Lots of eggs.

Lots of bacon.

Funny, you’d think I’d remember when I cooked that much bacon and eggs, but I can’t.

The other not so great but kind of intriguing thing Peter brought back was this flyer for the ultimate kroket.

Now, if you know anything about Dutch food, especially the kind of Dutch food made for drunk people, you know that “ultimate kroket” is kind of a paradox.

A kroket is a little deep-fried wad of…stuff. Misc. goo. I’m not sure what it is, or what it once was. They’re in the category of borrelhapjes, literally the little bites you have with your glass of gin, so really, the flavor isn’t too important–you’re just out to protect your liver. A few years ago, I trailed at the one Dutch restaurant in NYC (now closed), and the poor non-Dutch chef who’d just taken over reserved a special expression of horror for the krokets he was obliged to make. He didn’t really know what was in the goo, either.

Anyway, done right, they’re deep-fried so they’re, like all fine food, crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. In fact, the middle is usually like liquid napalm, and if you’re drunk and eat one without letting it cool, you will suffer terrible burns all over your mouth, and thus feel even more regret for your boozing than if you just had the normal pain of a hangover. If you’re sober and eat one…well, you wouldn’t eat one if you’re sober.

So, what I’m getting at is that the kroket is really not something anyone would think to improve on, because you only think about krokets if you’ve been drinking (and if you wear a tracksuit and gold chains and come from Alkmaar), and then you think they’re perfectly good.

But someone had a vision. Some guy named Thorwald Voss. He happens to have been the original genius behind Supper Club, back when Supper Club was really crazy and cool and not an international chain of sort-of-crazy-and-cool clubs (and, I assume, the inspiration for Monkeytown in Williamsburg).

Now the guy is making krokets. (Which makes me wonder just what happened there behind the scenes at Supper Club…that’s a long way to fall.)

But they’re not just any kroket. They’re “Thor’s Love Croquet [sic…in fact, sic galore from here on out]“:

Every bite a different taste: bechamel, cream cheese, onion, marmalade, nutmeg, hot chili sauce, japanees ginger, artisjok, capers, japanees bread crumbs, sunflower oil, frying pan, lots of love.

In short, Thor has taken the kroket-for-drunks and made it into the kroket-for-stoners. As Peter says, it’s like the Everlasting Gobstopper of krokets: each bite is another flavor, just as the flyer promises.

As for the other promise on the flyer, the cryptic “Stop thinkin,” I’m not sure what to make of that. The kroket seems to be thinking it. But then it’s thinking. So it hasn’t stopped. Dude. You could think about that for hours.

And there’s more thought-provoking material on the back of the flyer:

There have been made 100,000 of these croquets by hand. The recepie changes everytime. A piece of art is never finished. The thought that everything is a thought, is a thought that can be thoughtless thought about. This has been approved by scientists. Let’s try and get conscious of are unconsciousnees.”

Whoa. Are those the same “scientists” that made the Future Protein vegetarian snacks from the previous posts? And is he suggesting these krokets also have a layer of LSD in them? This really, really makes me wonder what happened at Supper Club.

THORWALD VOSS: Hey, everybody, if we all take our shoes off and eat on beds, and people feed us hash brownies, and someone swings on a trapeze, then we’ll get conscious of are unconsciousnees, yes? Wait, maybe hash krokets would be cooler…

TV’S BUSINESS PARTNERS, AKA WANNABE CORPORATE STICKS-IN-THE-MUD: Uh, yeah, but the customers might also be unconscious of the check. Have fun with your krokets, Thor.

But who’s got the last laugh? Supper Club is now a sort-of cool place that’s losing edginess credibility at the same rate it’s expanding around the globe, but Thor is selling his mind-expanding krokets at summer festivals in Amsterdam for 5 EUROS APIECE. This is a 500% markup on your standard kroket. And people are buying them, and talking about them. Rod said to Peter, “Dude, there’s the 5-euro kroket guy. You HAVE to try one of them.” (I paraphrase.) His reputation as the kroket/croquet master, nay, kroket guru precedes him.

Rock your krokets, Thor. One day soon I too will be in Amsterdam, and I will be eating your kroket and thinking that everything is a thought. Or not thinking. Or something. Dude.

Coincidentally, I’ve been reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which is so ghastly at the start that you begin to think the only way out is (shudder) vegetarianism. And then Peter comes back and plops down this Protein of the Future, these “Series Foods for Leisure Time,” reasonably priced at only 60 euro cents and attractively packaged. See that Remy Martin bottle and globe pictured on the beef pack? That means they’re classy and cosmopolitan!

Trouble is, they taste like shit.

