foodmuseumblog

Pyramid Prankishness...

Via IMGFave

Thin and Thinner: Organic Pizza by Jules

Just look at these slices, people---and absorb that they are made largely from organic ingredients, from local ingredients, and fired up swiftly--slices with goat cheese, caramelized onions, and adamame; pesto-infused cheese with tomatoes; shaved salami and sausage with....And so on.

The restaurant is Jules Thin Crust Pizza, named for one of the owner's kids, and the one we hit is in Wrightstown, PA . There are two other PA Jules', plus one in CA. The ambiance is "bring your kids!"

So don't come looking for romance....just crispy goodness.

Further Fair Fare: Pie

Green chile and apple pie? Sure--but likely only at the New Mexico State Fair Asbury Cafe, the September mecca for pie-lovers and others who turn their backs on deep-fried Twinkies and other dreck. Since 1960, Asbury Cafe volunteers have been cooking/baking their little Presbyterian/Methodist hearts out, contributing all proceeds to worthy charities in the Albuquerque area, many of them food-related.

That little piece dangling down inside the pie below? Green chile with a light bite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donuts and Diabetes Among Native Nations

 

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Currently on view at the Institute of American Indian Arts' Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe is this piece on how the white flour, fat, salt and sugar influence on Indian traditional diets has led to out-of-control diabetes issues.  Just outside, as noted in a prior post, visitors and vendors alike are eating fry breads, and other carby offerings.

Via IAIA---

Last Supper - C.Maxx Stevens’ exhibition is a conceptual installation. The new work by C. Maxx Stevens is based on her memories and experiences dealing with devastating effect of diabetes throughout native nations.  The exhibition creates a larger social awareness of the epidemic and its dilemma in all of the United States. The exhibition includes her family archives and testimony/narratives of the disease and its impact on traditional values and the drastic evolution of diet as well as economy.

About the artist: C. Maxx Stevens, Muscogee/ Seminole, received the prestigious Eiteljorg Fellowhip of Native American Fine Art in 2005 and was winner of the 2000 Visual Artist Award from the Andrea Frank Foundation in New York. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from Indiana University in Bloomington and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture and ceramics from Wichita State University in Kansas. Her installations are responses to site-specific environments where she explores the relationships among land, man, and the history of place. C. Maxx Stevens lives in Boulder, Colorado and is on the faculty of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado.

Et voila! French baguettes from a vending machine - Yahoo! News

(AP) — France is the home of the...

via news.yahoo.com

We were just reminiscing about Horn & Hardart.....

"Hecht came up with the idea a decade ago. He — like many French bakers — lived upstairs from his bakery in Hombourg-Haut and customers would often come knocking at his home after closing to scrounge for a baguette to hold them until morning.

"My wife said: 'We'll never get any peace!' so I said, 'We'll put out a bread distributor and we'll be left alone,'" Hecht recalled.

Now, he thinks the automated bread dispenser could revolutionize the lifestyles of bakers, many of whom get up before dawn to go to work. With the machine, they could sleep in a bit, he says."

Foodish Floridians Still Lack Something...

Ah, the bounty of Florida!  Fish so fresh it smells like Febreze, new spuds in winter, real-tasting strawberries, plump tomatoes, Cuban cigars and sandwiches, oysters, spiny lobsters, crawfish, tropical fruits like mangoes, starfruit and lychees, and so it goes.  It even has Ikea--but, alas, still no Trader Joe's. 

So it is with special pleasure that we return to TJ-land here in New Mexico. And this morning we breakfasted on scrambled eggs ( from the growers market) and TJ Whole Wheat Croissants, baked in our fave old countertop convection oven. Flaky, tasty, light, divine. 

And healthy as can be, especially with a generous addition of Irish butter and boysenberry jam. Yeah!

For those to whom the breakdown of foods into carbs, fats, calories, proteins, etc.,  holds a special fascination, take a look at this site that evaluates Trader Joe's products. It's from Livestrong, Lance Armstrong's non profit foundation.  ( Did he  or didn't he? And do we care?)

 

 

 

For rural Alaskans, Pilot Bread is soul food | Alaska Dispatch

It's called many names -- sailor boys, Eskimo cookies, hockey pucks and qa-qu-lik-daqs (something "like bread).

via www.alaskadispatch.com

Foreign Workers Gone, Tripoli Volunteers Make Bread

From the bbc:  "Every day at 1400 (1200 GMT) on the dot, our neighbour's 15-year-old son, Mohamed, delivers a bag full of bread to us: a ritual of "help thy neighbour" that seems to give comfort in these confusing and scary times in the capital.

He tells us he gets the bread for free because he has been volunteering at the bakery every day for the past three weeks.

Egyptians and sub-Saharan Africans once sweated in these local bakeries as they churned out loaf after loaf, but they have long since fled the country's unrest in fear for their lives - or are stranded at the airport seeking a way out. Now local residents have had to step into the breach."

( At right, a traditional sand-baked Libyan bread, most likely not like that baked in Tripoli. Thanks to Temehu, a Libyan tour operator, for the photo, and for superb information on Libyan foods here. )

A Florida Brasserie: Cassis, in St Petersburg.

