"Dear Food Thoughtz:" Freezer-burnt placenta

Dear Food Thoughtz, 

Since you are clearly the expert on food related issues, I have a problem and could really use your help... 

I'm sure I'm not unique in the fact that my freezer is often crowded with foodstuffs that have overstayed their welcome. Normally it's no problem to make more room by simply chucking things out, but I have an item that is taking up a fair amount of space and creating a sizeable dilemma. What should I do with my placenta? There is just no simple solution as I see it. It is just so valuable and I can't in good conscience throw it away, but I'm a bit concerned about cooking it at this point. It's been in there for about 6 months now and is sure to be freezer burned. Do you think this will diminish the nutritional value? Should I just pluck up the $150 and have it made into pills, or can I still get away with making it into a stew or something? Any thoughts you might have on the subject would be greatly appreciated. 

Signed,Placenta Ideas Sincerely Sought

Dear PISS,

First of all, my sincerest apologies for not getting back to you sooner – even I’m surprised that your freezer-burnt placenta wasn’t enough to arouse my food thoughtz. And to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to get around to this if I hadn’t talked to my mum last night on the phone. She recently sent me a Valentine’s care package (which also had Midge Deak’s belated birthday present inside: two Microplanes), which included some homemade chocolate chip cookies. I had initially request sugar cookies because they’re my favourite and I can’t get enough of that icing, but she sent chocolate chip cookies instead because you don’t have to roll out the dough. Anyway, I called her last night to thank her for the package and she told me that she actually did try to make sugar cookies because she just happened to have some dough in the freezer “from about a year ago” when her and my niece made sugar cookies together. So she took the dough out, and I’m not sure how far she got beyond that. Maybe she rolled, cut, and baked the cookies, or maybe she didn’t get beyond thawing the dough. We’ll never know. But what we do know is that she had to throw all of it out because during its one year tenure in the freezer, the dough had absorbed some foul taste from something else, rendering it unedible.

This story was just the push I needed to respond to your query of over a month ago. My advice to you is to eat it asap. First of all, you might be lucky and maybe that placenta has absorbed the tastes of actual foods that surround it. But secondly, the longer you let that frozen mass of cells sit in your freezer, the more likely it is that all of your other foods are absorbing what I can only imagine to be the totally revolting taste of a human placenta.

I don’t know how you should eat it. Midge Deak suggests frying it up with onions and paprika. Although she has never eaten a placenta, she regularly eats substances that physically and gustatorily (no idea if that’s a word) resemble placentas. Your biggest mistake was probably that you didn’t initially portion it up, because I think that the best way to consume this would be in a smoothie, but it’s going to be a really big pain to thaw out the whole thing just to make one smoothie. Unless your planning to have a pure placenta smoothie, which I wouldn’t personally recommend. Under no circumstances should you spend $150 to have your placenta made into pills. If you have a placenta in your freezer, I’m guessing it’s because you have a child somewhere in your house, and wouldn’t you rather put that $150 towards that child’s education or some frivolous article of clothing for her?

Anyway, that’s about all I have to say. Thanks for your request. Please do let me know how it all turns out.

Food Thoughtz Update: Alcohol

Well, everyone. I have finally decided to expand the scope of Food Thoughtz to include alcohol. The series will probably be called "Drink Thoughtz," or something equally unimaginative. I live in a house with a roommate, and these shelves are a big part of our living space and our lives:

Over the past two years, I've really gotten into the world of cocktails—which has in part been encouraged by this unruly liquor collection, but also by Midge Deak's relatively new found interest in cocktails (her favourite drink is something I call the "Midge Deak" and consists of vodka and plain tap water).

The series will likely run the gambit of alcohol, including beers, ciders, coolers, and hard alcohol. Perhaps wine sometimes too, but I am not really into wine unless it's cut with soda. You might be wondering what authority I have to pass judgement on different kinds of alcohol. The answer is precisely none, which is the same level of authority I exercise when it comes to food.

**Update** The famed Midge Deak has recommended the series be called "Booze Thoughtz," and I agree.

Food Thoughtz Restaurant Review: Playa Cabana - Hacienda (4)

M just whipped up these crepes/palacsinta to satisfy my hunger and my rage. But I will not be silenced and I will not be placated.

Hákarl

For the most part I have nothing but good things to say about Iceland: it’s a beautiful country with beautiful people and has one of the most consistently impressive musical and literary outputs of any country. But there’s something rotten in the state of Iceland (the quotation is relevant because Iceland didn’t become fully independent from Denmark until 1944), and that something is shark meat that is intentionally buried in the ground left to rot because the meat itself is poisonous because it’s bloated with urea and the only way to safely consume it is to let it rot first. All other reasons for disgust aside, there is something seriously wrong with a food when the only way to eat it without dying is to ensure it is thoroughly rotted through first.

It goes without saying that I would never try this food, but the question still remains: why is anyone else eating this? I get that when you’re living on an isolated volcanic island with very limited contact with the outside world and not the most extensive list of edible food readily available, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. And I guess, one of those things might be eating shark meat that you’ve left to rot underground for a few months, but… is it? Look, I would never advocate eating any kind of seafood, but I just feel like if you have access to a shark brimming with urea, you probably also have access to a lot of different kinds of fish and shellfish and whales and that, as disgusting those things are, they aren't quite as disgusting as this rotten shark and also do not have to be consumed rotten. And furthermore, Iceland clearly isn’t the isolated volcanic rock it was in the sixteenth century, so I really can’t understand the continued consumption of this revolting dish except as a misguided commitment to a culinary past that is no longer relevant today.

