Celebrities for Your Consumption?

There is, obviously, a fascination with celebrity and carnivorous consumption on this humble blog, so naturally, this little site that promises to one day make literally taking a bite out of your favorite celebrities a reality has piqued my interest. There is a tongue-in-cheek quality to it that makes me suspect that this is actually a riff on our consumption of celebrity culture (seriously:

The Franco salami must be smoky, sexy, and smooth. Franco's meat will pair with lean, strong venison. Sharp Tellicherry peppercorns and caramelized onions provide Franco's underlying flavors, complemented by a charming hint of lavender. The Franco salami’s taste will be arrogant, distinctive, and completely undeniable.

 as opposed to a real dystopian cannibalism-fetish wish-fulfilment scheme--but I have been wrong about things before.

As it is, the more technical details of thing lend themselves to the suggestion of this being a hoax--like the still cost-prohibitive nature of vatted meat production on any kind of retail scale. Also, celebrities would naturally be circumpect about offering up even a trifling sample of their genetic meterial because of what might be done with it--if charcuterie itself were not outre enough. For one thing, in a world where celebrity-stalkers is a very real thing, and paparazzi and disturbing fan letters alone can give one sleepless nights, who wants to run the risk that some odd person out there develops a real taste for you and decides they would settle for nothing less than a chip off the original block, as it were?   For those who would go through with it, imagine the negotiations for licensing rights for name, image, and protection of said meat? And given what the likely final consimer price would be, naturally a demand for authentication that one was genuinely getting a Bieberburger or whatever could lead to some disputes as to the actual % of Biebermeat vs lamb or just some average mere human vatted muscle tissue. The headaches of this being a real thing abound.

So nearly plausible, but just a bit...off.

Today's Refrigerators Are Too Smart By Half

You know, they put computers in everything these days. Even the iceboxes:

Security researchers at Proofpoint have uncovered the very first wide-scale hack that involved television sets and at least one refrigerator. Yes, a fridge. 

This is being hailed as the first home appliance "botnet" and the first cyberattack from the Internet of Things. 

A botnet is a series of computers that seem to be ordinary computers functioning in people's homes and businesses, but are really secretly controlled by hackers. TheInternet of Things is a new term in the tech industry that refers to a concept where every device in your house gets its own computer chip, software, and connection to the Internet: your fridge, thermostat, smart water meter, door locks, etc. To a hacker, they all become computers that can be hacked and controlled.

Fine. I'll get the new MacAfee for Fridges.  What I'm holding out for, though, is a fridge that senses when there is nothing inside it and calls out for takeaway.

Hold My Butter While I Wreck This Career

It's pretty difficult to have a more disastrous week than Paula Deen in the "managing one's appearances" area as, to all appearances, it was revealed that she had some fairly shocking ignorance that she has to work through. The Daily Beast covers some of the worst from the deposition in the discrimination case filed against her, which includes not only admitting using the "N-word", but also referring to her former employee as a "piece of pussy" and describing an idea for a wedding with African-Americans as servers in as a reminder of a southern plantation, kind of missing the point that the antebellum black servers in those times would have been slaves, and that people might feel some kind of way about that. Deen capped this week off though with one singularly bad day, missing an exclusive interview this morning with Matt Lauer on the Today show (although actually doing that interview would probably have been more ill-advised, come to think of it) and issuing not one, nor two, but three video apologies. The day was ended with the Food Network deciding that they really could not go ahead and renew her contract, y'all.

What has been particularly bad about this is that Deen herself doesn't seem to have grasped that it really isn't a question of how awful "the media" has wanted to depict her, but how awful keeping ignorant opinions about people and using hurtful language really is. People can refer to the recoil at racist or sexist language as "political correctness", but at then end of the day, it's only simple correctness to treat people fairly and respectfully, to consider their feelings, and not making the effort to do that as soon as you realize that your prejudices and the real world are colliding is just foolish. It seems like Deen hadn't really come to that level of introspection about it, and her apologies as a result seem awkward and forced. She seems to realize that her wounds are self-inflicted, but she still doesn't quite see how she got them.  And that is a shame.

