Little to Say, Less to Eat

I'm shaming all of you, I know. I have been lazy, and distracted, and non-blog oriented. I realize that part of it has to do with a weekend disinterest in food. I deal in food all day long so when I'm not at work my concerns and attention lie elsewhere. I eat when food runs into me. Which seems to happen more often if beer has run into me (as was the case on Sunday at the Folk Life Festival where Kettle Korn, Falafal, and Nachos all ran into me in a span of a few hours-- kind of incredible that my intestines weren't affected by the trifecta fusion cuisine-- but delve deeper: those things are actually exactly the same, corn and beans cooked in oil. Amazing, no?). To further highlight what I'm talking about I'll give you my eating during the last twenty four hours. Please bear in mind that I have a cold, which is also contributing to a non-interest-- for those not in the know, food isn't quite as fun when you can't smell or taste it. So it goes:

Yesterday: I got to work, rummaged in the fridge and happened upon a peach yogurt (a flavor I loathe) and some bags of sample granola that have been open for a few weeks now. In theory a good combo, but hating the yogurt flavor and eating it with stale granola really doesn't do much for a person. I treated myself to Bahn Mai for lunch which never fails to impress. I went sailing at Duck Dodge after work thus dinner was a big Red Stripe, a Full Sail and some chips and guacamole (I use that term generously as it was the generic version of Imo which means the first four ingredients are dairy products and oil, then it moves to a long list of preservatives, and finally some green coloring-- nary a listing for avocado). I ate three grape tomatoes when I got home and had a slice of the insanely good beer cheese I bought for Chris and Randy at the Pike Place Cheese Festival at some point last week. The beer cheese really tastes like eating cheese while drinking beer, which may seem weird until you think about having a one stop fondue experience, and then it makes tremendous sense. In case you find yourself pining for beer cheese you can take a gander here.

Today: Went to work (after blowing about a half gallon of snot out of my nose) and interestingly enough, didn't really want any yogurt. Had the foresight to bring a Thai Kitchen soup with me. It's funny. I've had this Thai Soup sitting in my bedroom since I moved here. It was one of the reminders of life in San Francisco. Given I was sick and soup seemed appropriate, I thought I'd have it for lunch. No no, I ate it at 7:35 this morning when I was more or less craving a salt lick. It was fantastic...although having eaten lunch for breakfast I was at a little bit of a loss when elevensies rolled around. I went fridge diving again and came up with a sample pack of hummus, a whole wheat tortilla, a yellow bell pepper, shredded cabbage, shredded carrots, peperoncinis, and Parmesan cheese. I mean, on paper, that experience of a single fridge dive resulting in such splendor seems ideal. But you have to understand that what I listed was pretty much exactly everything in the fridge (minus yesterday's peach yogurt). Because that's the way things are. We keep in our fridge exactly what we need. Which means, the same food will be there tomorrow. I could either eat exactly that, or drink from an unlabeled gallon jar of Caesar dressing (which also happened to be in there but which I deigned not to mention). So now I'm back home, which is ironically the place I eat the least. Especially interesting is that Chris and Randy don't keep chocolate in the house, which is I think a lifetime first. In the beginning it was kind of hard to deal with, but true to all that diet literature, once it isn't around and you stop eating it, you cease craving it. It's kind of liberating not to be a slave to the dark stuff.

And this is what I'm talking about. My food life on the day to day, is quite uninteresting right now. Although as I write this, I'm realizing you might be thinking "Wow, that's more than I eat in a week" or "Save some for the starving children in Somalia." Perspective is everything, friend, and for me this is highly uninspired. Food is feeling less about eating and more about thinking. Which is probably good in the long run. But are you better off for having read this? Doubtful. And am I better off for having written it? Unlikely. I wouldn't say this is the beginning of the end of the Assassin, merely a moderate period of hibernating. I promise that the next entry, whenever it happens, will be more compelling. In the interim, if you are interested in finding out what people in Chicago are eating this season, you should think about stopping here.

