Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Redux

When I was a kid - and, frankly, well into my 20s - I loved the Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit from McDonald's. I don't eat at McDonald's anymore, and if you put said breakfast biscuit in front of me I'd be slightly grossed out. But I'd still be terribly tempted to eat it, partly out of nostalgia, and partly out of the fact that bacon, eggs, cheese, and biscuits are just a damned tasty combination.

Last week I made a beef stew that called for the beef to be browned in pork fat, so I bought some bacon. We're not at all in the habit of eating bacon, but I figured I'd fix bacon and eggs for breakfast today to try to use some of it up. But then I had an even better idea - bacon, egg, & cheese biscuits! Except with real food, instead of what McDonald's passes off as food! Wheee!

There's a recipe for cream biscuits in The Art of Simple Food, but it calls for heavy cream, which we didn't have, so I briefly considered my alternatives. One of these alternatives was a box of Bisquick in the cabinet. All that recipe wanted was Bisquick and milk, which we had. But then I looked at the ingredients in the Bisquick. Enriched bleached flour? Partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil?? Hell no! Off Neil went to the store to get me some heavy cream and a few other items.

The cream biscuit recipe called for all-purpose flour (Alice Waters likes unbleached and so do I), salt, baking powder, butter, and cream. "That was so easy," Neil said after the fact. "Why do people even use Bisquick?" Why, indeed.

The recipe was supposed to make eight small biscuits, but we ended up with four and a half big ones; they had to be big enough to make sandwiches with. I fried up a couple of pieces of Wellshire Farms peppered bacon and scrambled a couple of eggs. Neil invented a new fried potato recipe, which we have dubbed Scarborough Fair Potatoes; they're seasoned with parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. This herbal cliché is actually a really good combination!

We assembled our bacon and eggs on our biscuits and added slices of Cabot's extra sharp white cheddar. This version of the McDonald's classic was barely even recognizable as the same meal. The biscuits were dense and buttery (as can be expected when you use six tablespoons of butter to make four and a half biscuits), the bacon was thick and crisp and peppery and just... bacony, and the cheese was tangy. (The eggs were, well, eggs.) The potatoes were perfectly seasoned. We've been drinking Jackson's Organic coffee all morning and putting heavy cream in it, reasoning that we don't have any other place to put heavy cream and it'll go bad before we can use it. Very decadent, indeed.

Just out of curiosity, I decided to compare our bacon, egg & cheese biscuit to McDonald's:

Our Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit
552 calories, 38 grams of fat

McDonald's Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit
480 calories, 31 grams of fat

Oops. However:

Our Bacon, Egg, & Cheese Biscuit
Biscuit - Unbleached all-purpose flour, heavy cream (heavy cream, skim milk, contains less than 1% of each of the following: mono- and diglycerides, polysorbate 80 and carrageenan), salt, baking powder (corn starch, bicarbonate of soda, sodium aluminum suflate, acid phosphate of calcium), butter (sweet cream, salt)

Egg - Just an egg, yo.

Bacon - Pork, sea salt, raw sugar, spices

Cheese - Pasteurized milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes

McDonald's Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit
Biscuit - Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), buttermilk (cultured fat free milk, guar gum, tapioca starch, salt, sodium citrate, carrageenan, locust bean gum, mono- and diglycerides, modified tapioca starch, food starch- modified), palm oil, water, contains 2% or less of the following: salt, sugar, leavening (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate), partially hydrogenated soybean oil, soybean oil, soy lecithin, natural flavor (plant source). Prepared with Liquid Margarine: Liquid soybean oil, water, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils, salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, mono- and diglycerides, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservative), artificial flavor, citric acid, vitamin A palmitate, beta carotene (color).