Does it look like I am driving this forklift? Whatever. I don't even care.
This food is too disgusting to waste any time on a picture.

I've been thinking about hákarl for the last few months. I kept planning to write a post about it, but I couldn't see the point. Of course this is something I would never eat, but I'm also not even totally sure that this can be classified as food. It's just weird, slimy, chunks of urea that for some unknown reason a very, very small percentage of the world's population sometimes puts in their mouth. Additionally, based on the Wikipedia article, it seems like no one else can stomach hákarl, so it's probably time for Iceland to own up to the fact that this gross Greenland shark was not meant for consumption. (Like, really, it was not. Because it is poisonous. I really want to get that point across: it is poisonous because it is so full of urea that if you eat it fresh, it will poison you.)

One of the most important things that a nation can do is to hold itself accountable for its mistakes in the past—to bury them in the sand and let them rot, so to speak. The most important thing that Iceland can do now—nay, the only thing Iceland can do now—is to admit that it was wrong and to move on. The sooner Iceland does that, the sooner we can all forget that this horrific rotten urea-shark ever existed in the first place.

The beautiful nation of Iceland

Once plucked from the sea a shark of Greenland.

Poisonous when fresh,

So they rotted the flesh,

And hákarl has since been universally panned.

The Turnip

You know that annoying trend of striving for authenticity?  It has something to do with artisanal axes, mason jars, rugged work boots, leatherwork, Herschel backpacks, and a commitment to a simpler life and farmer’s markets?  But you know how there’s also nothing there?  How none of these things are authentic, but are actually totally artificial, contrived, and empty?  That’s what a turnip is. Almost.  It doesn’t quite work as a theory, but I think that if I just force it hard enough, I might be able to come up with something that almost comes close to resembling something or other (or not).

Bizarrely, turnips might simultaneously be the most authentic thing in the world, but also the most meaningless and vapid.  Does that make them art?  I don’t know.  Probably not, because turnips are not artificial or contrived; unfortunately they are all too real.  They are probably also the next big thing in the relentless search for authentic living.  Nothing is as rugged or as simple as a turnip, and turnips are so disgusting that the only way someone could actually eat one is ironically.  Turnips are important for an authentic lifestyle because they signify poverty, desperation, and a sallow, Irish complexion.

Given the latter signification, it should come as no surprise that Samuel Beckett employed them in Waiting for Godot as one of many absurdities within a desolate and meaningless wasteland: of course as you spend the rest of your miserable and absurd life waiting for something that is never going to come (is it God?!) amidst an apocalyptic landscape it will be a turnip that you pull out of your pocket.  This association might be a quality of root vegetables in general because I believe Vladimir also retrieves a carrot and a radish from his pocket (and in all fairness, tonight I had garden carrots from this summer that had been properly stored in a root cellar, and they were delicious—root vegetables truly are a thing of magic).*  All of this is to say is that I have never been given the impression that people eat a turnip because they choose to.

This turnip ... this turnip ...  tiny little thing ... out into this ... what? No!... yes ... tiny little thing ... tiny little thing ...
tiny little turnip ... where! over there! staring, staring ... stop and stare ... where? over there! Gaaaawd ...

…Which makes the fact that we used to have to eat a revolting mashed up mixture of turnips and corn for Thanksgiving dinner extremely confusing. I get that there are certain foods that I think are gross, like salad or baked mushroom caps, that other people think are delicious. But surely no one actually thinks that puréed turnips mixed with puréed corn is good, right?  And let me tell you something: it wasn't the corn that was disgusting (although puréed corn is also obviously disgusting), it was the turnip.  Because there is something distinctly unpleasant about a turnip.  I’m not sure how to describe the taste, but the closest comparison I can think of is as if you accidentally ate one of those big chunks of crumbly rot on a potato.  Like, how if you expect something to taste a certain way, but when you bite into it there's an unexpected piece of rot, and so it kind of tastes a bit sweet (but in a bad, rotting way) and maybe also a bit bitter?  Who knows.  It's been a long time since I've eaten a turnip.

There's a famous Russian folktale about a giant turnip that presumably we all know.  I guess the moral of the story is something about how even the smallest and most overlooked members of society are important and needed for accomplishing goals, or that we need to work together, or whatever.  But all I ever got from this story is that humanity is made up of a bunch of dullards, and that those on top are just as stupid as those on the bottom.  Who would ever invest that much time and expel that much energy on getting their hands on a turnip? The moral also doesn't really hold water because the grandfather probably lost more strength throughout the process than the mouse was ultimately able to contribute.  Had he just enlisted the help of the grandmother, the granddaughter, the cat, and the dog from the very beginning when he saw that there was a giant turnip in his garden that was larger than him it probably would have been fine.  It's also unclear what exactly the family intends to do with this giant turnip once it's out of the ground.  Probably share it, but if I was that dog, cat, or mouse, I don’t think I would be too happy if my reward for helping out two old people and their granddaughter was a piece of turnip.