S is for Seattle and its Sandwiches

I would maintain that sandwiches are in my top five foods. This is not my first time addressing this theme. In a previous post I gushed about Cicil's, my most favorite sandwich stall in downtown San Francisco. In truth, my recently adopted job requirement of eating and making an overwhelming amount of sandwiches has perhaps muted their novelty slightly. Yet, the call of a good sandwich still tugs at my heart strings and probably always will.

Seattle, it turns out, is a sandwich Garden of Eden. Two astonishingly delicious sandwiches have spiraled down towards my belly during these last few weeks and their memory makes my mouth water and my belly glow from the inside out.

1) Act One: Bahn Mai, Pho Cylo. 1st and Lander.
There is a vibrant Vietnamese restaurant scene here. Pho is on many, many corners. It helps that I work near the International District (most of which is of some Asian bend) but because there are glittering signs declaring "BEST PHO EVER IN THE WORLD RIGHT HERE" on so many blocks, it makes a skeptic out of even the biggest Pho enthusiast. As a non-meater (did I just make that up? ever notice that meat and eater share a lot of letters?...yesssss), I'm not actually a Pho devotee but where there are Pho joints it turns out Vietnamese sandwiches, called Bahn Mai, often trail closely behind. My appreciation for Vietnamese sandwiches is easily credited to my parents. On many of their numerous trips to San Francisco (long before I lived there) they made a point of stopping at their favorite Vietnamese sandwich place on 9th and Irving. In retrospect I'm not sure it was their favorite, it was just the one they knew about, knew how to get to, and was easily accessible, and then they decided it was good enough, great even, to never need to find another one. My new boss is a legitimate Bahn Mai enthusiast. And he tipped me off that great ones could be found just a few blocks from our office. On a day that really just required a fine Bahn Mai, I struck out to see if I could somehow get some kind of a porkless mock-up. Leave it to these progressive Pacific Northwesters, my eyes immediately settled on Vegetarian Bahn Mai; same business but with tofu instead of pork. This sandwich arrived rightfully warm, the bread was a spectacularly crispy french roll, the sandwich was laden with thin strips of tofu braised in that indescribable sauce that smacks of soy, fish, perhaps a bit of suger and chili. It's guts were a heady mix of shredded carrots, cilantro (which I know belongs in there but still makes me gag-- more on my enzymatic shortcomings later), and sliced chilies. Damn, that's a good Sam.

2) Act Two: Caribbean Tofu, Paseos. Fremont btw. 42nd and 43rd.
I have a buddy up here who I sailed with in college and who is now in medical school at U Dub. He is a fabulous human, a native Seattlite (can I just call him a Satellite?) and in the know about many things. I picked him up en route to a Cinco de Mayo/Kentucky Derby party during which I lost $10 on a stupid horse that I was sure would win...thanks Tiago...you are a terrible galloper, enjoy the glue factory. Andy says we have to make a stop at the Caribbean sandwich place before we go to Ballard. I have no idea what's in a Caribbean sandwich, I assume meat-- Andy confirms. Then follows with "hmmmm....I'm pretty sure they have something non-meat. You eat seafood. Maybe shrimp..." then he pulls out his phone and calls. I already love this place because it is a sandwich joint outside of the U District that is good enough for Andy to keep in his phone. He calls and asks what non-meat things they have. "Tofu...and shrimp." Then he places our order for us. We fight heinous traffic to get to Fremont. We arrive thirty five minutes after our sandwiches were supposed to be ready. There is a crowd of folks congregating outside of this little red house emitting drool-worthy smells of sauteed onions. We walk inside and directly up to the counter. There are two sandwiches waiting for us. The few tables inside are filled. The cashier is a kid--eh maybe twenty years old. His eyes are huge, he is throwing money around, looking up for a second, making sure sandwiches are getting into the right hands. There a four or five people bustling around a griddle behind him. It's hotter than hell in there. We leave the sandwiches wrapped up until we get to our friends' house. The hope being that whatever essence of warmth that remained inside the bread might still be in tact. When we actually get around to eating them (after placing bets and getting tall cups of mint juleps) they are in surprisingly good shape. Right off the bat I arrive at this conclusion: these sandwiches are not good date food. There is no way to stay clean, no way to keep it out of the spaces between your teeth, off your face, lap, or shirt. You have to make-out with this sandwich to get to it at all. It's big and bulky and overflowing. It's a thousand calorie sandwich-- unless it's more than that-- which is possible. Note to self, wait until a third or maybe fifth date before engaging in this circus act. There are mounds of caramelized onions, melty cheese, tofu braised in some kind of jerk sauce, unidentified seasoning, lettuce that is "wilted" to put it kindly. I think some tomatoes, definitely a mayonnaise blend (ordinarily not my favorite but it definitely worked here) and jalapenos. This sandwich is dope: literally and figuratively. If I wasn't concerned about my girlish figure I would probably make a habit out of it.

