Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

A tale of two sandwiches

I was quite taken with the SPAM website I found last night. It got me thinking...I have never had SPAM. In college somebody gave me a tin of something called "potted meat food product," but I didn't eat that either. I did used to love Underwood Deviled Ham. And then rounding out the tinned meat lineup, there was canned corned beef.

There were two distinct corned beefs in my house growing up. My father loved a canned corned beef sandwich: toasted white bread, with yellow mustard on one slice and mayonaise on the other, sliced corned beef and pickles.

My mother would shudder when he ate it. Mom's corned beef came from the deli and only from the deli, served on rye bread with spicy mustard and swiss cheese.

I knew the origins of my mother's sandwich; my grandfather had grown up in Brooklyn. And my taste swung it that direction [Reubens, actually] , too, so I didn't give dad's sandwich much thought.

Then one day I was flipping through White Trash Cooking and did a doubletake. There on page 73: "Canned Corned Beef Sandwich." The recipe didn't call for yellow mustard, but it did offer the advice that it was "delicious with a Cocola!"

Suddenly dad's sandwich was no longer an abomination, is was as much a part of my culinary cultural heritage as mom's.

Super Secret Chili Spice Mix

This is for Susie, who noticed that my chili recipe was missing a little something...

Specifically, the spices.

Okay, the super secret mix:

Equal parts salt, pepper, paprika, oregano, ground cumin, chili powder, and red pepper flakes.

You might be saying "Wait a second...isn't that just the ingredients in chili powder, plus the chili powder itself?"

Yeah, pretty much. But it works.

As for amounts, spiciness is so individual. I use about 4 tablespoons of the mix per batch of chili; I think Victor would prefer it hotter and I've had a few people tell me it was too spicy.

I will say that the heat kinda sneaks up on you, so taste it twice and wait a second before deciding whether to dump more spices in. The first time I made it I had to brown an additional pound of meat and chop a second onion to get it back to where I could eat it.

I hope you like it. If you don't, blame Victor...he's the one who convinced me that the chili was good enough to share. Normally I am very shy about giving people recipes I made up, because I will feel guilty if they are underwhelmed.

Chili today, hot tamale

One thing I like about the cool weather coming in is the chance to make chili again. (I suppose I could make chili in the summer, but it doesn't feel right somehow.)

I've been fooling with a chili recipe for a few years now, and I finally have it how I like it...minimal work, maximum yield. Throw it in the crock pot and get at least three meals out of it.

It also works without meat as a vegetarian chili; that is actually the way I make it most often now.

Brown about a pound of ground meat...beef, turkey, pork, a mixture. Drain the meat and retain a small amount of the grease.

Or, if you want to go vegetarian, use a little olive oil in a frying pan.

Cook a chopped onion and two cloves of chopped garlic in the grease or olive oil. When the onion is soft, pour a few ounces of beer in the pan. Add the meat back in, if you're using meat.

It doesn't matter what kind of beer, although I wouldn't use anything too sweet. I'd say a "full-bodied ale" would be best.

Simmer the onions, garlic, and meat in the beer for a few minutes.

While that simmers, drain a can of kidney beans and a can of black beans. Dump the beans and a 28-ounce can of undrained tomatoes (crushed are good. If you use whole tomatoes, break them up.) into a heavy pot (or Crock-Pot), then add the onion, garlic, meat, and beer.

If you aren't using meat, drain and add another can or two of beans. I usually go for variety...maybe a can of pintos and a can of navy beans.

Season to taste with Super Secret Chili Spice Mix and cook over low heat (or on low in the crockpot) for an hour or more.

Serve over spaghetti, topped with chopped raw onion, chopped fresh tomato, cheddar cheese, and maybe a little sour cream if you were too heavy-handed with the Super Secret Chili Spice. (That stuff sneaks up on ya.)

Leftovers make a good lunch wrapped in a tortilla, and very small amounts of leftovers can even be used as an omlette filling.