They also look a little like shit–you can see one just poking its meat-free edge out of the chicken pack.

And they don’t save you from the gross industrial agriculture trap, because they’re made out of soy beans, sugar, salt, MSG, and “smaak versterkers,” which I think means flavor enhancers. Which really just means “people.”

But all my doubts are washed away when I read the fine print assuring me, “This product is especially developed by a team of food specialists.” OK, then. If cows can adapt to thrive on corn, then I can maybe adapt to live on this stuff. But then who’ll eat the cows? The food specialists? It’s all so confusing.

Uh-oh. I ate another one, and I didn’t wince nearly as much. Mmm, peeeeeople.

Yesterday, Tal reminded me about Chocolate & Zucchini, which is probably the ur–food blog, at least in the subcategory of food blogs operated by winsome, sincere lasses, as opposed to those narrated by big, burly lawyer-men.

Now, I haven’t read it much, but I kinda hate C&Z. Every time I click over to it, Mlle Clotilde is doing something delightfully meticulous and sincere and winsome, and then taking a beautiful photo of it. And she has this slightly artificial way of writing that I can’t quite put my finger on. Maybe it’s just that she never says fuck?

The other thing that dismays me about C&Z is its name: When I see the words chocolate and zucchini together, all I ever think of is zucchini-chocolate cake. Yes, it’s a real thing. And no, it’s not disgusting. It is a proud relic of hippie ’70s thrift, a byproduct of late summer, when the fat zucchini vines, seemingly the only thing that flourished in New Mexico gardens, would be bursting with these monstrous squash, at least as big as your forearm. Whatever you couldn’t palm off on your neighbor–well, presto, into a cake it goes. The cake is pretty moist, and kinda vegetable-y. And don’t worry—all the chocolate frosting cancels out any health benefits from the zucch.

But Mlle Clotilde is French, so to her, chocolate and zucchini represent twin poles of food experience, or something abstract like that, and then some commenter has the gall to write:

Of course, chocolate and zucchini, when you come to think of it, really do not fit together for any civilized recipe – could that be called a culinary faux pas?”

“Civilized.” Harrumph. Just because I grew up in a place where other kids thought we might not have running water.

Anyway, as an antidote to all this ridiculous preciousness (see also C&Z’s “About” page, which is ardent and lovely, but provokes a terrible snarl in me on a bad day) I direct you to a hilarious thread on eGullet about vile-looking food. I didn’t realize people were so compelled to photograph their dinners that they even took pics of the ones that look like crap on a plate. Anyway, all the failed food styling is very encouraging to see, and a little dose of reality that a lot of food bloggers don’t seem to dwell in.

NOTE: Per the comments of a helpful reader, Alex Witchel is in fact a she. I guessed, and I guessed wrong. Please adjust pronouns as necessary below, and change ‘Unk’ to ‘Auntie.’

This week’s New York Times Dining section brought yet another who-the-hell-are-you? essay from this Witchel person.

I can only respond with contempt. The piece is about a charming hostess he knows, the type who “never blink[s] when the schnauzer escapes captivity to hump the ambassador’s wife’s leg.” (If this were a systematic ripping-to-shreds of Witchel, a la The Bruni Digest, I would now insert a vile and funny photo as illustration, but I think this image is pretty clear and disgusting on its own, don’t you?)

Witchel himself confesses that the best he can do is “gather 6 to 10 people, double or triple a recipe and, with the help of a lot of good wine (mostly for [him]), hope for the best.”

Yeah, and? That’s what you’re supposed to do! Or am I missing something?

I do like how he specifies it’s good wine at his otherwise crappy, pathetic and unworthy dinner soirees where his guests must just have an awful time. Because everyone knows people really hate home-cooked food if it’s not served with utter aplomb.

Which brings me to the meat of the article. This charming hostess he knows, a Southern woman (of course she’s Southern) who maintains her accent despite the rigors of NYC, has been known to “serve meat loaf and chicken potpie in the same meal,” which apparently is a good thing, in Witchel’s estimation. So high-low, all “good wine” and meat loaf.

Anyway, this hostess throws a dinner, then “short-circuits” in the middle, and “chaos, of sorts,” ensues.

So I kept reading, with bated breath, to find out what the chaos would be.

Let’s see, the buffet and passed hors d’oeuvres went smoothly. The lasagna gets served just fine, but, heavens, with a Bordeaux! Witchel twitches: “I would have hyperventilated at even the thought of serving French wine with Italian food. Ten demerits!”