Drying my own figs!



Although having my own fig trees in the back yard means I've grown to appreciate raw figs, we simply get too many. We have two trees and we get more fruit every year--and unfortunately, there just aren't too many people we know who also appreciate fresh figs.  That means we end up with a surplus--after all, you can only cram your face with so many figs! And of course, it's a shame to waste food!

This year,  we decided to get a food dehydrator. It's very easy to use--basically, you line the trays with figs and set the temperature, and the next day you have dried figs.  Dried figs keep longer and seem to be a little more popular with people we know than fresh ones. The result of our first try at drying figs are pictured above--they aren't beautiful, but they do taste pretty good. The dehydrator itself just sounds like a fan--that's pretty much what it is.   Now that I've done a batch of dried figs (and have another batch drying away right now), I'm thinking about what's next.  I'll probably make some raisins if we have too many grapes (although that doesn't look like a problem we'll be having this year).  But I'm also thinking about doing dried tomatoes and banana chips. I don't even really like banana chips--but I might do a batch to see how they turn out--and because I can!

Thinking About Things that Are Food, vs. Things You Can Eat

I've been thinking and reading a lot about food, lately.  I'm not dieting, per se, but I've been making changes (like not drinking alcohol, and eliminating a lot of "empty calorie" foods) to what I eat, and because of the way my mind works, once I start to be interested in anything, I think about sharing what I'm thinking and reading about.

Some of what I've been reading lately goes against "conventional wisdom" regarding nutrition and health--books like Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat and Sally Fallon and Mary D. Enig's Nourishing Traditions have given me food for thought about what's eating most of us, health-wise. It's made me more aware of how many things we can find in stores and our own kitchens that just wouldn't have been recognized as "food" to our great-grandparents, let alone our distant ancestors. And once we get down to analyzing labels--it gets a little hard for us to see them as food, either. 

Dried Figs with nuts in their butts.

I'm all about real food. I like to snack on simple things that don't have a whole lot of ingredients, and lately, the nosh I've been crazy about is dried figs (because we got a mess of dried white figs on sale at a local produce store, and I still have a stash of organic mission figs we got at Nuts Online --seriously--if you love nuts, seeds, spices, and dried fruit, this is the place to go!) with almonds and pistachios stuffed into the crevice you have after pulling off the woody stem.

Because I am classy like that, I am referring to the resulting appetizer/dessert as "Figs With two Nuts up their Butts". Because I put both an organic salted almond and a large, California pistachio, in the, um, aperture of the fig. The result is so sweet and salty--and chewy and crunchy! This is definitely the thing that is tiding me over until my own fig trees give'em up (that will be late August, probably), so I can enjoy more elegant things like fresh figs with ham and blue cheese (another elegant, dumb recipe--halve fresh fig, stuff blue cheese on one slice, bandage halves back together with a slice of good ham--toast in an oven for like, 15 mins. It's ridiculously easy and Oh my literarily speaking God, I have to wait four, almost five months! Before I can taste this heaven in mouth again!)

So in the meanwhile, my fig-cravings are all about stuffing nuts into my dried fruit. Also--OMG! Do this--parmesan cheese with a drizzle of good honey and a Granny Smith Apple slice! No--shut up, DO IT!  Or if you "entertain", lemon-juice up some apple slices and slap them on a honeyed parmesan cheese "raft" and get these bad boys on a plate for your next wine (beer) and cheese "thing".

Re--freaking-dickulous. I'm of the opinion simple recipes kick the most ass. This is easy--totally kicks ass. Fruits and nuts--not just produce--they are an adventure!

Random Meat--not your cup of tea?

This appears to be a teacup, saucer, and spoon all made of meat. Probably bacon. If I were to drink tea from a cup fashioned from bacon, I think I would go with a lapsang souchong.  The smoky flavor would be very complimentary to the pork flavor. Also, I think instead of my usual Splenda in tea, I would use just a smidgen of maple syrup. The lovely thing is eating the tea service instead of washing-up, making the idea not only aesthetically pleasing but dead practical. And delicious!

