Category: Links

Two Quality Blogs (and a bonus)

It was a good day browsing. I found:

Vegetarian Duck, by Mark Morse, who lives in Amsterdam and happens to be writing about not only the kind of food I like to eat when I go out (and would like to add more of to the guide I’m working on), but also what I’d like to be cooking in my own kitchen here in A’dam, but am a bit too uninspired by Albert Heijn to pull off

Mexico Cooks!, which I found through Veg Duck, and which I haven’t burrowed into yet, but looks super-enticing

Actually, there’s a third good one, but only in Dutch: Klary Koopman’s Alles Over Eten. This will be the blog I subscribe to to keep my Dutch reading skills up…

Nice to have new troves of info on two of my guidebook beats… Now I’m off to cook myself dinner with my Albert Heijn groceries. Damn–I’d been looking at tinned sardines in the store, and for some reason didn’t get them–and here’s Veg Duck’s perfect reason.

Mayo, the Gateway Drug

A few months ago, Marla Garla tipped me off to Elyse Sewell’s LiveJournal, which has now become my guilty-pleasure blog. I only call it a guilty pleasure when I’m recommending it to someone, because it sounds bad to say you’re reading the blog of someone who was on America’s Next Top Model. But hey, I also kind of enjoy working at Us Weekly–I’m not proud. And she was the smart one on ANTM, so there.

But never mind the modeling. What is fucking fantastic about this blog is that this woman takes pictures of all the bizarro stuff she sees in grocery stores in Asia, and of all the sometimes-alarming stuff she eats on the street. This is great, because it’s exactly what I do when I travel–anthropological insights on Aisle 9. But since I still haven’t been anywhere in Asia, it’s all completely new, and it only stokes my mental image of the other side of the globe as this dazzlingly strange alternate universe.

What’s finally making me link to her blog is this post: Bourgetto. The horrific pastry detailed in this post made me laugh out loud.

And it also made me ponder the universal appeal of that magical substance we call mayonnaise. In so many cultures, mayonnaise appears to be the first baby step toward “Western” food and culture–and once people get a taste of that lovely white goo, there’s just no going back. Next thing you know, you’re hankering for meatloaf, and then pretty soon you’re test-driving SUVs. (I’m not making the meatloaf thing up: documented instance of meatloaf being seen as “exotic” in Mexico–scroll down.)

I have previously documented the Mexican fixation with mayo (here and here, to start), and the Japanese are total converts (mmm, okonomiyaki), but I wonder how mayo plays in, say, Kenya, or on the steppes of Mongolia? (Tell me in the comments! Oh, sorry, no–still broken. F***ing Yahoo.) I know it’s an integral ingredient in salads at “fancy” dinners in Cairo–it’s just a matter of time before it trickles down.

I am extremely pro-mayo, so I find this delightful: “See? It makes your sandwich/taco/bun/peas-and-carrots slide down your throat like nothing at all!” I feel like saying to everyone I meet in other countries. My father, on the other hand, probably has the allover heebie-jeebies at the thought of mayonnaise infiltrating the deepest Amazon rain forest.

All that said, I don’t know if I’d be able to handle Elyse’s nightmarish “blueberry streusel brioche with a filling of mayonnaise, tomatoes, cucumbers, and raw onions.” (She forgets to mention the corn kernels–also hilariously European, like a crappy Dutch salad.) Here I thought I had to worry about fertilized duck eggs in Asia, but now I see I’m going to have to deal with some far more insidious flavors.

I think I’m strong enough…

(Oh, what’s also genius about Elyse Sewell and her blog: she’s from Albuquerque too. Between her and Neil Patrick Harris–with whom I went to theater camp, let me just name-drop–the Duke City has some real celeb cred.)

Righteous Clambake Nation

Great story in the New York Times yesterday about preserving obscure native foods of the US: An Unlikely Way to Save a Species: Serve It for Dinner.

The main source for the story, Gary Paul Nabhan, raises Churro sheep (an old variety brought by the Spanish, used by the Navajo, but one that fell away when merino wool and associated weaving techniques arrived with later Europeans) and has written a book about Bronx grapes, Datil chiles and Makah ozette potatoes.

He has also divided North America into regions based on their most indigenous flavors. East Coast: Clambake Nation, yo! Though I of course can’t forsake my boyz in Chili Pepper Nation. (Except, uh, Gary, it’s Chile Pepper.) Who knew there was a Sonoran white pomegranate? And I do feel a simple sentimental attachment to Crab Cake Nation. Who’s gonna design the T-shirts?

Notes from the Slippery Slope

Just added to the links list: Notes from the Slippery Slope, which we cognoscenti know better as The Friday Afternoon Update. Naomi has been making me laugh every week via my email inbox for, eesh, years now. She made the move to a blog format a little while ago, but because I still get the weekly FAU email I’ve only just remembered about the newfangled approach–now, for everyone’s enjoyment! The recent post about First Man Bill Clinton was a goodie.

The Joy of Cooking, Forever and Always

Peter pointed out this nice essay in the NY Times by Kate Stone Lombardi: The Joy of (Still) Cooking.

She’s practical–talking about the fun of listening to music while you cook, and of using up all the leftovers–but I think I like this bit best:

I equate feeding my family with love, which is why I cannot imagine stopping now. What would that say to my husband? What would it say to me? I have a friend who opens the freezer every night and selects a Lean Cuisine to microwave for herself and her husband. They seem very happily married, which remains a complete mystery to me.

Yes, the idea of being a nice wife and cooking a nice dinner for my lovely husband makes me gag. But the practice of it is actually quite enjoyable. Just one of those postfeminism disconnects. And of course it helps that Peter does the same for me.

Totally Unrelated: Grad School Rant

Not me doing it, fortunately–and it’s more like a reasoned argument against, even if it is from someone who went through it and now teaches.

I’m only mentioning it here because that’s how freakin’ insidious grad school is! I quit ten years ago (and mentally checked out before that), but it still galls me to think about it. I feel like I have to tell the world NOOOOOO! Fortunately, someone else can say it a little bit more rationally than I can.

And hey, I’m married to a professor. Maybe that should be the real advice: marry a prof, and then get a job that allows you too to take summers off.

Oh wait, no, here, this is better: Do two years of grad school with a grant from the government (for Arabic–and the funding was cut! Before 2001! You fucking idiots!…ahem…ten years ago….breathe deep). While you’re in those two years of grad school in the ass of nowhere, TEACH YOURSELF HOW TO COOK. This will get you through the lean years after you quit grad school and have no idea what else to do–you will not only save crazy amounts of money and be able to afford living in New York as a “freelancer,” even after 9/11, but you will be healthy, both mentally and physically. Then, eventually, after cooking a lot of meals for one and loving it, eventually give in and marry a professor.

I am exceedingly grateful. But academia: suck it. But thanks for the cooking classes! It really did change my life.

Food Fight

This is totally brilliant! Thank god it’s animated–no french fries died in the making.

I like how the falafel is a suicide bomber. Genius. Although…are those sausages supposed to be Austria? Those are definitely not Vienna sausages. But thank god for that too. I think I might throw up if I saw chunks of Vienna sausage, animated or no.

(Cheat sheet here.)