Turnips definitely don't disgust me like some other foods do.  Some foods inspire in me a state of extreme panic or fear (egg salad sandwich, haggis, spaghetti squash are just three examples among hundreds of thousands), but turnips seem more like an unpleasant chore than anything else, and the easiest way to get through it is just to remind yourself that once it's behind you, you won't have to deal with it for another year.  Even easier would be to not eat them at all because we're all adults and don't have to.

Turnips just don't have a role to play in my life. What could I possibly use one of these things for that I couldn't substitute it for a potato or a carrot or some other edible ground vegetable?  Aren't turnips used for, like, apple juice?  Aren't they so bland that they are capable of just providing a substance with no essence?  Huh.  I guess we kind of inadvertently came full circle on this, because people who are a substance without essence are precisely the kind of people I expect to adopt the turnip any day now as an authentic and meaningful culinary experience.  But there's no meaning in eating a food by choice that has only ever been eaten by necessity throughout history. 

If it doesn’t wet your appetite, what can you do with a turnip?
1. You could build a pyre and burn it.
2. You could give it the cold shoulder and spurn it.
3. If you’re my mum, you could mix it with corn and churn it.
4. And if pulled it from the ground, you could dig a hole and return it. 

*I double-checked that Vladimir did indeed pull out a turnip from his pocket in Waiting for Godot, was surprised to find that the Wikipedia article states that in Act II, "[w]ith no carrots left, Vladimir offers Estragon the pointless choice between a turnip and a radish."  I'm sorry, "the pointless choice"?  Neither option is ideal, but it's hardly a pointless choice.  Having never tried a raw turnip or a radish in any state, it still seems fair to assume that a radish is probably much nicer to eat raw than a turnip is.  I'm basing this on the observation that radishes are indeed often served raw on vegetable plates or in salads, whereas I don't think I have ever seen a turnip served raw or on its own.  On one hand the turnip would be the better choice because it would likely be substantially larger, but on the other hand the radish, although smaller, would probably be much more enjoyable.  I would hardly call that a "pointless choice."  One choice is more likely to sustain you longer in a life of agony, whereas the other offers the potential to bring enough joy to your life to remind you why you might want to extend that miserable life in the first place.

 

New Year, New Me: Trying Walnuts

Today is New Years Day.  Today is also the day that I tried a walnut for the first time in my entire life.

I had been pretty dismissive of them in the past, but I must admit, they're not the worst thing I've ever had.

Pictured here is the walnut that I tried in my sister's palm.  Let's hope this launches her long-awaited career as a hand model.

Pillsbury Sugar Cookie Dough

Oh boy, this is going to be a difficult one for me.  Ever since I spent a week in Lethbridge with my sister when I was 13 during her first year of university (which, irrelevant, but: we have since both agreed that she was really irresponsible), I have been in love with Pillsbury’s raw sugar cookie dough.  In case anyone is wondering about the connection here—although it should be obvious—my mum bought my sister one as part of a large grocery-haul and it just sat in the fridge.  Every single one of you should be familiar with the product I am talking about because it’s delicious.  I’m talking about the holiday sugar cookie dough that Pillsbury releases during specific holidays (definitely Halloween and Christmas, but I think Easter as well) that has coloured images of reindeer or pumpkins dyed into the dough itself.  It used to come in a tube and you had to slice off the cookies yourself, but now they come in pre-sliced pieces on a flat slab. 
For whatever reason, I was left to my own devices one evening, and I devised to slice off a sliver from the tube in my sister’s fridge without her being any the wiser.  But then I continued to slice off slivers until I had eaten over half the tube.  I was in love.  Ever since then, I have bought this cookie dough at least once a year, and sometimes several times during a single season.  I always go into it knowing that I am a disgusting human being, and with that in mind, rarely feel any shame when I eat the entire package in one evening.  My consumption rates probably peaked during my first year of university in Montreal because I lived in such wretched squalor and subsisted entirely on brown rice and coffee that more than once I suffered from fainting spells and needed to compensate by eating as much sugar as I possibly could as quickly as possible.

More recently, I bought the Halloween cookies this October while R was in New York on business.  I waited for him to leave so that he wouldn’t judge me (only to later find out that he also loves this cookie dough, but only eats it cooked, whereas I only eat it raw).  Again, I ate the majority of the pack in one evening, only to be crippled by pain and nausea.  It states quite clearly on the package that you should not eat the cookie dough raw, which is weird, because it’s not as if there’s any other way to eat it (no matter what R has to say about it). 

This pictures is the worst, but you
get the idea.

Following that harrowing experience, I abstained from buying any more cookie dough, even when the Christmas themed dough came out.  Until R came home from work with a package, and I allowed myself just one measly little raw cookie.  I did not get sick.  I am fairly certain that the reason I got sick before has less to do with the raw eggs and more to do with the sheer quantity I had consumed.

At any rate, no matter what this dough has done to me in the past, I have continued to love it because 1) raw cookie dough is delicious, 2) it is even more delicious when it comes in a package and you don’t have to make it yourself, and 3) there is so much dye in each cookie that it has that amazing artificial taste that I love so much (artificial colours is my favourite food).

It's embarrassing to admit that this was the "best series" of
pictures that I took documenting this moment... but it is.
Even though my hand looks like a novelty gag present from
Spencer's Gifts.

