Blasts from the Past

Well, so, yeah, when I couldn't get up enough energy to go to bed last night, I Googled myself and came up with these two ancient clips. :)

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/04/style/game-not-cattle-on-texas-ranch.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1993/10/20/food-newsletters-eating-between-the-lines/cef0fbf1-598f-45a3-96ba-0442b0631e05/?utm_term=.b9211b8ae28a

Things really don't ever disappear from the internet. :o

Spiciness

I don't get it. 

Sure, some can be nice, but too much can make food inedible.

Recently, I had a jambalaya so spicy, it left my lips chapped. I hate when I order something that would be wonderful but someone, probably in the very last step, wrecked by adding too much spice.

Other people seem to love it, though.

It seems like a "prove your manhood" kind of thing. Take my husband. He will eat spicy food so hot, he will happily point out that his head is sweating. At a nearby Indian restaurant, where you order at a counter and are asked whether you want the spiciness level "mild" (garnished, to keep things straight, I noticed, with cilantro), "medium" (one slice of jalapeño) or "hot" (two jalapeño slices), my husband ordered "hot" the first couple times. I suspect it was because, at least in part, he had to make his choice publicly. (Since then, even he has quietly backed off to "medium.")

What else but misdirected competitiveness can explain this guy who ate the hottest pepper in the world (which clocks in, according to the Washington Post,  at 1.64 million Scoville heat units (SHUs) compared to the 8,000 SHUs of a jalapeno) in a hot-pepper eating contest. (What the hell?) He not only suffered dry heaves (to be expected, the New York Times article notes) but also the poetically named “thunderclap headache,” which is so intensely painful he had to be hospitalized. Or this guy, who, after eating ghost pepper, retched so violently, he tore a hole in his esophagus?

As I strongly suspected, liking spicy foods has everything to do with screwing around with the pain receptors in your mouth for the thrill of it.

No thanks.

Cheap Wines Are Just Fine

I used to write – a tiny bit – about wine.

But my husband is under strict orders not to tell anyone … because then wine snobs (there are always some) will want to debate/compete.

Here’s a dirty secret: When people taste wine blind, they tend to like the cheaper wines a little better than the more expensive ones.

I liked the wine professionals I met. One demonstrated to me the difference between “old world” and “new world” wine styles. If you taste a French white wine by itself, say a chardonnay, which is called a Burgundy (after its region rather than its grape varietal, because it’s French), it will taste thin. A California chardonnay, drunk alone, will taste better. But put some salt on your tongue and the French wine will taste a lot better. That’s because French wines are meant to be drunk with food, while California wines are meant to be what the wine person called “a cocktail-party wine,” often drunk alone.

Sommeliers told me the cheapest wines on their lists don’t sell because no one will order them. If they find a great deal, they often have to raise its price to sell it. That’s why I like a pal of mine who, with a great flourish, will tell a waiter, “Bring me a glass of your cheapest chardonnay!”

One wine guy told me syrah (or shiraz) wines – syrah is a red grape varietal grown mostly in Australia – are always good, though cheap.

I discovered vinho verdes at a Portuguese restaurant. These “green” or “young wines” have a slight sparkle, taste like the wine version of beer and cost $4 a bottle at my Kroger.

Which is where I search the lowest shelves (cheapest wines) for funny names and labels.

Because, really, most wines are just fine.

Throwback Thursday

Oop, found this blast from the past while googling myself.

Wrote it a billion years ago and had thought it was lost to the mists of time. Was afraid to read it, frankly, but I guess it looks OK. :)

Foods That Aren’t Really Food

See? People trying to make
pomegranates edible.

There are some things we all say are food that really aren’t. 

Take, for example, pomegranates. By the time you get through cutting it open, careful not to get any on yourself, it stains, and digging out the seeds, just so that you can get that tiny bit of edibleness around them … No, not food.

Grapefruit: absolutely not a food, more of a torture.

Lots of diet food – rice cakes, melba toast – fall less into the “food” category and more into the “cardboard” category.

Popcorn, in my opinion, is similar to rice cakes and melba toast, except you can drench it in butter.

In fact, there are a lot of foods that are inedible except as vehicles, excuses, really, for eating melted butter: steamed clams (breading and frying those also works), escargot, lobster.

Fondant, that weird clay-like icing bakers use when they are building something that looks cool out of cake ingredients, is not food.

Neither are marshmallows and cotton candy.

Legally, restaurants are not supposed to put anything on your plate that is not edible, in case you are too dumb to tell that that flower blossom isn’t really meant to be eaten. But it isn’t. Ditto: those sprigs of parsley and cilantro and those dried red peppers in your General Tso’s chicken. Not food.

Likewise, spicy ingredients – hot chiles, horse radish, wasabi – while fine as an accent to the actual food on your plate, are not, in my opinion, food themselves. Just picture yourself trying to eat a bowl of any of them.