Egg - Pasteurized whole eggs, food starch-modified, soybean oil, natural flavors (botanical source), sodium acid pyrophosphate, carrageenan gum, flavor enhancer [salt, maltodextrin, natural flavor (plant source), spices, herb, turmeric (color)], monosodium phosphate, citric acid, soy lecithin. Prepared with Liquid Margarine: Liquid soybean oil, water, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils, salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, mono- and diglycerides, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservative), artificial flavor, citric acid, vitamin A palmitate, beta carotene (color).

Bacon - Pork bellies cured with [water, salt, sugar, natural smoke flavor (plant source), sodium phosphate, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite].

Cheese - American cheese (pasteurized milk, cheese culture, salt, enzymes), water, milkfat, sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, salt, sorbic acid (preservative), acetic acid, artificial color, soy lecithin and/or corn starch (added for slice separation).

Um, yeah. I'll stick with our version, thank you. I'll just use a less buttery biscuit recipe next time.

Weekend Round-up: Le Gallo Rosso and Maido

Le Gallo Rosso
Friday night Neil and I met up with three other friends for dinner at Le Gallo Rosso. There has been quite a bit of buzz surrounding this restaurant but we hadn't tried it yet. What I'd heard and read most frequently about it was that the food is good and reasonably priced, the portions are huge, and diners are permitted to bring their own wine. Sounds good to me!

The restaurant is located in an alley off Bardstown Road, and they've created a lovely patio area that I can't wait to sit in when the weather warms up. There are separate dining rooms in front of and behind the kitchen; we were seated in the small room behind it. The atmosphere was cozy and festive, though the room was a bit chilly at times because of the frequent opening of the door. This seemed to be less of a problem as the evening wore on.

Small loaves of warm Italian bread were brought to the table in baskets and were accompanied by dishes of olive oil and sun-dried tomatoes for dipping. We gobbled this up, and our server brought us more bread several times. Next came the salads; Neil and I both had Caesar salads, which were very good. Two of our tablemates had the house salad, which comes as a bouquet of greens wrapped in a long slice of cucumber; they were very pretty, and I sort of wished that I'd ordered one for aesthetic reasons alone.

Our entrees arrived and were, as promised, huge. I packed up Neil's leftovers for lunch a little while ago and saw that of his two meatballs (which were stuffed with mozzarella), he'd only eaten about 2/3 of one of them. They were surely the biggest meatballs I've ever seen and, judging from the two small bites I managed to sneak from them at dinner, almost as delicious as they were big. Our companions enjoyed Betty's Deep Dish Lasagna and the Capellini Pompodoro.

Since I am on this little 30-day adventure in avoiding processed foods, I skipped the pasta and opted for the Chicken Artichoke & Sun Dried Tomato. It was described as "seared chicken breast topped with a white wine artichoke and sun dried tomato sauce." I thought that sounded delicious. But I ended up feeling as though I had gotten the evening's booby prize; while everyone around me was ooohing and aaahing over their meals, I was faced with two huge chicken breasts which, yes, came with artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes, but were not accompanied by any discernible sauce. They were incredibly bland. If this dish was, as Neil suggested, a nod to people who are on low-carb diets, it certainly succeeded in feeling like diet food (ridiculous portion-size notwithstanding). The small mound of risotto that accompanied the chicken was good, but perhaps only in comparison to the chicken.

The service, up to that point, had been slow, but we didn't mind. Our server was apologetic and seemed a bit frazzled, and we were well supplied with wine, so we were pretty forgiving. The only time I was really annoyed was when, after we'd finished our entrees, we were presented with the bill. He launched into an explanation of how he'd separated the checks on the ticket, only for one of us to have to interrupt him with "Are you offering dessert this evening?" Perhaps he was in a hurry to turn the table over, since by that point we'd been there for nearly three hours, but that was through no fault of ours.

