foodmuseumblog

Food-Themed Flick Wins Oscar

Dueling falafel joints on the West Bank, a concept that seized me by the tastebuds.  A short documentary by Ari Sandel titled West Bank  Story , (cute,) won an Oscar Sunday night in the Best Short Documentary category. Of course I'm dying to see it--falafel is a stellar vegetarian food, right, and, extra points, this film is a musical.

Here's what oscar.com says: "A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falafel stands on the West Bank."

Now I did see The Queen and don't recall QEII eating anything....maybe the corgis chowed down. And The Departed did feature a scene in a greasy spoon but the characters were so riven with violence I don't recall much eating. Loved Little Miss Sunshine a film wherein the Mom plops pizza and a bag of salad on the table, right?

But for real food, I think WBS is the foodie winner! Now how in hell can I get to see it????

Almost Acceptable--Girl Scout Cookies

A good while back I mused on the Girl Scout cookie thing in this blog--whining about the trans fats in said cookies.  Well now the GSers are back and trumpeting the almost no trans fats in their reconfigured products.

Here's the word from GS HQ

"For several decades, it was thought that partially hydrogenated oils–sometimes referred to as trans fats–were a healthier food choice compared with saturated fats. In recent years, data has emerged suggesting that, in fact, trans fats are not a healthier choice than saturated fats. Girl Scouts of the USA is proud to announce that all Girl Scout cookies are now "zero trans fat per serving" with the same great taste that has made them one of America's favorite treats over the years. While some "zero trans fat per serving" varieties of Girl Scout cookies were available in 2005 and 2006, this year all varieties will contain less than 0.5 grams trans fat per serving, which meets or exceeds the FDA guidelines for the "zero trans fat" designation.

Girl Scouts of the USA has worked diligently with our bakers over the past several years to address the issue of trans fats. We began listing the amount of trans fats one full year before FDA requirements went into effect. It is important to remember that Girl Scout Cookies are a snack food and are meant to be consumed in limited quantities within the context of a balanced diet. So that consumers can make an informed choice, the ingredients and nutritional profile of each variety are clearly listed on both the cookie box and the cookie order form."

It's noteworthy that more and more purveyors of cookies and snacks and such are taking pains to point out that these items are  " meant to be consumed in limited quantities within the context of a balanced diet. "

Apparently this concept is something many people have utterly forgotten or perhaps, in recent years, never knew...?

A Food Poem for Sunday Morning

The poetry of Linda Pastan, like that of Billy Collins, has been described with a faint note of scorn as "accessible," by certain literary snobs.  I love accessible--eat it up, in fact.

I sing a song
of the croissant
and of the wily French
who trick themselves daily
back to the world
for its sweet ceremony.
Ah to be reeled
up into morning
on that crisp,
buttery
hook.

Linda Pastan

(Poem found here: http://www.poemhunter.com/poets/)

Trader Joe's Has Taken Over My Kitchen...Whither the All-American Supermarket?

Recently I was in my traditional grocery store, after doing a tad of banking at my branch there, and I had trouble swiping my card in the machine--I was buying trash bags.  "This pesky thing is new,"  I grumbled to the clerk. "Oh, we've had those for months," she said .

Boing.  True.  The seductive allure of alternative food shopping apparently has virtually eliminated  jammed-to-the-gunnels-with-snack-foods  Smith's from my life.  I pondered this on my drive home. The bags of cut greens, spinach, the short, slender crisp cukes, the French-style frozen green beans, broccolini, spicy hummus, balls of mozzarella floating in milky water, extra shaaap Vermont cheddar, oozy St. Andre, dog chews, cans of tuna, canned beans of all sorts, including my favorite Cuban-style black ones, the full fat creamy yogurt, the Thai-spiced peanuts, and the vino galore, ( and more...,)  all are purchased from the right hon. Trader Joe's emporium. 

And all other veg, plus organic bulk flours, come from the Sunflower Market chain started a couple years back by Wild Oats founder, Mike Gilliland, who told me he had become bored with his rich, idle life, post WO. 