This handsome bay-side, prime location restaurant attempts to evoke, or possibly replicate the neighborhood brasseries of France. Its chef, Jeremy Duclot, is French, after all, once involved with Philadelphia's Le Bec-Fin.  On a recent late lunch visit, however, I curiously was reminded of St Petersburg, Russia, way back in the days before capitalism, when the lovely city sat empty of cafes, devoid of human community, as if waiting to reawake.

Cassis American Brasserie is a restaurant waiting to happen---the stage is set, but the hustle- bustle, jostling, spirit of enjoyment is missing. Service is erratic--particularly outside, where we overheard one diner say to the hostess--"First visit, and last." The kitchen is said to be huge--2900 sq feet--the restaurant does all its own baking, makes fresh pasta, and yet the food was oddly timid, lacking flair. The grouper sandwich on potato roll was good, but not great---its mango salsa topping was skimpy and dry. The fresh fries were overcooked, the in-house onion rings as well, battered in the manner of fast food joint commercial offerings.

The crabcake was plentiful in actual crab, the garni a sad, shriveled dollop of Asian greens, likely killed by a heat lamp. But it lacked seasoning, as if the chef were wary of the palates of the stereotyped geriatric crowd, none of whom were at table when I visited. ( Of course I was there...)

Having not skimped on architecture, although the interior early 20th c. design does not mesh with the exterior at all, the owners appear to have stinted on the warm generosity of spirit and verve required to create a magnet neighborhood eatery. ( Perhaps there is an underlying, even unconscious contempt for the (American? Florida?) customer driving some of these errors...)

NB Cassis has an adjacent bakery/coffee bar with quality products.

 
Greasy, largely overcooked fries? Untoasted ( tasty) bun? Ultra American garni. Mostly moist grouper. Scant salsa, my dear.

 

 

 

 

50 States, All Cake, Not All Homemade...

A private school I know has a geographic tradition---third graders do a wacky play about the USA, and then they head into the hallway to observe/exclaim over/ eat a cake. A USA comprised of more than 50 pieces, Texas, like Gaul, has three parts, Alaska two, for example, the cake display attempts to give each state its due, with some receiving more attention than others.  This year Florida was lavishly decked out, Tennesee was fairly bare, New Mexico had its alien but no chiles (!!), and Idaho lacked potatoes.  (Perhaps the bakers were not foodishly-inclined.) South Dakota was an actual map, finely done, and The District of Columbia traditionally is a cupcake. Hmmm.

The cake is about 6 feet long, and half as wide, and some of us muttered over the spatulas before diving into Wisconsin or Maine, "Where are the homemade bits?" 

And thank you, parents!

 

 

 

At left:

Mammals in Oklahoma stare down a twister, cleverly created from a paper cup.

 

Just Buying Bread, Now Dead

"A BBC correspondent in Tripoli says there are reports of three people being killed in a drive-by shooting at a bakery queue in the Sashloomon district on Monday."

Further Grotesque Foods:Florida State Fair, Plus--Art from Twinkie's 37 Ingredients

I referred in a Super Bowl post to the Grilled Meatloaf Sundae, coming to the Florida State Fair, Tampa. Well, how about Mashed Potatoes and Gravy fried on a stick? The Ice Cream Burger? Or that perennial fave, Deep Fried Dryer Lint w/White Truffles and Caviar? ( I only made up that last one...)

Apparently returning to the Fair, from The Cupcake Spot in Tampa, are these: the Maple-Bacon Cupcake, and that most popular snackish choice, the Kettlecorn C.C.

  The Cupcake Spot apparently uses actual decent ingredients, such as butter and vanilla. Unlike the 37-ingredient Twinkie, brought to us by Hostess Brands, makers of Wonder Bread. 

Photographer Dwight Eschliman decided to photograph all 37 ingredients, and we found his work here. Be sure to click on the teeny-tiny arrow at top left to "play" this project.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes A Person Is Really Hungry

Once I had wrestled into submission the packaging surrounding my new Epson printer, I was starving. I mean seriously--after pushing and pulling and scissoring the h out of the box, I finally was on the floor, my feet pushing the frigging printer out of the tight grip of the box.

So instead of going with the halibut, possibly encrusted with crushed sesame crackers,  sauteed with garlic, tomatoes and basil, I went full tilt carb boogie. Using Trader Joe's whole wheat pizza dough, I made a tomato, onion, olive and mozzarella mini pizza in my trusty cast iron mini pan, with basil. And garlic infused/chile added olive oil.

Wow. Good stuff.

Fat Americans, Again

So I've been away, traveling up and down the east coast, visiting friends and family, and doing some biz.  I pulled into a roadside rest area somewhere in New England with the usual fast food subjects on hand and decided to buy a coffee at Cinnabon.

As I stood in line, naturally I noted and smelled the alluring and catastrophically caloric buns. (730 calories per bun, according to the Internets. ) Now hey--I love to eat something divinely wickedly tasty once in a while. But of late I have been, shall we say, cutting back? So I spotted some tiny versions of the full-sized buns and when it was my turn asked for one, with the coffee.