Now the good news

Now, if I did work for the Center for Thoughtful and Reasonable Analysis of All Available Data with Appropriate Advisories on the Limitations of Said Data for Informed and Responsible Individuals Who Are Willing to Make Decisions and Accept the Consequences, I would be all over this research:

A study in this month's European Journal of Clinical Nutrition is reporting that it is unlikely that beer intake is associated with obesity.

The researchers stated in their objective that"[t]here is a common notion that beer drinkers are, on average, more 'obese' than either nondrinkers or drinkers of wine or spirits. This is reflected, for example, by the expression 'beer belly'."

After studying male and female beer drinkers and non-drinkers (no alcohol, that is) in the Czech Republic, the researchers found that men who drank beer and smoked did have a higher waist-to-hip ratio, but in nonsmoking men and in women the waist-to-hip ratio was not increased. In men the body mass index was not related to beer drinking, and in women, the beer drinkers actually had lower BMIs than the nondrinkers.

Forget the burrito, gimmie a beer.

Bean burritos (again)

I have a bean burrito addiction. (Actually, all Mexican food, but bean burritos in particular.) I heard on the news yesterday that the Center for Science in the Public Interest had evaluated the menus at Baja Fresh and Chipotle, two of the fast food places where I frequently indulge in my bean burrito fixes, and I had a pretty good idea that I'd be dismayed by the results.

I already knew the damage from Baja Fresh, because they have their nutrional information on their web page. I'm in Weight Watchers and I'd looked everything up to calculate the points. I have been frustrated that Chipotle didn't have the numbers available (I even e-mailed and asked). Now I know why...just the freakin' tortilla has 340 calories.

So the burrito I get, the vegetarian without sour cream or cheese, is still 980 calories and 36 grams of fat.

I did a quick Internet search to find the whole report and I stumbled across an interesting web page...kinda the anti-CSPI. It's called the Center for Consumer Freedom, which has representatives from the restaurant industry, food companies, and consumers. (I wonder who the consumers are.) Their press release response to the CSPI had me rolling, especially

"Once again, the killjoys at CSPI have made lemons out of lemonade," said Richard Berman, Executive Director of the Center for Consumer Freedom. "This ridiculous tirade against Mexican dining is a classic reminder that while most of us derive pleasure from food, CSPI exists only to whine about it. As usual, the group's latest so-called research is a complete rejection of common sense, and suggests that Americans are too stupid to make their own food choices."

Now, ok, CSPI gets quite bombastic in some of their publications (one of their regular features is called "Food Porn"), but at least they are getting the nutritional information out there. Since health information in the popular press seems to be of the "This Will Kill You" or the "This Will Cure You" variety, a certain hysteria is probably inevitable.

(When I was in journalism school I did a semester-long independent study with a scientific reporter. It is difficult to report on many scientific subjects without dumbing the material down too much or being too complex...and the average reader of the average daily paper or weekly magazine is looking for the "And this affects me how...?" angle. So I'm not saying that to bash "the press.")

Oh, and I do appreciate the information that CSPI gets out. I do want to know that a Chipotle tortilla is 340 calories. They irk me, though, when they go beyond informing and start calling for recalls of products, as they are with a meat substitute called Quorn. A lot of people are sensitive to Quorn and get a pretty bad reaction. I sympathize, because I have food sensitivities and I've experienced the adverse reaction in a public place thing, and that ain't cool at all. But I can tolerate Quorn. I like it. And while I think that every box should have a label warning people that a percentage of the population has a sensitivity or intolerence, and while I think that every product that includes it should be adequately labelled so that sensitive people can avoid it, darn it, I want to be able to buy it.

Switching tirades back to the Center for Consumer Freedom...I loved the comment about Americans being to stupid to make their own food choices. The CDC reports the prevalence of obesity among adults to be almost 20%, way up from the last ten years. Is their an adult left in the country who hasn't seen the data on the health consequences of obesity?