In other news, god bless the internet for sparing no piece of hard-to-find fact. After my last entry about Nana and Zaidee I consulted with my brother and hyper-pondered about what that delicious short-lived animal cereal actually was. My brother, who is way more tech savvy than me, was skeptical that I would be able to figure it out online given I had no concrete information other than "animal cereal". I narrowed it down by adding the search term "80's animal cereal". This brilliant query led me to a site that had known 80's cereals alphabetized. The problem was that each letter had its own page, and I had no idea what the cereal was called. So I just started at A. After a few minutes I found it. I'm thinking of writing Post a letter and seeing if they would put out a limited edition box for my twenty fifth birthday (which happened two months ago...shhhhh).

So things have been good. Good sandwiches, good cereal re-discovery. Good times. S is for sandwiches, and if I were illiterate I'd say S was for cereal too.

Sixty Years of Perfect Pairings

May 7th was my grandparents' 60th anniversary. What an incredible milestone. In the twenty five years that I've been witness to their love for one another, I've never seen it waver or change. I sent them a card that likened their partnership to other great partnerships in this world. Most of the card's offerings were food related and it led me to ponder how food has played a role in my relationship with them.

Throughout my life, my family has gathered together in December at my grandparents apartment in Miami. These vacations always began with a phone call and my Nana asking what kind of cereal my brother and I wanted. This was the greatest phone call of the year, not because I cared about cereal in particular (although there was this incredible kind of cereal shaped like animals that only existed for a few years and could only be found in the Winn Dixie on Key Biscayne), but because it meant that it was on her consciousness to stock her kitchen with all the things she knew I liked and couldn't easily get in our small town in Northern California: bialis, lox, pickled herring, smoked whitefish, corn rye, green tomatoes.

Ironically, when I was really young, I thought eating was a burden. But the Miami apartment was always a food mecca. There, even things I didn't like I ate, and loved. Pizza and American cheese topped my list of feared and disliked foods, yet Nana made the BEST English muffin pizza and I'd come in from a swim at the pool and munch ecstatically. (For the remaining 11 months of the year you couldn't get me near the stuff.) I learned to love many foods in Miami: grapefruit that my grandfather ate for breakfast simply cut in half around its swollen belly. When I was really little I always wanted to sprinkle sugar on mine, but overtime I learned to like it the way he ate it; even today, it's one of my favorite fruits. I also learned to dress my salad only with balsamic vinegar just like Zaidee did every night. Growing up, I always knew this about my mother: when she would go to the movie theater as a child and all the other kids her age would order ice cream or candy from the concession counter, she would ask for a pickle. Like my mother, I have an affinity for the sour, salty and briny. I can stand with a jar of peperoncinis and eat them one after another until the jar is gone. Genetics is an amazing thing this way, perhaps I got my taste preference from my mother, more likely I inherited it straight from my grandfather, just as she did.

There are many foods I will always associate with my grandparents' inviting dinner table: Sweet potatoes, roasted in the oven and served steaming, whole or in half, with their syrup sticking to their skin. Chocolate bobka, warmed lightly so the fluffy dough meshed with the barely melting chocolate. Even though I stopped eating meat years ago, I still think fondly on Nana's duck, fricassee, chopped liver, and brisket. My little fingers getting greasy as I picked around my plate.