Anise, the flavoring for black licorice. My grandmother was so proud of her anisette cookies. Blech. When she gave me, ordinarily a cookie fiend, one, I would sneak it back onto the plate when she wasn’t looking.

Did I miss any?

Losing Weight

Yay! I lost weight!

Needing to watch my weight is a relatively new development for me. When I was young, I was a skinny-skinny-skinny eating machine.

Well … things have changed.

Several years ago, my husband lost 60 pounds. People, he reports, kept asking him how he did it, but when he told them he watched what he ate and exercised, which is what I’ve just done, they’d say, “Yeah, I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.”

I’m no expert, but, yeah, it does … which doesn’t mean it’s easy or quick.

Things I found helpful:

Get a calorie-counting app on your phone, one that tracks calories expended on exercise as well as calories consumed.

You will need to exercise every day to keep within the calorie count. If you don’t, you will be hungry and being hungry makes you want to start killing people. And turn on the “track my activity” feature, which will minus out calories for the walking it senses you are doing.

Find exercise you will do. VERY important.

Do not let yourself get hungry. Seems counter-intuitive, but if you grit your teeth and try to use willpower to not eat, you will lose control and eat anything (and everything) within reach. Eat frequently and choose things that will keep you full, containing, in particular, protein, even though these foods aren’t the lowest in calories. Do not try to survive on lettuce.

Choose whole grains. Things like brown rice and whole-wheat pasta take your body longer to digest, leaving you feeling full longer.

Don’t make any food forbidden.  Sure, you can eat it. Just fit it into your calorie count. I drink lattes (skim milk, no sugar: an easy adjustment) and, at dinner, wine.

Be realistic: Slow and (relatively, imperfectly) steady is how this works.

Don't Have To

I tend to be a mindless rule-follower.

Years ago, my friend and I were waiting on a quiet subway platform when he dropped one of his gloves – a nice, leather glove – onto the tracks. He looked both ways, hopped down, picked up the glove, then neatly pulled himself back onto the platform.

 “Yes, there are rules, but you can still think for yourself,” he explained.

I’d like to say that moment had an immediate impact on me, but it didn’t.

Every year, I water my Christmas tree because you’re supposed to, ignoring that none of my trees have ever sucked up a drop of water.

Turns out, I’ve been doing it wrong.

This professor of forestry, who, incidentally, never watered his own Christmas trees until he did his study and said none of his plant-physiologist buddies did either, advises, A., buy your tree super-fresh, as in cut a few hours ago. (As if I, in Houston, have any hope of that.) B., he says recut the trunk when you get home, the way you cut the stems of flowers before putting them in a vase. (Duh. Why didn’t I think of that?)

Even then, though, within 12 hours, the tree will cover the new cut with resin.

I might try cutting the trunk but, then again, I’ve done it wrong for years and it’s been fine. The hell with it.

I have always washed raw chicken, thinking I was getting rid of bacteria. When my husband told me that’s not right, I didn’t believe him; he had to send me a link. Turns out he’s right: You should NOT wash raw chicken and other meats because you don’t get the bacteria off but you do splash it all over the kitchen.

So, I’m going to change.

I feel so daring.

Waffles vs. Pancakes

Image courtesy of

tiverylucky

at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I was recently at a motel’s continental breakfast, where there was a make-your-own waffle station. 

You scooped batter out of a nearby bowl, poured it onto the waffle iron, closed it, flipped it over and waited 3 minutes – which is a long time when a bunch of kids, in flannel pajama pants and winter coats, are lining up behind you.

I had never made a waffle before.

Which got me thinking: Why do people bother with waffles? Aren’t waffles and pancakes basically the same thing? If so, why would anybody bother with a waffle iron? Judging by how I had to peel my waffle off the motel’s, I would guess they are a pain in the ass to clean and, according to Amazon, they cost somewhere in the $40 range and are just another one of those specialty, rarely used gadgets that clutter up your kitchen. 

Image courtesy of

rakratchada torsap

at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

According to Alton Brown, however, waffles and pancakes are not the same. Despite what many people, like me, think, he says, the batter is different. And he points out that waffles are crunchy while pancakes are soft, something I had never known was intentional. When waffles have been crunchy for me in a diner or wherever, I thought it was because someone overcooked them. And I could never understand the appeal of Belgian waffles, which are just this crunchy bricklike thing. Apparently, though, what are called Belgian waffles here in the US are nothing like the waffles made in Belgium, which sound amazing.  And I’ve had plenty of soft, limp waffles, such as Eggo waffles, which are, come to think of it, gross.

Clearly, I have to find good waffles to try.

Maybe at these Houston places – waffles and fried chicken are a thing.

Actually, waffles are a Southern thing.

Who knew?

I'm not the only one to contemplate this issue.

(Link for this video:)