Items in red are What the hell is that?  (Which doesn’t guarantee I haven’t tried it.)

Note: most of the alcohol/caffeine items are automatically struck out.  Because, you know, I’m such a total killjoy and shit.

Also, I figure some of the other struck-out items – horse, snake, roadkill, even whole insects – can’t be ruled out absolutely, for ever.  Because, you know, I’m obsessed with a possible very difficult future and then I’d be a hell of a lot less picky then I already am.

1. Venison (How about moose?  I’ve had that, fresh from the woods and off the campfire, in Alaska.)
2. Nettle tea (Possible, since my mother went all natural-foods wild in my early teens and shoved a lot of icky stuff down our throats in the process.  But I doubt it.)
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare  (Love it.)
5. Crocodile (Cold-blooded meat?  Ewww.)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries (Grew up picking the wineberries that overran my part of Chester County every summer.)
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (though not that I can ever recall together)
33. Salted lassi (I have had salted tea with yak butter, in Nepal.  My host tried to talk me out of it.  I insisted and then couldn’t choke down more than a couple of sips.  My host laughed.)
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float (Probably the best thing on the menu at the Alamo theatres.)
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea  (Because I will never be able to associate “clotted” with anything but nosebleeds.)
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat (Goat stew, though there wasn’t a lot of curry in it.  Saved me from hypothermia one nasty day in Nepal, kept me in the bathroom most of that night.)
42. Whole insects  (Never intentionally, anyway.  But you get a small amount of protein that way when you’re a cyclist.)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk  (Unless chevre counts.)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel  (Unagi = favorite sushi.)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear  (Nopalitos, baby.  This is Texas, after all.)
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips  (See above re: my mother’s health-food craze.)
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin  (WTF?  Wikipedia only refers to kaolinite, which is some type of clay.)
    
64. Currywurst
65. Durian  (Pretty sure I had this in a milkshake at the Vietnamese place on 17th St. in Oakland.  Definitely had more than a few jackfruit shakes there.)
66. Frog’s Legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings or andouillette  (Is that the same as andouille?  Had enough of that to gag Evangeline.)
71. Gazpacho  (Made it a time or two.)
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie  (C’mon now.  Who in this country really hasn’t?)
78. Snail  (Scungili harvested from near our dock on Oyster Bay the summer I housesat in Centerville, Long Island.)
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum  (Made this a time or two as well.)
82. Eggs Benedict  (Wish they hadn’t dropped these from the buffet at Whole Foods.)
83. Pocky  (Don’t even have the Superchunk album.)
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant  (Don’t have good enough clothes to even walk down the block one of these is on.)
85. Kobe beef  (Disclosure: it was In a burger at the Waterloo Ice House.)
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam  (Consequence of ordering the Ham & Eggs breakfast at an inn on the Annapurna Circuit.  Of course they’re not going to have real ham in the Himalayas.  What was I thinking?)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta  (With pine nuts, raisins, brown sugar and butter, this makes an awesome backpacking breakfast.)
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Not on the list: Jerusalem artichokes freshly dug up and steamed.  Or how about soybeans fresh off the plant?  Both staples of our diet during that early-70s health food craze.  These days people call steamed soybeans edamame and charge outlandish sums for it.  Suckers.

So Sunday I was reading a piece in the New York Times magazine about blueberry picking in Maine and thinking Man, I wouldn’t mind a piece of that right now.  Of course after the heat of the last 3 months I wouldn’t mind a piece of the entire Maine summer, but I digress.

Searching my memory I can only remember one actual blueberry-picking mission in all our trips to our family friends’ property on Casco Bay.  I was 12; I remember it was very hot and bright and I didn’t much like being outdoors then and I was very disappointed in how small and tart the berries were, being already accustomed to Violet Beauregard-size supermarket blues.  My parents kept exclaiming over their deliciousness straight off the bush but I was used to them rhapsodizing over foods that were weird and unpleasant to me then – avocado for my father, sourdough for my mother for instance – and all I wanted to do was get back to the cabin and play with my plastic soldiers.

We might have also gone picking the one time we were in Maine and didn't do only Casco Bay.  That was 1970 and we stopped for a few days in Acadia on the way to or from Nova Scotia  but my memory’s a little fuzzy about what we did there.  Maybe we went looking for berries and didn’t find any. 

Anyway, I read that article and it occurred to me that youthful experiences really are wasted on the young.  Also that I don’t know that I’ll be getting the chance to go picking there anytime soon, which made me a little sad. 

Then yesterday one of my faculty members comes into the office fresh off his vacation and deposits a little white cup on my desk full of – Maine blueberries.  Picked by him the day before.  “It’s a bumper crop this year,” he said.

I sat there open-mouthed and finally shut it long enough to gather the wind to tell him about my reaction to the NYT article.  “Well,” he said as he breezed out, “that just goes to show you the power of positive thinking.”

• Firecracker paper blowing through the streets for weeks before and after Chinese New Year.
• $2 sandwiches from Cam Huong on Webster.  (Though I hear Lily’s in the Chinatown Center here has good and equally cheap banh mai.  Damn this car-lessness.)
• BART.

• W. Grand Avenue, the back door to the Bay Bridge.
• The Filipino (Pinoy) community.  The Vietnamese community.  The Russian community.  Actually white people in the minority in general.
• The pool at the downtown Y.

• That crazy 12th/14th St. interchange at the southern end of Lake Merritt.  I felt triumphant every time I went through it and came out on the street I intended.
• Pendragon books in Rockridge.  (Alt: Dark Carnival in Berkeley.)
• Walks or slow drives through the Mountain View cemetery.