Dessert was a vast improvement over my entree. Neil and I shared the berries and cream. Blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries were arranged on a pool of thick, sweet, vanilla-tinged (I think) cream. If I'd been in the privacy of my own home I would have licked the plate when the berries were gone. Another member of our group ordered tiramisu, only to find out that they were out it; he ordered cheesecake instead and was quite happy with it. And... I can't remember what the other members of our party had for dessert. (Lisa, feel free to comment and tell me!) Neil and I were both very impressed with the coffee and wondered where it was from; we've both noticed that restaurants with really good food often fall short when it comes to coffee (notable exception: Mayan Cafe, which serves Jackson's Organic). Le Gallo Rosso's coffee was quite good and I was excited to get a second cup of it.

Because I loved the atmosphere and, more importantly, because everyone else seemed to have great food, I am willing to overlook my boring chicken and give Le Gallo Rosso another chance. I'll even recommend it; just stay the hell away from that chicken (unless, you know, you like plain chicken breast for some reason).

(Aside: Ever since listening to Garlic and Sapphires, I can't get Ruth Reichl out of my head when dining at new restaurants. Neil feels the same way.)

Maido
I love, love Maido. I love the patio in the summer, and I love the dining room when the weather's bad. I love the small plates, the sushi, and I especially love the beer list. The service, if not always meticulous, is consistently friendly. It's one of my favorite restaurants.

Saturday night I experienced Maido in a whole new way; our friend Paul rented the karaoke room for his birthday party. Twelve of us squeezed into a back room that was set up with bench seating and tables (and a few extra chairs in our case) in a U-shape; at the front of the room was the karaoke machine. The moment I sat down and saw Paul and his wife Allison with their beers I knew that my 30-day beer fast was not going to last. I ordered - and loved - a Siberian Night. That was followed by two Left Hand Milk Stouts. Beer, I love you!

Anyway. I'm not going to review the food because I was moderately intoxicated and distracted by the karaoke; I will save that for another visit. Suffice it to say that it was, as always, extremely good. I will, however, review the karaoke. The catalog of songs was huge; I've never actually done karaoke in a bar before, so I can't compare it, but experienced karaoke-ers in our party thought it was quite comprehensive. (It did not, however, contain the one song I actually sing well, Ella Fitzgerald's "A Tisket, A Tasket.") The set-up they have is quite ingenious; there's a remote control sort of thing into which you enter the song number you want, and you can keep adding numbers to the queue while people are singing. We passed the remote around, adding songs, forgetting what order they were in, and then scrambling to grab a mic once our tunes started playing. We had SO. MUCH. FUN. By the end of the night we were all just singing along to all of the songs. (You should have heard our rousing rendition of "Sister Christian.") I like to think of myself as someone who can sort of sing, having done it all through school, but pretty much every single person in our party kicked my ass. Which was slightly demoralizing, but hopefully everyone was too drunk to remember how much I sucked.

I really, really want to do this again. The rates are not posted on Maido's website, but Neil thinks it's $50/hour. Which is kind of pricey, especially considering how quickly time flies when you have a big group of people. But if you can afford it - or if you can get everyone to go in with you on the cost of the room - it's definitely worth it.

Two events at Varanese

90 Point Wine Dinner
Featuring the live jazz of Jeff Sherman
January 24th, 6 pm
$59 plus tax & gratuity

KUNDE ESTATE SAUVIGNON BLANC
Tempura Point Reyes Bleu Cheese and Dried Apricot

GEORGE DUBOEUF MORGON BEAUJOLAIS
Grilled Diver Scallop and Strawberry Gazpacho Napoleon Garnish with Baby
Arugula and Balsamic drizzle

CASTELLO DI MONASTERO TOSCANA
Duck Stuffed Ravioli atop Shaved Baby Fennel and Sweet Onions Accompanied by a Black Truffle Sauce Finished with Fois Gras

MONTECILLO GRAN RESERVA RIOJA
Smoked Braised Pork Belly Served Over Creamy Beans with Manchego Cheese, Roasted Pablano Pepper and Oven Dried Tomato