But there’s another kind of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough that comes in a shrink-wrapped tube and resembles a loaf of polenta or some gross sausage-type “food.”  And this is the sugar cookie dough that I am not happy with.  Not because the dough itself tastes any different from the seasonal cookie dough (with the obvious exception of the artificial dyes), but because the package showcases these beautiful star-shaped cookies with white icing and blue sugar crystals and promises “perfect shapes every time.”  And then Pillsbury was too cheap to throw in a complementary star-shaped cookie cutter or any icing and sugar!  And I know they could because I went through a pretty dark phase last year in which my diet consisted almost entirely of those Pillsbury cinnamon buns, which come in one a menacing vacuum-sealed tube that literally explodes open, but which also includes a little tub of icing that fits perfectly in the packaging.

Pillsbury easily could have repackaged these sugar cookies to accommodate the frosting and tacked on a cookie cutter, perhaps to the exterior of the package, for added value.  It wouldn't even have to be a stainless steel one; I would be perfectly happy with plastic.  Additionally, the cookies, when sliced from the loaf, didn’t even make perfect round cookies.  They cooked poorly and ran together and refused to lift off of the baking tray, which is a problem I never had with the seasonal sugar cookies.  When I wasn’t eating the dough straight from the loaf (ew, such a gross sentence), I had to eat the half-burnt/half-raw crumbs with a spoon because that was just the way these Pillsbury sugar cookies crumbled.

This was the most successful baking attempt. The photo
has since been instagram'd to Pillsbury and I am still
waiting for a response or a free voucher or something.

I'm not really sure where to go from here.  I've always found the Pillsbury brand really endearing: the "Pillsbury poke" really worked on me because that doughboy is beyond adorable.  I want to keep supporting this company partly because I imagine some of the money going directly to the doughboy and partly because Pillsbury is owned by General Mills, and I typically like their products (Lucky Charms, Green Giant), but it's hard to stay true to a brand you love when you no longer want to give that doughboy a playful poke in the tummy, but rather a forceful slap in the face. 

These "perfect cookies every time" are as broken as Pillsbury's promises.

To close things out, here's a picture of the wrapper itself:

You might also notice the "Do not eat raw cookie dough" warning.
This, just as much as the "Perfect shapes every time!" claim, is a bald-faced lie.

“Perfect shapes every time” — what a joke!
Forget your tummy, doughboy: your brain needs a poke.
Next holiday season when you roll out this sugar cookie dough,
Remember Pillsbury: you reap what you sow.

Don't be surprised if your sales take a tumble,

Your empire, like your cookies, will inevitably crumble.

But then again, let's stick to reality:
I gobbled these up in their entirety

A Long Over Overdue Potato Update (2)

In April, 2013 -- approximately one month after this blog went on summer vacation -- my ham sista came to visit me in Montréal and help move me back west.  Leading up to her arrive we talked a lot about all the potato feeding frenzies we were going to have. In the end, we only had one.

Maybe you're thinking, Wow. Only one potato feeding frenzy? That's pretty pathetic for someone who claims to really like potatoes. But you guys. They were delicious and I have no regrets about our culinary choices that week.

A more recent potato update would regrettably not exist because--would you believe it?--I've been in Toronto for three weeks now and I haven't bought potatoes once.

Buns

Whichever asshole said that man can’t live by bread alone was a liar and an fool. You can. And I know because I have. When your diet is as restrictive as mine, you soon learn to take what you can get, and in a social setting, a hotel dining room, or on an airplane, that’s usually buns.

Of all the foods that I have wanted to discuss on this blog, buns never really crossed my mind as something warranting my time and energy. Before I get into it, I want to clarify that the only buns that will be discussed in this post are the small round buns that you can find in the Overwaitea bakery section and which are almost always present in either a basket or a bowl at large lunch/dinner events. They are also always served on planes and usually the only thing I will eat on such occasions. There are so many other buns--pizza buns (!!!), cinnamon buns, cheese buns, my niece’s rendition of Hot Crossed Buns--that will be saved for future posts.

So why buns? Why now? This post was specifically solicited by one of my avid readers, and I can only assume that she is so keen to know my opinion of buns because one time at a festive party at her house, I opted for a solo bun over a heaping pile of ham. No offense to the hosting family, but I always go for buns when I am at one of these casual gatherings where there’s a table of food and no rigorously controlled method for eating it. Of course, had it been a sit down meal with endless trays and dishes of food being passed around and around, I would have helped myself to some ham (and perhaps demanded a bowl of frozen peas), but in the words of a wise Hungarian scholar, the bun “is for small people always on the go.” By limiting myself to one bun, I maximized my mobility and therefore my sociability--a charm I am well known for.

Sally Lunn Bun.

In my post on rice, I wrote about how rice is one of those foods that is always there for you and that you don’t have to spend too much time thinking about. I kind of feel the same way about buns, except that I am also always a bit disappointed when I realise that I am going to have to eat a bun because there is nothing else to eat. On an airplane, for example, there is a 90% chance that the only part of the meal I am going to eat will be the bun. There have been times when I’ve really lucked out and they serve spaghetti bolognese, but it’s usually some sort of chicken curry (one time Air Canada even served fish and didn’t offer a vegetarian option! Or at least not to me) and it’s all so mixed up in that little dish that I can’t pick out a single thing. So when I look down and realise that all I’m going to be eating is that bun, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed. That is until I break the bun open and spread one of those little pads of butter on it and eat it and remember how much I love eating buns with butter and wonder why I don’t do it all the time. I love eating anything with butter, but buns are especially good because the butter doesn’t melt so when you bite in, you will inevitably get a bit with a lot of semi-solid butter and it’s such a rush! You’re a bit disgusted with yourself because you’re just eating chunk of butter, but it’s also really hard to care because 1) it’s delicious and 2) you’re on a plane, and any disgusting behaviour goes on a plane.