"Honey, you have to buy 6 of those," said the clerk.

'This, " I blurted out, gesturing melodramatically and then slapping the counter,  " is why Americans are so fat!"  Rather than calling security, the woman serving me the coffee threw her head back and guffawed with gusto. 

"Ain't that the truth, honey, ain't that the truth."

Deliver Me From Bland!

Amazingly, I ate lunch at my second Seventh Day Adventist-inspired vegan joint in almost as many days. This one, Little Lad's, is in Portland, Maine, and it seems that the same fellow started them both--and others. So maybe he likes bland food that features  descriptive names but tastes almost exactly the same?  ( New Hampshire's stuffed pepper did have a tasty tomato sauce.)

We ate lentil pilaf, Armenian style,  "Shepherd's Pie," fresh corn, slabs of potatoes, and salad. I doubt that an Armenian came within an inch of those lentils.  The corn and the salad were fine. When I asked for black pepper, I was told that the cooks think pepper is tough on the digestive tract, so no dice. The salt, too, was hidden, but available.

Little Lad's sells perfectly popped and seasoned popcorn in bags that is exceptionally good, I must say. They give you small sample bowls with your lunch and, of course, I bought a bag to take away. (If the popcorn is distinctive, then why is the carb-heavy food so...?)

A fellow blogger who lives near London makes delectable vegan food--as do many others inclined in that direction--so there is no reason for same to be utterly lacking in distinction. Or spices.

For supper in Portland? Gilbert's Chowder House--homemade onion rings! Fried clams with bellies! Oh yes, mighty fine, as a once in a blue moon treat. We neglected to have cole slaw.

Tomorrow I head south, back to the wicked NY/DC metro corridor, where  I most likely will not be enticed into another such vegan eatery.

ps   Don't miss eating at Flatbread if you are in Portland. Pizzas and ethical stances of distinction.

Panda Cake as Inspiration

 The National Zoo's 4 year-old panda, Tai Shan, whose babyhood antics I followed delightedly via the pandacam, celebrated his birthday today with a cake made of  "water, bamboo, shredded beets and beet juice," according to today's Washington Post.

That sounds refreshingly veggie-appropriate so I am pondering adding shredded beet to some kind of cake. Red devil? Or maybe a striped effect, in an angel food cake topped with strawberries.

And soon, shredded zucchini?

These "healthy" additives do not take away from the decadent cake-taste pleasure we all love, but somehow, the carrots of carrot-cake fame, do, do they not? ( I may be alone on this.)

I draw the line at garlic, onion or carrot in my cakes. Just sayin'.

(Tai Shan's 1st birthday cake--person-type--found here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/19764857@N00/192819747)

The Prez Hits a Bakery "Up There"

 Like many, I still am delightedly astonished that Barack Obama is our president. Imagine--he bolts from his limo in search of a snow globe, on his first trip to Canada, in fact his first official foreign visit. Then insists on a stop at a French bakery where he tried to buy maple-leaf-shaped cookies for his daughters. The baker refused his money.

"As he left, a woman emerged with the one local favorite Obama had heard a great deal about _ a deep-fried pastry known as Beaver Tail."    As this blog relates:  "Essentially a Canadian version of the donut, the dough is made into the flat shape of a beavers tail and flavoured with lemon, maple syrup and cinnamon."

Apparently discussion of pastry occupied a few minutes of Obama's meeting with Canada's opposition leader, Michael Ignatieff.

According to the AP report, " The two chatted briefly at the start about the pastry, which the president had tried and described as delicious.

He added that in Chicago, "we have some stuff that will thicken the arteries."

This guy is REAL. And he notices food.....

( Tks to http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/?p=565 for photo.)

Pizza Dough Transformed

Let's face it, and with all due modesty, I'm a genius. I was peering into the fridge this morning in search of something exciting (!) to eat when I espied a bag of Trader Joe whole wheat pizza dough with a due date of this very day.

OMG, today?  Hmmm....So I took out the dough,  cut it in half, warmed it in the micro, and fired up my countertop convection oven.  I spread out ( with a glass) the dough, sprinkled it with sugar and cinnamon, and then rolled it up. Then I stared down at it, added a tad more cin/sugar, and remembered a vision from the distant past--of someone cutting the dough into smaller bits before baking. ( The real bakers out there are roaring with laughter over this, my epiphany, but, hey--baking never was my strong suit, ok?!)

I bet it was a Pillsbury commercial of some kind, turning its refrigerated,  additive-filled white biscuit (?) dough into cinnamon rolls.

Who knows. In any event, the 4 resulting mini rolls were perfect, 2 eaten with swiftly cooked-in-olive oil scrambled eggs, and accompanied by  a good strong Scandinavian blend cuppa.

The 16 oz.package of dough costs $1.29 here in Albuquerque, and I have half left. ( Whole wheat flour, oil, yeast, sea salt.)

All I need to do now is create some baking powder frosting, freeze it, and then go crazy with this notion on a lazy Sunday morning.

NB This took all of maybe 15 minutes.........

( Thanks to pic from http://www.chow.com/pick/5678)