Belated St Patty's Day Not-entirely-Random Meat Offering

This, of course, is corned beef with cabbage, potatoes and carrots. It is supposed to be the epitome of Irish cuisine.  I, for what it's worth, love the way boiled cabbage, potatoes, and carrots come out in a dish like this, where the ingredients can be cooked ensemble in a crock pot or in a large stew pot on the stove top.  The flavor of the corned beef enhances the vegetables and makes them very brothy and agreeable.

The sticking point for me is the corned beef. It's boiled beef and it's pink. I've cooked meat in ways that I would considered bad--I braised a great big turkey leg in wine until it had the basic consistency of Happy Fun Ball.  I've broiled strip steaks for a period > 8 minutes. (No, don't hate me. I was young, I didn't know. The crispy bits were really reminiscent of well-done beef bacon, so it wasn't all bad. No, they weren't an inch thick, even. Thus, the crispage. In future, I will always do these in a pan w/butter and close attention!)  But boiled beef just feels wrong to me.

Don't get me wrong. My mom has made pot roast,  even crock-pot beef, that has been tender and not without flavor, but when I'm presented with a roast cut, my first instinct is to roast. And when I see pink meat, I am either looking at ham or the inside of my rare skirt-steak--I just don't get corned beef (except as a luncheon meat, in which case it is truly delicious and ridiculously good with cole slaw or sauerkraut on a nice rye bread.).

I prepared corned beef with potatoes and cabbage all of once. My first husband was full-blooded Irish and very proud of his heritage, so I wanted to make a meal for St. Pat's that expressed my appreciation of a heritage I share (like, I think 25%? mixed with sundry other things).   It wasn't the worst meal I ever made (That was the braised turkey.) It wasn't even bad. It needed, perhaps, a story to go along with it, about the history of Ireland and why this dish was part of our culture. As it was, we had leftovers that went to the back of the fridge for a bit. They went blue, not green after several weeks at the back of the fridge, and we didn't even save the plastic container.  It may be the dish wasn't all it could be because I'd never had good corned beef and potatoes, so I didn't know how it ought to taste, and maybe somewhere a great plate of these can be found.

Knowing now that salt pork was the original meat at the center of the cuisine makes a difference to me, though. I've long appreciated the flavors that pork fat imparts in vegetables from doing greens or lima bean in pork hocks; I think I may want to revisit this dish to see if it can be done in a more flavorful, and authentic way. Although, thanks to my current, Italian-American spouse, my answer to this dish is going to look like pan-fried prosciutto with fennel in the place of cabbage and the spuds will also be fried, unless I decide to serve my fennel and prosciutto over potato gnocchi. Yummmmm. Irish/Italian fusion doesn't sound so bad, right? Or, to get down to the boil and the cabbage, start with a mirepoix of onion, celery and carrot, and then dump in minced savoy cabbage, and have them simmered with pork hocks that were already roasted so they were ready to yield the best of their gelatinous flavor and  a couple quarts of vegetable or chicken stock. Simple, peasant-style eats, but done, you know, with intensity.

No Prell-tasting green food colored beer. Just the kind of food my Irish ancestors would have found an affordable bounty.

Random Meat--it's been a long time since I've rock and rolled.

This is a picture of someone who is delighted to have a box with meat in it. And who wouldn't be? From the marbling and the bright red color, you can tell that this is a pretty good steak, but really, this should be promptly wrapped and refrigerated--or slapped on a skillet, at her nearest convenience. As the meat is pulled from a box, and there appears to be no mess, I suspect she might have some dried aged beef, which might be why she is happy to pose with it, but if that's the case, the color isn't quite dark enough. But lucky her if her box has some properly seasoned aged steak.  I suggest she acquire a nice Beaujolais and for an easy veggie dish, quickly braise some tender asparagus spears in a pan, and then, dump the water and finish'em with a little plus gras butter and pepper. Add a mixto salad with oil & vinegar and a great loaf of bread, and you simply can't eat better. If her meal is that easy and built around a great piece of beef--no wonder she's smiling!

Iron Abbey--if you are in/visiting the SE PA area.