Buns are a safe bet because you (almost) always know what you’re getting, but the other reason I am so dedicated to buns is in part to combat this rising fad of “gluten free.” I will be the first to admit that I don’t know what gluten is, but I do know that it’s found in breads and pastas--two of my favourite foods--and that it is becoming increasingly and annoyingly popular to be “free” of it. Some people claim that their bodies cannot tolerate gluten, and at the risk of sounding too much like a tyrannical monster, let me just say that if you are one of these people, then it is high time you asked yourself whether or not you truly belong in this world. I feel that it is my personal duty to do all that I can to ensure that gluten will always be in our diets by eating as much of it as possible and ensuring that there will always be a demand for it. I also know that I always associate gluten-free with vegans--an association that my singular vegan friend assures me is wrong and unfounded, but I am pretty sure is right and well-founded--and therefore feel that it is doubly crucial to lash out against this fad.

Because it is a fad. I know it is because signs advertising “gluten-free” food are becoming a more and more prevalent marker on the Vancouver landscape. Whenever something becomes popular in Vancouver, the fad either originated there and you immediately know that it’s stupid and that you will do well to avoid it (Lululemon; those stand-up paddleboards) or that it has come there to die (coffee culture; indie music; speciality beers) and it’s time to jump ship. And I also know that it’s a fad because, okay, whatever, maybe there are some people on this planet who can’t handle gluten, but there certainly are not enough to warrant the veritable plethora of menus catering to a gluten-free diet along Commercial (or “The Drive,” as I like to call it), or the gluten-free beer (there is a Montreal beer called Glutenberg, which is a really unfortunate waste of a great name), or the new gluten-free Rice Crispies. The worst part about these dietary fads is that they are always accompanied by the shaming of those who do not adhere to their bizarre and arbitrary rules, so now I am put in this weird position where I can’t help but feel bad (not guilty, but actually bad, as if I have some kind of defect) that my body can tolerate gluten. Is there a reason why I should be envious of people who can’t tolerate gluten?

Here is a picture of me at the social gathering in question. I think I will use
it again when I inevitably write about prunes because that's what my face
looks like. You might have noticed, as I just did, that there is a jar of salsa
behind me on the counter. To the best of my recollection, that salsa was not
served, otherwise I probably would have nimbly dipped corn chips into it,
careful not to get any of the chunks.

But to stay on point, of course there are other reasons to value the bun aside from just combatting the rising tide of gluten intolerance. That wise, old Hungarian sage was right: buns are a great companion for someone always on the go--small or not. The bun is the most highly evolved form of bread and is the most portable. Like a baguette, they are a self-contained unit, only without the unruly length and shape. (I honestly don’t understand the appeal of baguettes beyond making bruschetta, which I would obviously never do. But every time I go the grocery store in Montreal’s hipster heart, I see hordes of people pawing at the baguettes, and I think--although I can’t be sure--that it has something to do with being seen biking home with a baguette sticking out of their backpack. I can’t figure out why this is a good thing, but I think it might be because it suggests that the purchaser of that baguette also purchases cheese, and there is a certain amount of cultural and social currency that goes with buying cheese, which, in my heart of hearts, I wish I could cash in on.) Sliced bread is great when you’re at home (although I avoid unsliced loaves at all costs because they are so difficult to slice), but it’s not as portable as a bun and isn’t encased in crust, which usually serves to protect the bun from being crushed in a bag. The other problem with sliced bread is that it can be a pretty hefty commitment. Unless you freeze it, you have a relatively small window of time in which to eat it, and if you forget it in your cupboard when you go home for Christmas for two weeks, you are in for a really unpleasant surprise when you return. Of course buns mold too, but the point that I’m try to get at is that you can buy just one or two buns rather than committing to a whole bag of them. There is also something more acceptable about serving a bun (whether it be on a plane or a buffet table) than a slice of bread, and I believe that it is because while a slice of bread can only ever be part of a whole, a bun is its own single entity. I certainly don’t want to suggest that buns are the best form of bread for every occasion (obviously no one wants to substitute buns for toast), but they do have their merits and they deserve out praise and attention.

Bun on the run.

Friends, what if you find yourself at a social event
And the food table leaves you feeling like a sullen malcontent?
Don’t despair, don’t give up; take advice from Sally Lunn:
Forego everything else and go straight for the bun.
Savour that bun and act highfalutin:
It’s your God given duty to protect all the gluten
From the monsters who would try to take it from us
And turn gluten allergies into such a wide-reaching fuss
After all, allergies tell us something about our ability to survive--
There must be a theory about this to contrive?
Admittedly, I’m not the fittest condenser
So I’ll direct your attention to the works of Herbert Spencer.

Rice

Hot damn! The rice at Rancho Chico's is SO GOOD. One time I asked what
rice they used and where they got it from, and the waiter was obviously
uncomfortable and said he didn't know, but I know that he just wasn't willing
to tell me. I don't even care if they won't tell me. I am more than happy to
pay $3 for this mystery rice, and going to Colville is a pleasure in itself.