Shopping at both TJ's and Sunflower is........fun.   The staff are upbeat and well-informed.  The customers, particularly those at TJ's, are peppy and pleased,  trolling the aisles and emitting little gasps of delight as they discover garlic-stuffed green olives for VIRTUALLY NOTHING. Oh my gawd!  Nowhere else have I been collared by shoppers eager to share their enthusiasm for, say, the frozen Thai veggie dumplings, or the korma sauce--"to die for!"

Now Whole Foods--it was recently announced that they are buying Wild Oats--- is also on my food radar, though their prices are generally too high. I venture in there once in a while, especially on weekends, to sample this and that,  to eye the specials, and to slurp down a small vat of their fish soup.

And in season I am out at the farmers markets buying fresh local goodies.  So Smith's, the all-American supermarket,  has become a place where I bank, and once every 6 months, buy kitchen trash bags.

( P.S. People I know elsewhere complain bitterly about the crowded parking lots at many Trader Joe's markets. Here in the Wild West, we do not have that problem. Errr, not to the same extent. Avoid weekends.)

Fasting with Veggies

Just had a call from a person about to begin a fast for spiritual reasons. He asked if a potato were a fruit or a vegetable--apparently veggies are ok on this fast. So I said that the spud was  in the vegetable column and definitely not a fruit. I explained, however, that many veggies , botanically speaking, are fruits because anything edible that develops from a flower is a fruit.

But the potato, an underground tuber, the storehouse for the potato plant of excess nutrients the plant does not need at the time, may not exactly be what the spiritual fasting gods ordered either, growing in the dark as it does.....

Yucky Peanut Butter

Just went to check the contents of Con Agra's Peter Pan Peanut Butter and that section of the website is down, presumably because their web elves are scrambling to get something together re salmonella, their product, and why consumers  should continue to buy their stuff once the danger has passed.

So I'm guessing here, but I think their product at its most perfect contains sugar, extra oils of the partially hydrogenated variety, and other utterly unneeded extras.

Why are parents buying this stuff for their kids in the first place?!! Try a p.butter that contains peanuts, people---you don't even need to have a salty one. My jar label reads:  "dry roasted peanuts."

Try taking the kids to a store that has those peanut-butter making machines and the cute little clear plastic containers. Justin and Gillian will love watching the peanuts up top turn into the thick gloppy looking p.nut butter that coils into the container. And if they want to make poop jokes, so be it!

( Thanks to www.all-creatures.org/recipes/i-peanuts.html for the peanut pic.)

Faux Fish?

A pork chop is a pork chop, a chicken wing a wing, a burger a burger.....BUT--Fish eaters can no longer feel secure that they know what they are eating. The US is doing DNA tests on fish entering the country because apparently fish fraud is a real issue. This has been covered recently in the Washington Post--but we were in Florida a few days ago, living this dilemma.

We had no doubts that what we were buying at the Star Market in Cortez, Florida was the real thing--Pomano, Snapper, Grouper and so on. Why?  Well for one, because it was an actual fish market.  And for another, we could see the fish carcases being cut up on a long table behind the sales case, scales flying, the egrets , heron and pelicans awaiting the fish market's detritus under the dock's pilings.

But when we passed through Sarasota, when we inquired what fish was being used for the fish sandwich at a joint perched over the marina, the waitress said Basa, a fish flown in from Asia, frozen.  "It's the new, new thing in fish," she said. ( Buyer beware-not all basa is basa....)

Oh.

We visited friends on their houseboat berthed near Orlando at Sanford, Florida on the St John's River. The local greasy spoon at the end of the pier featured a fish called "snook," a local Florida specialty. Or so we thought. The fish market guys back in Cortez had told us snook in a restaurant was not legal. Only the person who caught it could eat it and it could not be sold commercially.  Hmmm. The weary waitress at the spoony place said their snook came in from Lake Victoria in Africa, from their distributor.

We noticed a Sysco sticker on the cash register.

Oi vey.

Was snook in actuality Nile Perch?