RENWOOD ZINFANDEL GRANDPERE
Moist Chocolate Cake Topped with a Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Icing served with a Sundried Cherry Jam

A Taste of Love
Featuring a menu of foods thought to have aphrodisiacal qualities
February 14, 5:00 pm - 11:00 pm

Oysters on the ½ Shell Topped with a Pineapple–Cilantro Salsa

Hearts of Romaine, Artichoke, and Palm Salad Dressed by Gorgonzola Cheese, Grape Tomatoes, and Raspberry-Honey Vinaigrette

Grilled Certified Angus Beef Tenderloin Finished with a Black Truffle Demi Glaze and Gnocchi Tossed with a Pesto Cream Sauce

Coriander Seared Ahi Tuna served over Crab Fried Rice and Hand Carved Baby Carrots Drizzled with a Passion Fruit-Ginger Hoisen

Moist Chocolate Cake Filled with a Sun-Dried Cherry Jam Topped with a Tahitian Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Icing

Varanese
2106 Frankfort Avenue
502 899-9904

Roses, Song and Chocolate

The Event Design Group @ Event Design Library & Emporium is holding an event called Roses, Song and Chocolate: Celebrating Love & Friendship. The event is Friday, February 8, 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm. Says the press release:

At this fabulous February event, chocolate desserts featuring local Chocolate Artisans Fred Moore of Coco's Chocolate Cafe on Bardstown Road and Prospect, KY favorite, Lilliana Gross of Lilliana's Finest will be served; signature cocktails will be a highlight along with small plate appetizers by nios @917, while enjoying live music by guitarist Craig Wagner. There will also be Knit Lingerie modeled throughout the evening by featured local Event Design Emporium artisan Tonya Wagner.

Advanced ticket purchase encouraged with limited ticket availability at the door.
Please call T. Lynne @ 502.451.5377 for reservations, ticket purchase & event information.

Tickets: $15 single, $25 couple
Advance ticket purchase by Monday, February 4, 2008 encouraged.

A portion of ticket proceeds will benefit T. Lynne's charity of choice: Dress for Success!

Knit lingerie, eh? Veeeeeery interesting.

Event Design Group @ Event Design Library & Emporium
1325 Bardstown Rd
502 451-5377

Changing the Way I Eat

I have decided that something needs to be done about my pudge. I blogged a week or so ago about the conflict between being a foodie and wanting to lose weight, and I think I'm ready now to take action.

There are several books influencing my strategy, and none of them are diet books. They are:

-In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
-What to Eat by Marion Nestle
-French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano
-The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

I first read French Women Don't Get Fat a couple years ago and recently picked it back up and re-read most of it. I bought What to Eat in August. I got The Art of Simple Food a couple months ago. I started reading In Defense of Food last night and can't put it down. All of these books are saying the same thing and in ways that make a lot of sense: Lay off the processed food. Cook and eat real, whole foods. Stop obsessing about calories, carbs, proteins, and fat. Just eat food.

That we have to be told to do this is, when you think about it, kind of crazy, but Michael Pollan does a great job of explaining how this came to be. You should definitely read In Defense of Food right away. I'm only 39 pages into and I can already recommend it unequivocally.

So, for the next 30 days, I am going to attempt to:

- Cut processed foods down to a bare minimum.
- Cook everything from scratch (this isn't really as time-consuming or intimidating as it might sound if you check out some Alice Waters recipes).
- When dining out, choose dishes that consist mostly of unprocessed food; choose restaurants where this isn't difficult.
- Cook four servings of dinner so that we have stuff for lunch that isn't peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
- Lay off the high Glycemic Index carbs. I tend to think that low-carb diets are BS, but I also understand the effect that carbs have on blood sugar, and that's something I've had issues with. I also know that if I eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast I will be hungry again more quickly than if I eat a bowl of yogurt. According to GlycemicIndex.com, high GI carbs can be avoided thusly:

*Use breakfast cereals based on oats, barley and bran
* Use breads with wholegrains, stone-ground flour, sour dough
* Reduce the amount of potatoes you eat
* Enjoy all other types of fruit and vegetables
* Use Basmati or Doongara rice
* Enjoy pasta, noodles, quinoa
* Eat plenty of salad vegetables with a vinaigrette dressing

Easy enough. We already do a lot of those things anyway.
- Practice portion control; Neil and I both tend to eat whatever it is until it's gone.
- Stop drinking beer. Yes, I know, I just wrote about how much I love beer. But I think it is a big (maybe the biggest) reason I keep gaining weight, and my attempts to drink it in moderation haven't been met with much success. I'm going to go without it for a month and see what happens. Then I will add it back in (hopefully judiciously). The occasional glass of wine is still permitted.

And... that's it. No food-tracking, no calorie-counting, no low-fat anything or artificial sweeteners. I will still cook with butter, oil, cheese, and, when necessary, sugar. I have a strong suspicion that if I use those things in moderation and eat mostly plants I will be just fine. I will let you know how it goes!

Beer: A Love Story

I was going to write this entry last night, but I settled onto the sofa with my MacBook and a bottle of Ommegang Abbey Ale and things quickly went downhill. Neil started playing New Pornographers songs on the guitar and before long I was tipsy and pretending to be Neko Case and/or Kathryn Calder. (This has nothing to do with food or beer, but do yourself a favor and check out the New Pornographers if you haven't already. They are my most favorite band.)

So, beer. My childhood experience with it is probably similar to many people's; at some point I tasted some that my dad was drinking and didn't like it. I didn't like the way it tasted, and I didn't like the way it smelled. Yuck.

My first actual beer-drinking experiences were as follows:

Age 16 - Hanging out with a group of older people, trying to impress a guy. The Bud Light was flowing. I drank several. They were gross, but I was caught up in the fun of the evening and didn't care. Still, I couldn't imagine why so many people liked beer. It seemed like something to be tolerated rather than enjoyed.

Age 17 - Ex-boyfriend threw a party over spring break. I was sad about our break-up and drowned my sorrows in a couple wine coolers. A Bud Light followed. Still gross.

Age 18 - Boyfriend liked Heineken. I tried it. Didn't like it.

And so-on. (Are you noticing this theme of boyfriends and beer? Yeah, me too.) Around the age of 22 or so a friend (a female friend!) introduced me to lambic, which I loved. I didn't really count that as beer, though. It was just fruity and fizzy and delicious. Beer was bitter and full of other strange flavors that did not please my palate.

And then along came Neil. And with him came Blue Moon. I tried it... and I liked it! Not long after that I went out with a group of my grad school classmates and it was decided that we should order a pitcher of Blue Moon. What luck! They'd chosen the one beer I liked! Still, I found that an entire glass of the stuff was a little much.

I kept drinking Blue Moon and soon realized that a big glass of it and an order of chicken wings was one of the best things in the world. Then I started branching out. I liked Harp. I liked Bass, but not as much. I liked Rolling Rock. I liked Negra Modelo. At some point I tasted Neil's La Fin du Monde, which totally rocked my world.

In Montreal we drank Boreale (and were crestfallen when we realized it's not available in the US). In Philadelphia (and, as it turned out, in Gulf Shores) we drank Yuengling. I chose beer based on recommendations and based on the label and based on the name. I got unintentionally wasted on Aventinus at the Nachbar. I came home from a party wearing the little plastic rams that come with Celebrator Doppelbock. I squealed in delight at a grad student gathering when I saw that the chair of my department had stocked her fridge with BBC's Dark Star Porter. I got gently teased just a few weeks ago for walking around a party drinking Rogue's Shakespeare Stout out of its 22-ounce bottle. I fell in love with Left Hand's Milk Stout while dining at Maido. Beer is all around. If I'm at a party, dining in a restaurant, or eating dinner at home, I am more than likely drinking a beer. If I go into ValuMarket for something other than beer, I often leave with beer anyway. (Have you seen their beer selection? If not, go! Right now!)