I get the impression–or at least I hope, for his sake–that Witchel is playing up his finicky side, in a gambit to draw in the reader who may also hold such weird preconceptions about wine and food pairing. “Dear reader, you’re insanely uptight,” he seems to be saying, “but, hey, so am I…well, a little. Stick around, and maybe you can learn something from ol’ Unk Witchel!”

But I’m not such a reader. As long as there is wine, and it’s not Kendall-Jackson, I’m good.

But back to the impending “chaos”:

Then an odd thing happened. She signaled the waiter…. After a few whispers, he went around the table removing the silverware meant for salad and cheese, then served the salad on dinner plates.

Whoa. Crazy. Wait, the waiter? Of course your party will go swimmingly if you have a goddamn waiter.

I’m so disgusted, I’ll just skip to the chase. The hostess gets confused and serves this lemon mousse Witchel adores—after the salad and before the cheese!—and then, when he calls the next day begging for her secrets, she says she didn’t make it herself, she bought it. And everything else she served at the dinner!

Which in itself is no crime, but she passed it all off as her own labor (“I just whipped this up”), which is ridiculous. If you can cook, cook. If you can’t, order out—but don’t pretend you did it all yourself. It just makes life hell for quivering balls of insecurity like this hapless Witchel guy.

And your dishonesty is especially rotten in a dinner-party setting. People come to your home, for home-cooked food. And there’s nothing more satisfying than home-cooked food. But then to get served up big slabs of lasagna from the corner caterer—maybe it looks homey, and tastes a little homey, but guests have got to sense something is not quite right, and they’re really just getting another mass-produced meal in disguise.

But, rereading the essay, perhaps Witchel was the only sucker. He didn’t guess that the hostess was “joking” when she said she whipped up the mousse herself. She admits she had a bit to drink, and that’s why she forgot the cheese course. Indeed, “the more events had gone astray”—if you can call any of that astray—“the more lighthearted she had become.” It’s a hard day when I feel more sympathy for the woman with a waiter and entirely catered food than for the guy who is at least willing to cook for his guests, even if he gives himself demerits while he’s doing it.

Again, open invitation to Alex Witchel to come over for Sunday dinner. I’ll show you “astray.” But we’ll have good wine.

I haven’t been in Cairo since 1998, so I guess there’ve been some developments. I know you can drink Lowenbrau beer there now, for instance, and the subway has a second line. And then I was at this pan-Mid East cafe in Las Cruces, NM, of all places, and they had this “malt beverage.” In the US, that means St. Ide’s, but in Egypt, that means something non-alcoholic, sort of fake beer, which I’ve never liked.

But this malt beverage came in a pretty blue can (fayrouz means ‘turquoise’ in Arabic), and in pineapple flavor, no less. So how could I say no? And it was delicious! Fizzy, not too sweet, very refreshing.

A fine product of Egypt–I’m very impressed. I remember when Stella beer used to have twigs in it.

Thanks to Beverly for, I guess, fishing the can out from under the seat of her car and taking a picture…

So I’m finishing up The Rough Guide to NYC, and writing up the outer-borough restaurant reviews. In the process of ferreting out addresses and phone numbers, I’m coming across quite a lot of other bits of food writing and restaurant commentary.

And I will slit my own throat if I ever again have to read that “[certain food item] is a revelation.”

This has got to be the most bludgeoning cliche in all of food writing. The related “[food] is revelatory” is also heinous.

I just don’t believe that after eating truffles/pita bread/parmesan gelato/cauliflower puree, a food writer has ever leapt from his/her well-stuffed chair, run out into the street, and changed his/her life forever. Perhaps his/her first step might be to give up food writing?

I do believe there are moments when you’re eating something and you have a small epiphany — such as that wild strawberries, when picked on a hillside outside of Oslo, actually taste like artificial strawberry flavor, so that’s what the strawberry-flavor chemists were striving for in the first place. But, please, I did not shriek, “These strawberries are a revelation!” at my fellow berry-pickers.

Get a sense of perspective, people.

I’m reading a story on food trends in that little Life newspaper insert, and there’s this quote:

“On a mission to rule the global foodscape, the Thai government has been exporting chefs and heavily promoting its cuisine. The result: more than 3,000 Thai restaurants across the States, an increase of about 120 percent since 2003.”

Huh. Does that directly account for all the places on 30th Ave, and the one on Ditmars? Do Thais get subsidies to open restaurants?

Very cursory research reveals that the Thai government isn’t focusing just on the US: Saudi Arabia might like Thai food too.

And here’s a story in the Bangkok Post that explains the whole “Kitchen of the World” program–which does include subsidies for restaurant owners! Cheesy name, but great news. When I can get fresh kaffir lime leaves in Astoria, I know they will have succeeded.