When I was about four or five I came up with a great joke that drew on all of the important elements of my life and wove them together into what seemed at the time the greatest comic query ever produced:

Q: What did Michael Jackson say to the bowl of rice?

A: Let’s eat!

Black or White was my favourite song at the time and I guess we were having rice for dinner. Who knows. Rice is such a boring food that it’s impossible to remember when you’ve eaten it. I had a 10kg bag of rice in my closet and now it’s gone and I guess that I ate it because it’s no longer there.

But the charm of rice lies in the ease with which it is forgotten. Like an undervalued friend, it’s always there for you. But unlike the undervalued friend trope, you won’t learn a valuable lesson in taking things for granted once they’re gone because rice will never ever desert you because there is so much rice in this world and it is so cheap. It's a food that, until now, I have never really had to think about. I eat it because it's filling and cheap and doesn't really taste like anything.

Here is a delicious plate of plain rice that I enjoyed in
Bogota. I was with my mum at the time and we had met up
with a girl I met in El Salvador a few months before who was
now living and working in Colombia. She took us to this
restaurant where both she and my mum ordered really
outrageous and enormous dishes, while I happily consumed
this and contented myself with the knowledge that I was
not a disgusting human being who hate disgusting things.

Honestly I don't know what else I can say about rice. I realise now that a lot of this post is about me eating rice in Central America. I guess that's because that was the time in my life when rice really took the centre stage of my diet. By eating almost nothing but rice, I was able to forget about food and stop worrying about what I would eat that day and focus on the important things, like learning how to smoke and, for the first time in my life, really enjoying casual drinking. Rice allows for great things to happen in your life without ever taking the credit for them.

Some Ways that I Like to Eat Rice:

• With cheese sauce. Not with cheese sauce, obviously--that would be disgusting. But my favourite dinner is white basmati rice, sausages, and broccoli and cauliflower smothered in cheese sauce. I eat the sausages first so nothing touches them/is touched by them, and then I eat the vegetables. But once the vegetables are gone, there is still a pool of cheese sauce on the plate, and I like it when some of the cheese sauce touches the edges of some of the rice, but I don’t think I would ever like to push the rice onto the cheese sauce because that would be too much. It’s just nice to get a hint of cheese sauce with your rice because then you can remember and savour how delicious that cheese sauce was.
• White basmati rice with mixed frozen vegetables and soy sauce. I don't know if there is anything else to say about this except that it's a relatively new development for me. I had always relied on fried rice if I found myself in a Chinese restaurant, and one day I finally realise that I could just more or less make it myself and avoid Chinese restaurants all together. Eating rice with vegetables and soy sauce makes me think that maybe I am growing up and broadening my horizons.
• 1 part brown rice, 2 parts butter. When I was little and my mum was doing some baking, I used to lick the butter paper after she was done with it. Eating rice with tonnes of butter tastes like butter but feels like rice. It's like licking butter paper without the guilt of actually licking butter paper.
• Plain. Eating plain rice with no butter or salt is a sneaky way of tricking yourself into having an ascetic experience without actually committing to asceticism. It’s like learning something meaningful from the Orient by looking up Buddhist prayers on Wikihow.com--which I just did because I thought I would be able to make a joke about Edward Saïd, but then I lost interest.
• In a restaurant. I love going into ethnic restaurants in big, bustling cities like Vancouver or Colville, because I know that there must be at least one person who sees me enter and think, She must be a good person. She must really care about the world. Why else would she be eating at an ethnic restaurant? Ethnic restaurants always serve plain rice, and it's always the cheapest thing on the menu. And for some reason, it's usually way better than rice that I can make at home. Must be all that ethnicity.

This was kind of a weird moment for me because while I do (now) enjoy rice
with vegetables, I definitely don't enjoy rice with these vegetables. I don't even
remember what was in here... Corn, obviously, and I think some crushed tomatoes
that had cooked into the rice so it wasn't really very traumatizing, and, I don't know,
carrots? Anyway, like all of the other pictures in this post (with the exception of the
first one), this was taken in Central America and I was really hellbent on
experiencing new things.

Something to Keep in Mind:

 

Of the food I eat, I never expected that rice would be the one to betray me. But betray me it did. During my trip through Central America, I was too busy finding myself to ever even question where I was finding my rice. I lived almost entirely off of rice, and I never worried about how it was prepared because it's rice and it's really hard to mess up rice. But did you know that rice can go bad? You probably did because no one was surprised when I told them that I got rice poisoning and was so miserable that I wished only for death.