I can probably count on my hands the number of people in the country whose health actually concerns me. If everybody else wanted to eat three Big Macs a day I really don't care. I don't care if people smoke unfiltered Camels and shoot heroin either. Or if they ride motorcycles without helmets. My only objection to any of that is the economic cost I need to absorb when the consequences of their decisions catch up to them, but hey. I walk and hike in tax-supported public parks that the morbidly obese, hypertensive, diabetic, arthritic non-exerciser doesn't use. So maybe it evens out in the end.)

I had a point...oh yeah. Some people are downright stupid, but some of us are just busy. So the information necessary to exercise common sense needs to be available. It's on cigarettes, it's on alcohol, it can be on a burrito.

Personally I'd love to work for the Center for Thoughtful and Reasonable Analysis of All Available Data with Appropriate Advisories on the Limitations of Said Data for Informed and Responsible Individuals Who Are Willing to Make Decisions and Accept the Consequences.

But I'm not quitting my day job.

vino, vidi, vici

Victor and I went up to the Maryland Wine Festival today. It was a new experience for me; until I started drinking with Victor I was pretty much a beer person. I said I didn't drink wine because it gave me a headache (and it did. I drank plenty of bottles of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill when I was young, and I always had a headache the next day.)

Anyway, though I have always been a beer person, I am a lot more discriminating with my beer than I was with the Boone's Farm. During the microbrew boom in the early '90s my husband was a brewer (we are no longer married and he no longer makes beer, although the two are not connected) and I learned pretty much by osmosis how to characterize different beers. That turned me into a snob on the one hand, but on the other, guys seem impressed by a woman who orders (and actually drinks) porter.

But back to wine. A couple years ago I took Victor to an Italian restaurant for his birthday and he ordered a bottle of cabernet sauvignon (Beaulieu, I think). I'm not a big Peroni fan, so I joined him in the wine. No headache the next day.

I also started reading the wine column in the Wall Street Journal. (I get it from AvantGo on my PDA.) It struck me then that tasting wine was really no different than tasting beer...or coffee, for that matter...or black cherry Kool Aid. The Kool Aid is just a bit less complex.

I'm a big proponent of "Think globally, eat/drink locally." With beer, you actually want to drink it as fresh as possible (best beer I ever had came right out of the Brite tank at Dixie Brewing Co. in New Orleans...oh wait, I'm back to wine) but since wine ages, it can travel. Still, I like to support local farms and local businesses, so drinking Maryland has plenty of appeal.

There were twelve wineries at the festival this year. My favorites were Boordy , Elk Run, and Deep Creek, but I admit I relied too much on my memory as we went from tent to tent doing the tastings. When it came time to go back and buy bottles, I couldn't remember everything I'd had that I'd liked. Funny how that happened...

One I know I missed was a raspberry dessert wine. There was a reason for the Boone's Farm; I do like the sweet stuff.

Another funny thing happened at the wine festival: I saw one of the company VPs. Apparently he's a woodworker on the weekends, and he was set up there selling his work in the craft section. He told me that the power in my building is back on (we have four buildings) but two others are still out. Looks like I'm back at work on Monday.

That's fine. There's still a whole day left of this weekend, and I have a case of nice wine.

Sunday dinner

The less said about the Terps game, the better.

I was right about being sore from yesterday's little weight workout...I am feeling it most when I climb the stairs...but I did drag my lazy ass out of bed this morning for a walk with Victor and the dog. It wasn't much, just around the little neighborhood lake (Fifty minutes, but a fifty-minute beagle walk is a twenty-minute walk with thirty minutes of sniffing), but hey, two days in a row.

I wish I could report that it filled me with energy and a new sense of purpose. The dog was happy, at least.

Victor claims we are not yuppies, but our grocery shopping has become something of a trek. First, the farmer's market (or actual farm) for produce and fruit. Then the bakery for fresh 470-grain bread. Then Whole Foods for free-range grass-fed meat, goat milk gouda, and vegetarian tv dinners. Finally we hiit the "regular" grocery store for Diet Coke and toilet paper.

I suppose if we really were yuppies we'd kick the Diet Coke habit and go ahead and buy the organic unbleached toilet paper from Whole Foods. It's probably only $4 a roll.