I like to review good restaurants every now and again, just the way I review movies and books--you'll mostly get really good reviews from me, because I'm interested in pointing people to something good I've found. A place would have to be super-awful for me to give it an Internet-thrashing. So I want you to know: Iron Abbey is one of my favorite restaurants in the world. I am giving it a serious recommend.

Take my lunch experience today as part of the reason I love this place: they are a gastropub, which means the emphasis is on good food, but they have a beer list that is really comparable to Monk's Cafe in Center City (which is really damn good). So you really can't go wrong if you like some good food and some seriously great beer.

Me and the spouse started with the Mezze Platter as our appetizer, which is a generous spread of roasted peppers, prosciutto, salami, cheese, some absolutely fabulous fried green olives with blue cheese, hummus, pita, onions, water crackers, and....sheer deliciousness. The hummus was chickpea heaven. The manchego and Parmesan cheeses were good quality, as were the prosciutto and salami--this is a thing I look for in a proper anti-pasto: quality. It was a generous portion for two; my husband remarked that we really could have eaten just that and made a good lunch, and I have to say, we are both what you would call "good eaters". When a spread like this is accompanied with great beers like Fegley's Brew Works Mad Elf Reserve, which is a Holiday Ale with some really good use of "noggy" spice flavors and a heady, malty profile, or Southern Tiers' Unearthly IPA, which is a smooth, hoppy, crisp, brew of incredible drinkability for it's crazy-strong 10% ABV (that was what I was having--I am a sucker for IPA's--a total hop-head) you have a wonderful experience.

Then I had an awesome Blue Abbey burger--which won me over with conforming to some of my hard and fast burger requirements:

Good bread.

Actually cooked well-done when I said well-done.

Crispy, not chewy, bacon.

Cheese used as a flavor--not a cover (I hate when condiments smother!)

And the fries that accompanied it were flavorful and crisp, of the regular size (not steak or shoe string, but the in-between) and starch-bathed for crispness variety. They were a total "yum". I "boxed" half of the burger and most of the fries for a re-heated snack later. I also enjoyed, as my second beer, Port Brewing Company's Old Viscosity. This is a high-test Imperial Stout with strong flavor and a syrupy mouth-feel (Viscosity--indeed!) It's not a bad beer to have a dessert with--and I opted for flan. I'm a flan fan. The smooth, but rich and alcoholic flavor of the beer went really well with the caramel-custard of the flan. It was a major mouth-happy.

My spouse had the chili, which was pleasantly meaty and also quite flavorful. Because the Mad Elf was a strong beer, and he was the designated chauffeur, he declined a second beer. But I'm serious, when it comes to choosing beers at Iron Abbey--you could seriously make a day of it if you had someone else driving. There is plenty of novelty and truly tasty-sounding selections to be had if you are a beer hound--and I totally am! And even if your love of beer is just a wee thing, you will still enjoy the food: good portions, properly cooked, with great attention to the quality of ingredients. I definitely give them my seal of approval.

(And the service is always top-notch--another plus! And they are knowledgable more often than not about the beers they have, which is great if you aren't used to such a bodacious beer-menu.)

Dear God, Texas is even frying the cocktails, now!

I am in awe of the Texas State Fair, and one year, I will journey to Texas, probably because I'll eat anything, and they, bless their hearts! will fry anything. And each year they find new things to fry.

They've gotten through all manner of meats, buns, candy-bars, donuts. And now, they've begun frying beverages. I'm fascinated by this description of a fried margarita:

Deep Fried Frozen Margarita - Sweet and creamy funnel cake batter is deliciously coupled with margarita ingredients. Fried, dusted with a tangy lemon/lime mixture and lightly spritzed with south of the border flavor, it’s served in a salt rimmed glass. 21 and over, ID required.

It's boozecake! Booze--and cake! Only fried!!! Since they've long been deep-frying Coca-Cola in dough, can the deep-friend Cuba Libre be far behind?

What will Fry-o-later technology come up with next?

Eating Stuff that is or isn't food.

I've eaten ridiculous things in my time, which I recently was reminded of when I responded to a thread at Shakesville regarding what food one could not be paid enough to eat.