In Rio Dulce (or should I say Rio Not-So-Dulce?) I ordered a plate of rice from a street vendor just as I had done countless times before and would continue to do countless times afterward. I watched as the woman scooped out a large portion from a stainless steel bowl that was sitting on a counter and heap it onto my paper plate. But I had no qualms with eating relatively cold rice that had been warmed only by sitting out in the sun all day and was of questionable freshness. None of this was of any concern because with my restricted diet, food poisoning had never even entered my mind as a possibility for me. I ate the rice in the same way that I eat any rice--as a simple means to an end--and washed it down with a litre of beer. The afternoon and evening passed as any evening in Central America passed: lazy hammock reading followed by a rousing game of gin rummy, and this specific night, with a bag of hickory sticks which I did not enjoy in the least. When I was in bed, I broke out in a sweat and began to feel the waves of nausea wash over me. Convinced it would go away by morning, I committed myself to the task of falling asleep with great success. I was awoken at around six in the morning with an immediate need to vomit. So I jumped out of bed with the grace and agility of gazelle and ran down multiple flights of stairs to the bathroom on the main floor, certain that I would make it in time. And I did--sort of. Just as I breached the threshold of the bathroom door but had not quite made it to the stalls, I projectile vomited everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I was like a veritable fountain, spewing hickory sticks in all directions. When I had expelled what I believed to be everything that had ever been in my body and surveyed the pool of vomit that now surrounded me and covered the majority of the bathroom floor, I calmly asked the hostel receptionist to provide me with a bucket and mop to clean up the mess. I showered, I brushed my teeth, and I went back to bed. Mere minutes after crawling back into bed, I was once again on my feet and rushing down to the bathroom. This time I managed to make it to the sinks and clogged not one but three sinks with hickory sticks. After scooping the puke out of the sinks and into the garbage, I again showered and brushed my teeth and went back to bed. The third time I didn't even make it out of the room and instead just dry heaved and dribbled bile into a garbage can which, in retrospect, would have made more sense to use in the first two instances.

Upon arriving in Livingston, I remained in bed in the fetal position for one
day and one night until I finally felt well enough to greet the world, at which
point I was told by a nurse that I had suffered from rice poisoning because,
duh, rice goes bad.

The next morning I had to take a boat to Livingston and it was one if the hardest things I've ever had to do. I arrived at the hostel and immediately went to bed. Until I had an eye-opening conversation with a British nurse the following night, I had been under the impression that the hickory sticks had made me so sick. It was the first time that I had ever tried hickory sticks, and they gave me the distinct impression of being rejected McDonalds' fries that were too old, dry, and crusty to sell. But, you guys, it was the rice. It was that Rio Dulce rice that had been sitting in that stainless steel bowl in the sun for God knows how long. And what followed this revelation was an existential crisis almost as painful as the rice poisoning itself. I was force to reevaluate my life and the decisions I had made. Could I still eat rice? What would it mean to give up something that had, for so long, been such a central staple of my diet? How could I continue a trip in a region that depended on rice as much as I did and not eat it? Ultimately I abandoned all of these difficult questions and resumed eating rice with the same reckless abandon as before.

A plain bowl of rice

No one cares about it.

They're missing out. *

* See what I did there? That's a haiku. Get it? The Orient?

Frozen Peas

If you’re anything like me when it comes to food (and there are pretty good chances that you’re not), there’s nothing worse than having to go a dinner party. But do not despair, fellow foodphobics: those that care about you will ensure that there is at least one thing that you will eat, and if they don’t, then you can sit and sulk quietly in front of an empty plate and they’ll learn for next time. One of the easiest ways to please a person who won’t eat any of the regular trappings of a communal meal is to serve them a bowl of frozen peas--everyone has them in their freezer and they make for a delicious snack.

There's something really special about eating peas--fresh or frozen--and I think it has something to do with being able to hold several in your mouth at one time without them losing their singular identity until you crush them between your teeth. Sometimes the inevitable clumping in a bag of frozen peas can prove to be a problem, but usually breaking up these
clumps--squeezing them so hard that they just fall apart in your hand--is half the fun.

At first you might think that dipping your claws into a small bowl of frozen peas is more shameful than pretending you’re engaged in the conversation while staring at an empty plate. But the one thing that I’ve learned about shame is that showing shame is actually shameless, so you can look at me and think to yourself I’m so ashamed for/of you, but at least I’m not the one eating a salad right now.

In hindsight, eating frozen peas is pretty disgusting. The only food that should be eaten frozen is either food that was designed to be eaten frozen (i.e. ice cream) or frozen green grapes or blueberries, but not vegetables. And despite my unaccountable love for frozen peas, I would never consider eating a frozen bean, carrot, or corn niblet. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I've been eating frozen peas forever, and even though I know it’s wrong, old habits die hard (or don’t die at all), and I still spend most of my nights tucking into a bag of President’s Choice small sweet peas (seriously, best frozen peas on the market. Forget the Green Giant).

A note of caution: eating frozen peas will make your hands smell disgusting and fungus-infested, but I think it’s a pretty fair tradeoff.

Peas, peas, peas, peas--

Frozen in a bowl!*

*This song, quoted here in its entirety, was written for me by my sister's friend, ca. '97/'98.

Nuts

Nuts can be a difficult category to pin down because there are so many different varieties. In theory, the nut should be the perfect food. It is portable and snackable, and therefore resists strict alignment with any social food practice: one does not need to get dressed up or abide by any culinary custom in order to enjoy a nut. And yet, for the most part, nuts are disgusting. They confuse us with their careful packaging. It is human nature to want to know what lies beyond that hard shell and to get to the meat of the nut’s nature, as it were. When we do crack open the shell, we are almost always disappointed. Although nuts are a varied group--they come in all shapes and sizes--they share one thing in common: none of them taste good and they’re all too expensive for what you get. In fact, the only two nuts worth eating also happen to not be nuts. The cashew, for instance, grows inside of a kidney-shaped fruit attached to another fruit, and is therefore actually a seed and not a nut. Meanwhile, the peanut can be found underground because it is a legume. But I refuse to abide by the laws of botanical science, which try to tell me that a tomato is a fruit and a cashew is a seed. The classification of these foods should depend on their use, and not some science geek who starts all of his sentences with either “Well, actually...” or “Did you know...” For all intents and purposes (and intensive purposes, since the cashew and peanut are excellent sources of energy), both can be considered nuts.