On most nights Nana cooks dinner. Zaidee always eats happily, never complaining about the way this or that is cooked. Maybe it's because after sixty years Nana knows just how Zaidee likes it, maybe it's because after sixty years they both like it the same way. Maybe it's because the food Nana cooks is made with so much love it's nearly impossible to dislike. I learned to eat under my grandparents' watchful and loving eyes. I developed my palette in large part because of how they stocked their fridge and fed me between rowdy bouts at the beach or general mischief with my cousins.

Even now, living in urban areas where all kind of food is accessible to me, I find that certain things don't taste as good as they do in their kitchen. Green tomatoes are never better than straight from the jar, my fork staked through it's middle, juices dripping into the sink, my bathing suit dripping onto Nana's kitchen floor. I can't imagine my life without my Miami food. I can't imagine Miami food without my grandparents. Grapefruit and Balsamic vinegar, bobka and sweet potatoes, bialis and smoked whitefish, American cheese and English muffins, Nana and Zaidee. Sixty years of perfect pairings, here's to many more...

Treats and Deets

I don't have an overwhelming amount to say on the food front. I spent the day doing procurement type work. Calling vendors and discussing products and specs and just how quickly we can get samples. It is kind of amazing though. If you have a contract with a vendor (and in some cases even if you don't) and you say "I want 5 lbs of sweet potatoes sent to this address" the sales rep not only says "okay" they overnight FedEx it to you-- for free. It's pretty amazing. On tap for a Monday delivery are two #10 cans (weighing in at 6.5 lbs each) of marinated mushrooms. That's a ton of marinated mushrooms and that is actually my fault. I asked for the weight of the sample size of mushrooms in ounces. He said "it's a #10 can...so...6.5". Me being the retail consumer that I am I assume, naively, that he means 6.5 oz. I even write an e-mail to our chefs saying that two 6.5 oz cans of mushrooms will be arriving shortly. Imagine my surprise as I'm reviewing specs and discover that the cans are 6.5 POUNDS each. That's a pretty big error by me. Thankfully A) it was free B) the people around these parts probably didn't even read the e-mail I wrote C) they are all very forgiving. These kinds of mistakes are better made in quantities of low number ounces to low number pounds rather than on large scale procurement whereby we might move 3,000 lbs a week of something like corn.

In non-food oriented news, I've been going running at Greenlake a fair amount. And just for the sake of diversity I'd like to discuss some of the regulars that I have seen because they are quite a group...albeit not attractive, as is the gold standard in this city...but highly dynamice. (I know what you are thinking "Wow, Kitchen Assassin, that is incredibly rude". Actually my friends, do a Google search. That is common knowledge among the rest of the world and even some locals. I didn't come up with it on my own, I just happen to agree.)

1) Old St. Nick. This guy is the reincarnate of a more svelte Santa. Same white hair, same white beard. He walks around the lake wearing a smock with red lettering that reads "Spanish Lessons". I'm wondering if he is wearing it because he is looking for lessons or because he gives them or because the smock is a nice way to keep cool. Today I saw him sitting down on a bench with a young guy. I slowed down my pace in an attempt to determine if they were speaking Spanish-- when I passed, the young guy was saying "ooooohhh" not indicative of much. This will require more investigating.

2) Husky Guy. He is not husky, but his dog is. Everytime I've seen him he is wearing all navy blue and is hanging out with his snow white husky. Once he was just sitting on a bench; the enormous dog draped over him. He looked pretty chilled out and so did his pooch. I dig him. He and his pup make a good team.

3) Roller Boogie. So along with some of the other more sweeping generalizations I could make about Seattle, I'd have to say this city loves its rollerblades. I don't get this at all but I'm trying not to judge and thankfully the people don't wear neon spandex while doing their shuffle. However, there is this fella at Greenlake who is a large black man who roller blades with his iPod. This is not abnormal except that he dances while he blades. At some point I'll have to ask him what he listens to because he looks so sublimely happy while he does his triple step-side kick-shuffle that I want whatever he's got...except for the blades. I don't really want those.

As I write this I am standing in the kitchen. Randy is over my right shoulder making beer. The Mariners game is on in the background-- in the distance you can hear the trains whistling by. All is peaceful in Seattle.