Determining Your Gastronomic Limits

I am not kind to my stomach. Even when I know the two-hours-from-now Brian will be cursing the present time I-could-go-for-a-snack Brian, I continue to punish my digestive system. Think: a large ice cream sundae after a smorgasbord of sub par sushi.

Yesterday at the Topsfield Fair in Topsfield, MA, I confirmed the above. After walking by a literally endless array of food vendors, I carefully chose a sure-miss lunch: jambalaya. Everyone knows that if there's one place north of the Mason Dixon line where you should get fine Cajun cuisine, it's a 200-year-old agricultural fair in rural Massachusetts.

To drown my sorrows in what was clearly a poor choice, I decided to treat myself to something that harkens back to Dawn's old post: Boardwalk Food - A Summer Must. I got fried twinkies. For a meager $5, I watched as the man from the funnel cake cart grab two chilled twinkies on sticks, dip them in batter, deep fry them, shake on some powdered sugar, cover them with whipped cream, and drizzle on a brown substance approximating chocolate.

I have to admit, I was only able to eat one of them. Even so, my stomach was cursing me for much of the day.

While I could lie and say that I've learned my lesson, I'm positive this is far from the last time something like this will happen.

My Ultimate Snack Food - Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies are food royalty in my life, they rule my sweet tooth world. As most people who like cookies go, you've probably had a ton of different types of chocolate chip cookies. There are only two real kinds - crispy and chewy (a.k.a. soft baked).

Chewy is just an abomination - unless you're personally standing there watching cookies come out of the oven, a cookie should not be flexible. Any chewy chocolate chip cookie is pumped full of chemicals to make it bendable, and tastes like it.

I'll focus on the positive - Crispy! There are many good crispy chocolate chip cookies out there, from mom and pop operations to mass market. Here's my take on the top few manufacturers out there in different categories:

Top National Brand - Pepperidge Farm Nantucket Chocolate Chunk Cookie, large and crispy, loaded with dark chocolate chunks. They carry several other styles of chunk cookies, all good as well. This is the best TRAVEL cookie - car trip, picnics, camping and more. They're even stored in seperate stacks inside the bag for easy sharing as well as for protection from busting up. The bonus is that in hot weather, you leave the bag in the sun and the chips get gooey, simulating fresh out-of-the-oven cookies. I can't tell you how many summers I spent as a teenager at the Jersey Shore reading Weekly World News and munching on gooey Pepperidge Farm cookies.

Top Local Brand (Northeast US) - Peggy Lawton Choco Chip Cookies, a best kept secret of New England. This is the cookie you find most in sub shops, grocery stores, schools, and roach coaches. It's the working man's cookie. They are shrink wrapped (it's an art form learning to open them up) in a set of 3, and come in several kinds such as sugar (mmm), peanut butter, oatmeal, and more. The link above is for a chowhound.com posting about the brand, as Peggy Lawton doesn't have a website that I can locate (old school!). The Choco-Chip cookies are this amazingly perfect dry and crisp cookie with almost a "salt" feeling, the chocolate chips rounding out the "sweet". It has the same draw for me as a chocolate covered pretzel. You definitely can not eat just one. It's all or nothing for Peggy Lawton.

Top Boutique Brand - David's Cookies, I discovered this brand through a cafeteria in our building at work. They get them through a foodservice company, and bake them fresh - handing out free samples on Fridays. Or I can buy them at 3 for a dollar, which I manage to do on average of once a week. They have captured the holy grail of Chocolate Chip Cookie Texture. The outside is firm and crunchy, but the inside is slightly chewy and the chips are borderline gooey. The taste follows suit as perfect. I can't vouch for David's offerings of pre-made cookies, but all I can say is I'm ready to buy a bucket of dough from these guys.

And one final note... I'm a No Nuts girl. Macadamia nuts are OK on occasion since they are exotic, but that's it! People manage to ruin a good chocolate chip cookie with the palatable taste of aptly named WALNUT MEATS. No thanks! Blech.

Mac and Cheese Fritters

All I can say about Mac and Cheese Fritters is that if they were around when I was in college, I would have been at least 400 pounds.

I don't know how they do it, but they fry up a ball of macaroni and cheese. The outside is crunchy (not greasy) like a mozzarella stick. The inside is divinely loaded with macaroni and cheese in perfect condition. It's like a Comfort Food Munchkin.

This little delight was found at the Biltmore Bar & Grille, a quaint pub in Newton Upper Falls (MA) where we recently had a private work party. If you're in the Metro Boston area and want to know pleasure on a plate, stop on in.

Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Being a Virgo, I'm a huge fan of my birthday - aside from receiving well wishes, the largest icon of the birthday is the Birthday Cake. Since I've had just over 40 of these in my life, I have a pretty solid opinion on types of birthday cake, and also how to eat them.