There's been a spate of talk over at Louisville HotBytes lately about beer, including a heated discussion about why fine restaurants often put more care into their wine list than their beer list. This got me thinking about beer vs wine in general and how I ended up being so enthralled with the former, often to the neglect of the latter. I certainly love wine, and I loved it before I loved beer, but somehow I'm just not as into it. I daresay I find beer more exciting.

Tell me, Blog Tartare readers, what are your favorite beers? What should I try? I favor porters and stouts but I'll try anything once. (Except maybe IPAs. I seem to dislike them pretty consistently.)

BBC Reopening & Melillo's Valentine's Day Deal

St. Matthews BBC Reopening - After a week-long closure for renovations, the St. Matthews location of the Bluegrass Brewing Co. is reopening tomorrow. Along with the cosmetic upgrades they'll be rolling out a new menu. BBC bartender Becca reports: "The new menu will include some old favorites----Brewhouse Nachos, Shepherds Pie and our much requested beer mustard. The menu will also have a Hot Bacon and Spinach Salad, a Portabello Burger, a Chicken Parmesan Sandwich and Fried Polenta." Yum!

BBC
3929 Shelbyville Rd
502 899-7070

Melillo's Valentine's Day Special - Melillo's is offering a three-course Valentine's Day dinner, including soup or salad, entree, dessert, and a bottle of wine for $90 per couple. Ladies will receive flowers and gentlemen will receive candy. Call Ashley for reservations.

Melillo's
829B East Market St
502 540-9975

Odds and Ends

A little later I'm going to blog about beer, but first I want to mention a few other things that don't merit posts of their own. Call it a Blog Tartare Casserole if you like.

Osaka - Neil and I went there Friday night with a group of friends. I like Osaka well enough but it's not my favorite sushi place (that honor goes to Sakura Blue). It is, however, my friend Tabetha's favorite, so we eat there when she's doing the organizing. Osaka was slammed Friday night and it took a loooong time to get our food, but they gave us complimentary edamame and dessert (red bean ice cream, I believe), so we didn't mind a bit. And someone in our group subsequently decided to have her birthday party there next month. Good job, Osaka!

Sweet Surrender - We're Sweet Surrender fans in part because we're friends with the owner, but we'd love it even if we weren't. The friendly folks there didn't bat an eye when our party of 9 wandered in after dining at Osaka. We enjoyed uniformly delicious desserts and one of the employees made sure that we were all signed up to receive coupons for free cake on our birthdays. Several of the people who were with us hadn't been there before and were quite impressed with the food.

Wild Eggs - This is the hot new breakfast place in town, and I ate there yesterday for the second time. I had the Farmers Market Skillet, a dish full of various veggies topped with cheese and two fried eggs. It didn't blow my mind, but it was a perfectly good breakfast. It came with an Everything Muffin; these muffins are inspired by "everything" bagels and are really, really good. I really like Wild Eggs and thought that our 20-minute wait for a table was reasonable. If the wait were much longer (and I suspect that it was by the time we left), I'm not sure I'd find it worth it. (To be fair, I am extraordinarily impatient when it comes to restaurant waits.)

City Cafe - Ah, the Russian roulette that is the City Cafe specials. Sometimes they're great, and sometimes they're... not. Neil and I went last night and both had extremely mediocre meals. I had salmon with a dill cream sauce and Neil had teriyaki flank steak. My meal was mostly devoid of flavor aside from the unappealing fishiness of the salmon, and Neil describes his meat as "blah and frighteningly pink in some places." Blech. I remain loyal to City Cafe though because the stuff on their regular menu is so good and their specials are too, more often than not. Just not last night.