• The Museum, even if I did only go there once or twice.
• The Parkway theatre, which was only a year or so old when I left.  Sure, we’ve got the Alamo in Austin and it’s probably better-run and I wouldn’t give it up for anything, but it’s become too business-like, a franchise operation, and the Parkway was one-of-a-kind.
• The 9th St. Farmer’s Market, worth calling in sick for on the occasional Friday.
• The occasional jolt underfoot the earth gives to remind who’s boss.
• My sister’s back deck in the Montclair hills.
• My sister.

• Taco trucks on International Blvd.
• That way the skin feels after a day in that peculiar combination of East Bay sun and salt-air breeze.
• Meeting for Worship at Strawberry Creek, probably the most consistent, deepest silence I’ve ever experienced.
• The Emeryville Public Market: fast and cheap food from almost anywhere in the world (Afghan anyone?), all within a 100-ft. radius.

• My old job at the big Kaiser hospital at MacArthur and Broadway.
• Downtown parks – Preservation and Lafayette.  And I guess Jack London Square too.
• The glass rotunda between the Federal Buildings.
• Telegraph Ave., especially the Temescal District.

• The World Grounds coffeehouse in the Laurel, also just getting started when I left.
• The nighttime view coming out of the Caldecott eastbound: the blaze of East Bay lights right below you, then the dark of the water, then the glimmer of SF beyond that.

(More Oakland pics here and here.)

Ahhhh.  I feel good today.  Any number of reasons, and here are a few:

• I feel good for finally putting up the necessary $$ for a .mac membership, and that the most precious of my data – the stuff I’d risk third-degree burns running back into a burning house for – is now backed up online.  Even if the last of the 2.8 gigs was still uploading this morning after being at it all night.
• I feel good for finishing everything on the to-do list at work today by noon.  It was a long and ever-growing list too, as is inevitable when you work with a bunch of faculty who can’t manage to assimilate that you’ll be gone for a week until the morning before you go.
• I feel good about having made the decision to take Lexapro. Not just because the antidepressant itself makes me feel good – as I say every chance I get, I won’t jump to any conclusions until the dark months between Halloween and New Years are past – but because it makes me able to help others.  The other day over lunch a friend confided that she’d just started it too, and about her misgivings – she’s a very kickass, self-reliant person ill at ease with needing pills for anything.  I was able to staunch some of those misgivings.  It always feels good to do that for cared-for ones.
• I feel good for remembering the large handful of breath refresher/digestive-aid anise mix on the way out of the Clay Pit today.  None too happy at the way not grabbing it the last few times subjected my colleagues to subsequent afternoons of steady poot-poot.
• I feel good because at this time tomorrow Pacific, barring any fuckups caused by Mercury retrograde masked as American Airlines, I’ll be on the ground in sunny California for a spell of much-deserved relaxation, visiting, and quality Vietnamese food.  And I don’t care much if it ends up being not that sunny after all (though in October it’s hard to go wrong in the Bay Area).  I’ll be out and about for a week and not in Austin and that’s what matters.

Lunch at the Clay Pit buffet on a Friday, a big plate of their inimitable vegetable korma and tandoori chicken and even some of the onions from the bottom of the chicken pan.  A good seat right under the lights for hassle-free reading and a choice between the New York Times Sunday Book Review (summer reading edition!) and the latest issue of Macworld.  Oh, and no need to pay as there's still a balance on the giftcard from two months back.

I am so easily made content.

Six months on the job at UT and I still go to the Dobie Mall for lunch pretty much every day.  I like the cheap, I like the walk there and back, but most of all I like the illusion that I won’t know what I’m having until I walk in the door.

“Illusion,” because in fact there are really only a few places there I’ll eat, and a specific meal at each.  Lasagna and salad from Niki’s on the colder days, though their pizza is good too – I’ve come to realize over the years it’s closer to my beloved Eastern Seaboard paper crust than anything else available in Austin.  The pastor at the Burrito Factory is worthy of Taco Loco at Mission and 29th, and that’s high praise indeed.  Palak paneer and lamb curry at Student Biryani make an excellent mini-feast on days when the Clay Pit is out of reach.  And if I can’t think of anything else, the gyros and fries at Gyro King make a serviceable Plan B, as long as there’s the requisite hillock of mayo and lake of ketchup on the side.

(I’ll probably never eat at Oona’s again.  They used to be one of my faves but a couple of truly abysmal customer-service experiences killed that.  That and they just don’t give enough food for a person of my size.)

So it was with some dismay I found earlier this week that one of my standbys has to be crossed off the list.  Student Biryani has gone out of business, so abruptly that the “Full Combo” placard still sits on the display counters and cans of Pepsi crowd into the glass cooler.  

I guess it’s not really a surprise, as I was almost always the only customer at the register.  I’d hoped that was because I usually got there after the lunch rush but a nagging feeling said not; the nice man and his equally nice wife were always just a little too anxious to see me walking up.  On occasions when I kept going, preferring a little faux-Italian or Greek prepared by Koreans, they looked so crestfallen I felt awful.

One of their neighbors confirmed it was no vacation they’d left suddenly for.  “They hadn’t paid their rent in three months,” he said sadly.  It’s a cutthroat business, the Dobie Food Court, and it’s claimed another victim.

I wish the Biryani folks well on their just-begun sojourn into The Land of Failed-Business Crushing Debt; I never learned their names.  I don’t know the name of the guys at Niki’s either, though they feel like old friends by now. I should learn them while I have the chance.