I mock, but it is actually my preference to buy the local, organic, and as-close-to-natural as possible food. I don't hate chemicals and modern manufacturing processes, not at all. (I am addicted to Diet Coke. Thank you, Monsanto.) I work, in a way, in the chemical industy. To me, "organic" means "containing carbon."

But having seen the decline in health in my grandparents and now parents, and realizing I have no children to take of me when I'm old and feeble, I figure I better do what I can to stay healthy. And as I started switching over from...well, to be honest, crap...to real food, I realized that the less-processed, fresher food tastes a whole lot better.

My sensibilities probably did lie closer to the environmentalists and the ethical vegetarians than they did toward Big Chemical and McDonalds, but now I'm acting it, too.

Anyway, when I was a kid Sunday was our best meal of the week, and Victor and I have picked up the tradition. Tonight we grilled corn again (there are a lot of farms right around here that grow very sweet corn, and as far as I'm concerned that is one of the best parts of summer. There aren't many corn days left this year, and I'm making the most of them, dammit.)

So, corn again, and grilled chicken-apple sausage, cucumbers and sour cream, and kalamata olive bread. Oh, and a Magic Hat #9. (I'm a beer snob, too.)

And my leftovers at lunch tomorrow will be looking way better than that Lean Cusine or the Extra Value Meal #3.

What's the plural of burrito?

Burritos?

Burritoes?

I thought words ending in "o" took "es," but "burritos" looks better.

Whichever. I want one. I have been craving bean burritos lately. It's the weirdest thing...because eating one does not seem to satisfy the craving. Week before last I ate bean burritos for lunch or dinner five out of seven days. I oughta be sick of them.

I know a lot of people have the theory that if you crave a food, your body is needing something that food has...like if you need iron, you'll crave red meat. I have used that to justify steak or burgers, but I'm a bit suspicious...why crave beef but not spinach?

Hey, I think I might be anemic, and there's iron in beans!

OTOH, I eat a lot of beans, and I still "feel" anemic. (Ok, I don't feel anemic, you can't "feel" anemia. [I think I might be spelling that wrong, too.] I just feel like crap and I'm hoping it is anemia because then I can freaking fix it.)

Driving home from work this was my train of thought: "Turn left, there's a Taco Bell over there."

"Need anything at the bookstore? You can stop by Chipotle."

"They put a new Baja Fresh in that shopping center."

"Haven't been to the new Mexican place in a while. Don't want them to go out of business."

"I have tortillas at home! I can make a burrito!"

Mmmmmmmmmmm

It turned out well.

In addition, we had:

• New York Strip


• Grilled onion with balsamic vinegar and oregano


• Pita bread


• And for dessert, raspberry crisps and dark chocolate with a framboise lambic.
Posted by Nic at 19:13 | Comments (17)

Bisquick

I actually made dinner tonight. I'm not sure when the last time I cooked was...before vacation I was busy at work, then getting ready for vacation, so I ate out alot that month, then with no water and the pets at my parents', eating out this week seemed sensible too. But I realized that someday I had to cook again, for health and finance.

So tonight I made a salad of cucumber and tomatoes (the tomatoes on my plant finally got red!) tossed with balsamic vinaigrette and a spinach-feta pie.

Specifically, it was an Impossibly Easy Spinach-Feta Pie, with the Impossibly Easy part being, I would guess, a trademark of General Mills. Even if they didn't register it, anybody raised on suburban cooking and ads in womens' magazines from the grocery store checkout will recognize Impossibly Easy Whatever as a one-dish Bisquick-based dinner. You throw your main ingredients (spinach and feta, chicken and broccoli, tuna and peas) in a pie plate, add a mixture of Bisquick, milk and eggs, and after it bakes it is sorta like a quiche.

I love these things. The oddest one had a filling of kielbasa, sauerkraut, and swiss cheese, and you used beer instead of milk in the Bisquick mix (I think it might have been the Impossibly Easy Oktoberfest Pie), but it was pretty good.