I have chosen to begin and end this post with the cashew and the peanut so that the reader might get his/her hopes up with the cashew, only to have them dashed by the other nuts, and then experience a kind of redemption with the peanut.

The Martyrdom of St. John Nepomuk, who was drowned a sea of nuts for
refusing a walnut offered to him by King Wenceslaus.

Cashews: The cashew is one of the few nuts fit for human consumption, and its deliciousness lies in its impracticality. It is born of a revolting fruit, one which I have had the distinct displeasure of actually tasting. The cashew fruit will suck all moisture from your mouth, and with it, the will to continue living in a world cruel enough to create this fruit in the first place. Some people actually eat this fruit, but presumably only the kind of people who are too poor to buy the cashews (likely the cashew harvesters). The singular cashew grows within a poisonous comma-like addendum to the fruit, which must be roasted outdoors before it can be safely ingested. The intensive labour involved in harvesting the cashew and the danger involved in roasting it is a mark of luxury and good taste.

Pecans: Pecans look like wrinkled and diseased vulvas and should be avoided at all costs. They have no culinary value and are aesthetically displeasing and disruptive to the common good. They also lead to the unfortunate pronunciation of “pe-cawn,” which lends a false sense sophistication to what is in actuality a banal and middle-class nut.

Walnuts: Walnuts are sometimes considered “the poor man’s cashew,” as if just placing a bowl of walnuts in your living room will put you on par with your more affluent neighbours, who can not only afford a dish of cashews for company, but are also sophisticated enough to use the word “dish” instead of the unrefined “bowl.”

Hazelnuts: Hazelnuts are not edible and therefore are beyond the scope of this discussion.

Acorns: Like hazelnuts, acorns are also totally inedible. But unlike hazelnuts, they are adorable and warrant our attention.

Although Saint Francis committed himself to living
in poverty, he could not give up his mountain of nuts
and refused to share them. His selfishness was awarded
with sainthood, in true Catholic fashion.

 Pistachios: These “oysters of the trees” are as offensive and revolting as the actual oysters of the sea. They look like a cyst in the process of bursting, or, more horrific yet, an oyster. An interesting parallel can be drawn between the lazy activity of cracking open a pistachio shell and eating the hardened vomit inside to the plebeian activity of sitting on a porch, whittling a piece of wood. There is also a disconcerting dust-like material coating the shell.

Almonds: There is only one appropriate way to eat an almond, and that is to wait until the Grand Forks Art Gallery is catering a social event which prompts your mother to buy a giant bag of pre-sliced almonds from Costco, roast them in the oven to be used in some unknown and highfalutin dessert, and then store them in a stainless steel dish on top of the dinner plates for you to graze on as you drift through the kitchen, waiting for your actual dinner of starches and cheese to be prepared for you.


Chestnuts: These little brown gems are pure delight, so long as you never try to eat one. Collecting chestnuts and storing them in pockets or displaying them in jars is a perfect passtime for any self-respecting individual, but taking the next step and trying to eat one is not. Chestnuts grow within a spiky burr-like covering, and when they begin to make their way out of this frightening womb, they resemble a violent caterpillar shedding its horrific skin, revealing the beautiful brown bulb of a butterfly within.

Macadamia: The common name, “Queen of Nuts,” is an offense to the institution of monarchy. These cheap Hawaiian souvenirs* give the impression of class, but don’t be fooled: they are as ordinary as they come. Only an uncouth commoner would be taken in by this ruse.

Saint Lucy, who refused to marry a pagan, offered
him a plate of macadamia nuts instead. He
accepted the deal. She is often portrayed holding a
tray of nuts and is the patron saint of hostesses.

Peanuts: And now the time has come to end this otherwise rather dour post on a positive and hopeful note. Do not despair! Not all nuts deserve our disdain! The peanut, along with its more urbane cousin, the cashew, is capable of saving the nut classification from utter disgrace and embarrassment. Although peanuts do not have the same luxurious touch as the cashew, they are nevertheless more adaptable to our changing times. Everything has peanuts! Which is why peanut allergies are so rampant: we must purge the human race of those of us who cannot be accommodated within this new era. If I had a quarter for every time a peanut saved my life whilst stranded in the wilds of the revolting Eastern European culinary landscape, I would have enough quarters to live off of peanuts for the rest of my life. All hail the mighty peanut, king among nuts.


* I seem to recall a time in elementary school when everyone was going on vacation to Hawaii and invariably bringing back macadamia nuts as a tasty treat for the class. I, of course, never degraded myself by ingesting a single one. Nor have I since. Incidentally, they are actually Australian, which only adds to the many number of reasons to dismiss them as a food worth eating. Nothing good has ever come out of Australia. 


Recent scholarship has found that it was more likely
a pecan, and not an apple, that led to man's fall from grace.

When choosing nuts, be selective

Some are good, but most destructive.

Limit yourself to the peanut and cashew,

All others, for God's sake, eschew, eschew!