My favorite Birthday Cake is Ice Cream Cake. Tom Carvel was my man from an early age. With a Carvel in my town, my birthday was not complete without a Carvel Ice Cream Cake. I do recall when I was small, that there was a light-colored row of crunchies in the middle layer, along with the chocolate crunchies. (anyone else remember that?) I'm not elitist when it comes to cakes, JP Licks does a good ice cream cake, and there's also the bi-sexual cake... the one layer of cake with one layer of ice cream together which is VERY naughty. I'm a big fan of bakery cakes as well, with a variety of frosting flavors - some that make your teeth ache, others that make you want to lick the plate clean.

My lovely and smart husband picked up a small triple layer bakery cake, golden cake with white frosting for my birthday. The frosting had a bit of an almond flair to it, almost undetectable but there. It was quite good - frosting sweet but not painful - perfect accompaniment to a small glass of milk. My dear co-poster Brian inscribed his drawing of the proper way to eat a piece of birthday cake in a card sent to me, which was the impetus to this posting.

Here's the way I would eat a triple layer (same general process for double layer) cake. It's all about proportion. Start with the most bland, lowest cake layer at the point, including the frosting row above it, working your way to the frosted end-cap. Move up each layer at a time in similar fashion. When you get to the top layer, eat the first part of the cake till you get about half way. Here are a few options:
a) use your fork and bisect the cake edge, so you are eating either the top frosting with a triangle wedge of cake, or the end-cap frosting with the triangular wedge of cake (as shown in the diagram).
b) eat both the top and end-cap in little blocks, so each bite has an "L" of frosting.

I tend to eat the B version, because it feels like i'm eating a lot of frosting - the big finish! I also do something similar with pies when i get to the crust.

Dress Like Your Favorite Food

I've been blessed with a sweet-as-heck 5 month old baby girl, and with the impending New England weather, her Nana sent some money for a snowsuit. Doing a websearch for "baby bunting" I found an insane amount of bizarre outfits that you can put your baby in. There was a large majority of Halloween Costume-esque ones, and a few disturbing ones (the whoopie cushion) but the ones I liked the best were the food costumes.

Wonder Bread - visions of pure chemicals dance before your eyes, the only bread that tastes as plastic as the bag it comes in.

Banana - nature's greatest pleasure, my favorite all purpose fruit. Why would I dress my daughter up as one? I'm not sure, but I don't think I could take her out in public without scarring her for life.

Smarties - the candy that was the only rival to Pez in its taste, size, and stackability. Does it transfer somehow metaphorically onto a baby? Not in any way I can think of, and I'm kind of twisted.

And my favorite food outfit I think is the Mustard Squeeze Bottle. I don't know why. It might be the simplicity of the design.... sleek and yellow, with the complementary "cap" hat, and the straightforward MUSTARD text emblazoned across the suit.

If you have twins, you could get the obvious partner suit, the Hot Dog.

Living in the Lemon Light

How is it that the Lime lives in the shadow of it's far less intriguing cousin the Lemon?

Sure, Lemons deliver pure sour flavor that requires sugar to make lemonade palatable (and darned refreshing).

Sure, Lemons can delicately accent the subtle flavors of grilled fish or fried calamari.

But it's the complexity in the Lime that add depth and intrigue to foods. Limes are sour in one recipe, then sweet in the next.

It's time to upstage the Lemon.

[Keep a few in the fridge and discover new uses for the Lime.]

Would you like a cup of REAL TEA?

Hot tea is something that, as a child, you only have when you’re sick. As you get older, it reappears as a drink alternate and this is when people’s tastes begin to change.

In my teens, I drank black tea with honey. In my 20’s it was black tea with a spoon of sugar and a lot of milk. In my 30’s it was black tea with 16 grains of sugar and a big splash of milk. In my 40’s (as in ‘still 40 for one more month’, thank you) it’s 16 grains of sugar and a medium to small splash of milk. My current reasoning is that the sugar shaves off the bitter high points of the tea, and the right amount of milk provides a nice body to it. That is the way I normally take my tea.

As a ‘tea person’, I also can drink tea with honey, herbal tea, and the only tea so far I couldn’t handle at all was Lapsang Suchong, which tasted like a hot wet ashtray. I love iced tea in its various forms (sweetened and unsweetened home made), the only brands I like in a bottle are real brewed with lemon Snapple and the Assam Black Honest Tea.

As far as hot teas, these are MUST HAVES in order of favorites:

Yorkshire tea – I prefer the red box

Canadian Red Rose tea – Red Rose Brand tea in Canada is MUCH better than the US version, can only be ordered from Canada

PG tips - they have the triangular tea bag

King Cole (they also carry THE BEST black decaf I've had to date)

Barry’s Tea - I've been drinking the Irish Breakfast but I hear it's all good.

If you are a REAL TEA drinker, I strongly encourage you to try these teas! Please comment on your personal favorite teas, we’re willing to try anything if it’s good!