Actually, I love Bisquick in general. I hate to cook, but I do like eating. I have a killer banana bread recipe that only needs five ingredients: banana, Bisquick, egg, sugar, and oil. I'm not big on baking because I hate measuring, and cleaning up the utensils. Forget any recipe that starts with two mixing bowls. I think I found a way to make the bread using only the 1/4 cup measure...if only I could mix it right in the loaf pan.

So I am so not Betty Crocker. My co-workers were quite surprised to hear about my Bisquick fetish. One made sarcastic comments about a Crock Pot. (Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do have one, but I pretty much only use it for chili. It isn't that I'm anti-Crock Pot, I'm just not organized enough to be assembling dinner before I go to work.) But apparently my friends were surprised to find me, a divorced Yuppie who buys organic tv dinners, in the Bisquick & Crock Pot demographic.

Then I really surprised 'em. You know those Betty Crocker coupons on General Mills' boxes? They say something like "22 Points. Save on Houswares and Gifts!" Then in tiny type it tells you to write to Betty Crocker for a Free Catalog!

My grandmother had them in a drawer in her kitchen, all separated by point value and neatly secured with rubber bands. When I ask people about them, usually they don't know what I'm talking about (younger people) or they think Betty Crocker coupons went the way of Green Stamps.

Uh-uh. I save them. Moreover, I sent for the catalog and I use them. My silverware? Betty Crocker. My plates? 75% off! Frying pan? Scissors? Had a double points coupon that time!

I am totally Betty Crocker.

Doooooonuts

I'm totally remiss...a blog about eating in Ocean City and I forgot to mention the best-named establishment: the Fractured Prune.

Actually it was Victor who wanted donuts, but they were good.

The 'Prune means something other that donuts to me, though. It used to be a little shop on 46th Street (right in front of where the Shark is now...the site now is a huge t-shirt shop) where you could get, besides donuts and coffee, everything you really needed at the beach: comic books, mayonaise in tiny jars, bait, a boogie board. Back in the old, old days, I used to walk down there every morning with my grandfather to get the newspaper.

My grandparents started us on the OC tradition. They rented the condo(s) and invited the kids...my mom and her four brothers, with the spouses and children...for the week. Those were good times, even the year it rained all week and the adults finished 23 cases of beer by Wednesday because they were cooped up in the apartment with seven (eight, maybe? It probably felt like 18) children. I think that was the year I learned how to play five-card draw. I think it was the year I learned the parts of speech by playing Mad Libs. ("An exclaimation shows surprise: Oh, how witty! Ah, how wise!" explained my grandmother. "Oh, shit!" supplied my uncle.)

I still remember the shock the year we came into town down Coastal Highway and the 'Prune was gone. I had an exclaimation or two then...

Dreaming of food

Well, I can't do much while the plumber is working, so I'll do some more beach blogging. Man, I wish I were still at the beach.

I gained four pounds, which is not bad considering how much I ate, and what I ate...

My favorite restaurant in Ocean City is Weitzel's, a family place on 51st Street. I referred to it earlier as "mom-n-pop," which it was in 1977 when I started eating there, but the mom-n-pop have retired and it is run by the next generation. We eat there, I dunno, almost once a day. Walking distance to Weitzel's is the main requirement for where we stay.

Weitzel's doesn't have a web page (it would be a bit out of character if they did) so I can't pull up the menu online and reflect on meals gone by...don't laugh. I do that, especially in, say, February, when I need a vacation. Anyway, I don't need a web page to remember Weitzel's, because I have been eating the same thing for 26 years. Fried chicken. Steak & cheese with onion rings. The "Big G" burger. Breakfast...eggs, or maybe an omelette, with fried potatoes and escalloped apples. (I don't eat either, but at Weitzel's you can get both scrapple and grits! It's where the scrapple-grits lines meet!) Maybe an ice cream sundae in the evening.