Was the grouper we had eaten out in Bradenton really grouper, or was it  a version of Asian catfish, well disguised under the blackening seasonings we chose? Or maybe farm-raised white fish something from Missouri?

( Grouper ???? from groups.msn.com)

Devil Crabs Served Up With Cuban Luvvvvvv

Here's Lili, Queen of the Florida Devil Crab entrepreneurs.  We had just turned south from Ybor City and were heading down to Bradenton when we spotted her tiny white scooter-style  van by the side of Route 41 South.

"Hey, Mama, what can I get you?" A high energy huckster in the best possible sense, Lili  has the patter and jive of the pro she is. She told us she had started up and sold a handful of businesses over the years, always taking a year off before starting the next.

This time her aim is to revive the roadside vendor tradition of Ybor City, selling deep fried devil crabs, crab empanadas, meat-stuffed potatoes, ( based on her Mom Lidia's recipes,) French fries, and, in the works, a range of desserts.  Her wagon? An Indian-made white "van", brand name Bajaj, serves as vending point, kitchen and vehicle.

Oh-- did I mention that she's Cuban?

"The Cubans coming into this country, many of them, are educated professionals, " says Lili.  "But they can't get good work here the minute they arrive.  They're janitors making $6 an hour. I want to offer some of them the opportunity to become self-sufficient, owning and running a franchise selling devil crab."

Lili and her family came to Ybor City from Cuba in 1970, when she was five. Her parents had been running a grocery store.  Castro's people seized the family's stove, and their sewing machine. In the States her parents worked at the Arturo Fuente Cigar Factory, as well as at other jobs.

Right now Lili is training her cousin Maribelle,  over from Cuba just three months, and a young friend in Florida just a month.  They are intently trying to learn the customer chatter Lily has perfected--their English is raw--along with the fry technique.  Maribelle bends over the fry pot, and Nomar is set to doing prep work in Lili's brother's restaurant. The little white vending van sits out front of his place, Monday through Friday, 1-6.

When traffic starts to thin, the shy and retiring Lili roars into the restaurant and zooms back out dressed in her chicken costume, wildly waving a sign that reads, " Eat More Devil Crabs."

At $3 a pop, the plump crab croquettes are beyond good, and far better than those I praised at Columbia Restaurant. " Of course," says Lili," when I tell her that.

"These are made with lotta, lotta, lotta Cuban love. ( Three times, three times.) That's the secret."

Did I mention that Lili Peguero is Cuban?

( To buy a franchise email Lili at [email protected])

Eating At A Tourist Mecca

Yesterday I had lunch with friends at the original Columbia Restaurant in Tampa's Ybor City. Founded in 1905 by Casimiro Hernandez, a Cuban immigrant, the restaurant that now stretches along a city block began as a corner cafe where cigar factory workers could meet, drink Cuban coffee and eat Cuban sandwiches.

We ate Columbia's version of "devil crab" croquettes, a plate of calamari, and black bean soup. And finished up with cafe con leche. The calamari were................amazing. Fresh! Delicately battered, lightly deep fried and served with aioli. I have had slightly more seasoned soup--remember I live in New Mexico--but still, it was a fine example of the genre.  ( And I used the house hot sauce in it...) The little croquettes were delicately seasoned and tasty.

Alhough Columbia is indeed a food heritage site--it even has its own adjacent museum--and its tilework, bar, and overall ambiance is inviting, I was still wary that its food might not be up to snuff. It's remarkable to see that an ancient mariner like this place is still doing good work. The family has expanded well beyond Ybor City, an immigrant village of Spaniards, Cubans and Italians. Columbia has six branches across Florida.

Ybor's nearby museum, built in an old bakery that still retains its giant wood ovens, with a patio where a pasta factory once stood, invites visitors to tour a cigar factory worker's wood frame house next door. A single nail on the front wall was where the Cuban bread hung on delivery in the early morning. Handy on the kitchen wall was a device for pressing plantains into cakes, and nearby, a cockroach trap, an item that appeared well-used.