I eat anything. I seriously mean, anything. And this lead me to look back at a Democratic Underground post I wrote on the same:

I ate a "Rio Snapper". That's the brand name for a little thingie they sell in playing-card-size boxes around Independence Day--you know, the little bit of gunpowder and sawdust wrapped in a spit-ball sized wad of paper and you throw it and it goes, "BANG!" or "SNAP!" when it hits the ground? Or like, if you step on it?

Well, I got dared to *bite* one when I was ten or eleven. You have to know, I was a bit of a tomboy, and a dare was a meaningful debt drawn upon my honor, so I had to pay in full. My problem is being, if you'll allow the oxymoron, a "closet exhibitionist"; once all eyes were on me I had to elaborate upon the deed. I took the "snapper" between my teeth, inhaling so as to suck my teeth dry and then drew back my lips as far away from the snapper as I could. I bit down, causing it to "snap" weakly, which should have been enough, but for an imp of the perverse that let the snapper then fall back upon my tongue.

Whereupon there was nothing left but to roll it about in my spit until soft and swallow. Naturally I displayed my empty mouth in pride.


I have naturally eaten paste, Elmer's glue, wax (as in "wax teeth"), and the brownish, syrupy glue known as "mucilage." I have undoubtedly swallowed countless gnats. On impulse, I have sample cowslips, dandelions, sliver of a jade plant, grass, and acorns. Acorns are a little bitter. Was *not* impressed, not much like filberts, really.

I once ate an entire rotisserie chicken, including most of the bones to unnerve an uptight relative. The bones were softened by the slow-roasting process, so it really was no problem. The spine and ribs I mostly balked at, but the wing-bones were barely there. Drumsticks were impossible, but I left them extraordinarily clean. In Italy, I downed two-and-three inch smelts, heads, tails, bones and all, having taking my husband's advice regarding "picky eating" (this was four years ago, when he didn't yet know me as well) to the extreme.

All of which is actually true. I've licked buttons and amber jewelry. I have a bias that the tentacles is where all the flavor is in calimari, and I really don't understand picky eaters. I've swallowed the bitter choke of artichokes and downed my share of scales, claws, bones, and hair.


And I suspect there are more true omnivores out there--people who can easily discuss the merits of licking envelopes and sampling papier mache, and can confess to even swigging the odd cologne or licking especially food-like soaps.

I hope. Unless I'm a complete lunatic. Which I've also expected.

I saw a sanitation truck, and was reminded I'm in one of the great cities--

I'm from Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love. We are ridiculously diverse, culturally rich, gifted with theater, art, music, and we have a reputation for being especially rowdy sports fans. But I saw a pretty trash truck that reminded me what I really love about my city:



That's one of several sanitation vehicles that have been made into art here in the city. This article misunderstands the point, but shows the pictures--

Philly’s Mural Arts Program partnered up with The Design Center of Philadelphia University to transform 10 city garbage trucks into pieces of movable art. Sadly, the murals do nothing to disguise the trucks awful fucking smell.

Garbage is what it is--but why can't we have trash trucks that are beautiful? They do a necessary job, and that part is beautiful. There are a few million households making trash in this city, and none of it smells nice, not even the garbage of the guy who commented on the "awful fucking smell"--hey, stupid--there are people who work on those trucks who put up with the awful fucking smell of our garbage everyday. But when I saw the artistic truck, I felt a little lifted--this is a Philadelphia thing. I know Japan pretties up their sanitation trucks, too, because I looked into it. But it's useful art. It surprises you with a new possibility. It reminds you there is room for beauty anywhere.

And that's something my city has learned. The mural program is a thing I really think is smart--where there is urban blight and grafitti, why not make art that everyone can respect and really enjoy as part of the community?