A few years ago I found a runner-up to Weitzel's (which will, no matter what, always be my favorite OC restaurant for sentimental reasons): the Shark on 46th Street. The reason: "An 8 oz. grilled tenderloin filet of Certified Angus beef topped with a walnut & bleu cheese blend & caramelized Granny Smith apples & sweet onions." Oh, man. Carmelized onion and blue cheese are two of my favorite things. Walnuts are good. Filet is good.

I'm now drooling like Homer all over my lap top.

This year (in an effort to find places without kids...not that I don't love my niece and nephews dearly, but sometimes it is nice to eat someplace without sippy cups and crayons) we went to The Hobbit. When I was a kid (past the sippy cups but not well into food beyond cheeseburgers and fries) I remember the Hobbit being advertised as "proper dress required." I never throught I'd want to dress up for dinner on vacation (although I think that "proper dress" thing is long gone), but looking at the menu I decided we needed to go there this year. I was really glad. I expected it to be good...they opened the same year I started going to OC annually, and any place that stays around that long can't suck. I wasn't disappointed. We ate in a room overlooking the bay, the courses came out at a civilized, relaxed pace, and the food was wonderful. I had tuna "topped with asparagus tips, hearts of palm, shiitake mushrooms, shallots, garlic and grape tomatoes in a a white wine, caper, lemon butter sauce."

(Pause to clean up drool.)

Ah, one funny thing. The first couple nights the family all ate together (i.e., with the kids), so we got dinner first from Weitzel's and then went to Dumser's, another family-style place that actually started as an ice cream stand in 1939. So again, it doesn't suck. Anyway, I was trying to eat vegetables when I could, to keep the weight gain to a minimum, and not just french fries and onion rings. Both nights I had green beans. I like green beans fine. At the Shark on Monday night, though, I was hoping for something different...but the vegetable of the day was green beans. So the night we went to the Hobbit I was pretty excited to see broccoli on peoples' plates. Then when our food came out...green beans. (Ah, well. Maryland farms grow 4462 acres of green beans, second only to corn in terms of vegetable farm land use, so I guess it makes sense. And that's a real statistic.)

Anyway, we also ate at Macky's on 54th Street. Their menu is heavily seafood I'm allergic to, and since the fresh vegetable was green beans, I went with salad and pasta. And all food is better when you get to eat it watching the sun set over the water.

Then there's the junk. The Boardwalk. This may account for 3.75 of my four pounds, frankly...I must have my Thrasher's fries (covered in vinegar) and a polish [sausage] with the works from Polock Johnny's. And what the hell, a funnel cake to share with the seagulls.

This is Victor's lunch...but substitute the polish for the corn dog and it'd be mine. (I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it; I had chili sauce on my fingers and the camera slipped.)

The plumber is still here. As soon as he leaves...I can be down there in, oh, four hours if the traffic is good...

Not sure about this

I kept seeing this billboard once we crossed the Bay Bridge.

I am allergic to crab, but before my allergies got so bad, I used to pop Benadryl and indulge in crab cakes once a year. My favorites were from a mom-n-pop place down here in Ocean City, where they were made by hand with huge lumps of crab, a bit of mayonaise to hold it together, and Old Bay for seasoning.

So I was naturally suspicious of a McCrab.

I remember trying a test-market version of McRib while travelling through Virginia one summer. It was vile.

Bal'mer Sun columnist Dan Rodricks noted that the crab cakes, which are being test marketed in Delmarva, are handmade in Easton. That's a good sign, though phrases like "microwave ready" and "less fish filler" aren't so good. Rodricks didn't try them because of his personal boycott of crab meat over the over-harvesting of Bay crabs, a view I can respect. His column didn't specifically say that McDonald's was using Maryland blue crab, though, and even though the production is in Easton, a fair amount of crab is actually imported into Maryland from the Gulf of Mexico.

Anyway, I'm on vacation, and a serious discussion of ecology is for another day. So, for that matter, is the McDonald's debate...they are bad, they are good, I am fundamentally opposed to so much of what they do, but I eat there probably once a week. On bad, busy weeks, it's even more. I feel dirty.

I'm also never going to be able to eat the stupid crab cake without having to go to the hospital, but for some reason I really want to know...is it any good?