The best thing about this is how it tells the stories of our neighborhoods, and how thoughtful the placement of the art often is. We are like a tattooed city. Just like people might have tattoos that cover scars or tell the stories of their lives--we have art that fills the interstices, that describes our people and covers over the fraying nature of all human endeavor--

And then there is the personal art--the art of specific space:



This mosaic form is found here and there and especially in South Philly, not just on South Street. And it, too, has a story. But where you see the mosaics, you know people are representing an ideal--the uniqueness of Philadelphia and its art. And there is pride to be drawn from that--

The ugliness of blight is fixed with native creativity. The creations made reflect our diversity, and remind us of our strengths. They reflect the individuality we have as citizens who are creative and quirky and real--

And all of that makes me like my city a little more. Although there are mysteries regarding us--artistically. We are a great jazz city, but have no jazz radio station. We have a vibrant foodie culture and several microbreweries--but I worry about the availability of righteous beer. We have Monk's. There's Iron Abbey just outside Philly. But more restaurants need to take up the banner of promoting better beer. Grey Lodge does a great job in promoting local beers and beer diversity--more of this, please! (I will vouch for the really awesomeness of their jukebox, etc. This is a bar par excellence).

I have a city where we bother to paint the trash trucks. Where we have an awesome beer culture, where you can eat ridiculously well, for a not ridiculous amount of money. And where we decorate to commemorate. Where "sacred space" (such as corners where people met with accidents or violence) is made creative space (where art performs the function sometimes of explaining, healing, commemorating). And the price of admission is only your desire to look.

Celebrity hair jam--er, yum?

Jam made from Princess Diana's hair

JAM made from one of Princess Diana's hairs has been selling well at an art exhibition in London.
Sam Bompas, who founded catering company Bompas and Parr, says a tiny speck of the late Princess of Wales' hair has been infused with gin, then combined with milk and sugar to make the preserve, which tastes like condensed milk.

Mr Bompas says he bought the hair off eBay for $US10 ($12) from a US dealer who collects celebrity hair.

This works more as surrealism than food for a variety of reasons. First, the mention of jam with hair in it creates an unpleasant image of something not sanitary (I recall Davy Jones in The Monkees' film Head jokingly requesting a "glass of cold gravy with a hair in it", which made me viscerally grimace the same way--unclean!). But in this case--the hair in the jam is the point. It's supposed to be a minuscule amount, but this leads to a number of interesting cultural questions--

Is any hair the right amount to have in one's jam? And of course, does it matter that the person whose hair it was was a celebrity?

It's infused with gin (might I add, a very English spirit)--so does the alcohol sterilize the weirdness of it being "hair jam"?

And finally--just who is buying this? Because there are some definitely strange and intense people in this peculiar old world, some you might even say have stalkerly-intensity. Are there cults of Diana-worshippers, whose literal renderings of certain archetypes have poetically apotheosized Prince Charles' ex-wife into a goddess-figure whose very hair preserved in a jam (whose ingredient list actually seems a bit easily perishable) would serve as an agreeable sacrament for? Or are they just carefree memorabilia hounds snapping up the jars to sit next to the Royal Wedding hand-painted plates and other Anglophile tourist tat?

(At my darkest imaginings, I envision a solitary paparazzo, gutted with guilt, purchasing jar after jar through proxies and spending sad nights remembering the night she died while slathering the jam on stale crumpets and numbly swallowing each gobby mouthful part in penance and part in some sympathetic-magic urge to incorporate some of her nous into his own corpus and carry her like a cross of fat about his middle for the rest of his life.)

Or, you know, the the usual jam-fetishists. Gooseberries. Poblano chiles. Hair of deceased royalty. All in a day's collections.

It also works more as art because, of course, it's obviously going to depreciate in value once you pry the lid off. There is very little market for used jam. And I can't say I know of any market for used jam with hair in it.

The real down-side though, is with appraisal. All things considered, is it worth anyone's while to DNA-test a batch to see if it really has her hair? (Although this is pointless without a follicle tip I understand. Naturally, one can't expect that from hair purchased at auction and subsequently infused with gin. What a perfect crime for forgers! One could bootleg celebrity-hair jam from Fido's brush for a very profitable period of time.)

It's not exactly something that goes with my decor, personally, as I prefer more traditional objets d'art. Your purloined finger-bones assembled into bird-cages, and miniature books bound wholly in mouse ears. You know the sort of thing.