Books - I've been on a big food book kick lately and yesterday I picked up The United States of Arugula (which I'm reading now and quite enjoying), Heat, and In Defense of Food. I'm excited about all of them and will report back as I read them.

Bagels - Earlier today I said to Neil, "Remember those really good bagels we had in Montreal?" Just now I realized that there is such a thing as a Montreal-style bagel. Who knew?

Better Than Egg Salad

Some months ago I found this recipe for "egg" salad that uses tofu instead of eggs in a Light & Tasty magazine. I'm honestly not sure why there is a need for such a recipe, unless you are allergic to eggs (but then you'd also have the matter of the mayonnaise to deal with). It turns out, however, that we have another use for it; Neil is really bothered by the texture of hard-boiled eggs. But not, for some reason, by the texture of tofu. So we tried this recipe and it was actually really good. I just made it again today and thought I'd post it. It would also be excellent with eggs instead of tofu.

Better Than Egg Salad

1/4 cup chopped celery
2 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup reduced-fat mayo
2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 package (12.3 oz) silken firm tofu, cubed
8 slices whole wheat bread
4 lettuce leaves

In a small bowl, combine the first eight ingredients. Gently stir in tofu. Spread over four slices of bread; top with lettuce and remaining bread. (I love how these instructions assume that you’ve never assembled a sandwich before.)

Chubby McChubbersons

I mentioned in my first post on this blog that I am trying to lose weight. There is a differences between trying to lose weight and wanting to lose weight, and I have definitely been doing more of the latter.

Fear not, kind reader, I have no intention of making this a blog about weight loss. It takes a special blogger (like Wendy McClure, for example) to make such a thing interesting. But I do want to discuss the tension I feel between being a foodie and trying to lose weight.

When I was in my early 20s I gained about 30 pounds, and in 2003 I lost it with the help of Weight Watchers. It was actually astoundingly easy. Since then, as I've watched the weight creep back on, I have tried WW several more times, and I wasn't able to stick with it. The reasons that WW worked so well the first time:

1. I was single and didn't really have much of a social life, so I didn't go out to eat that often.
2. I was living in Shelbyville, so for the most part it was at least a 30 minute drive to get to my favorite restaurants.
3. I didn't really know how to cook and was, for some reason, content to eat a LOT of Lean Cuisine.
4. I had not yet realized my profound love of beer.

In 2004 I started dating a man who introduced me to the sublime pleasures of meals made up of bread, cheese, and wine. Consumed in bed. We ate avocados by themselves and artichokes dipped in butter. It was decadent and wonderful. Wine-soaked evenings turned into hangovers that were treated with greasy Waffle House breakfasts the following morning. Not surprisingly, I started gaining weight again.

At the end of 2004 I met Neil, who is certainly my culinary soulmate (aside from his bizarre dislike of biscuits and gravy). Neil is the love of my life and there are many wonderful things about him and our relationship that are outside the realm of this blog, but one of the single most important effects he's had on my life is that he taught me to like beer. And I actually have a whole other post brewing (haha) about beer and my journey toward it and my love of it, but suffice it to say for now that we drink a LOT of it. We drink beer the way many people drink soda (or, for that matter, water). We actually discussed getting an engagement Kegerator instead of an engagement ring when the time comes. It's like that.

So now here I sit, wearing jeans that I bought in August that are already squishing my middle in uncomfortable ways. Something needs to happen here, I'm just not sure what. Except I actually know exactly what to do: eat better (not even necessarily less) and exercise more. Or, as Michael Pollan says, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." But my foodie nature (is that like Buddha nature?) wants to eat everything, including Alice Waters soufflés that contain 29.5 grams of fat per serving. Last night we went to Bourbon's Bistro where we split a "Lobster and Fresh Goat Cheese Tart with Roasted Leeks and Peppers, topped with Grilled Red Onion and a Garlic, Saffron and Tomato Cream Sauce" and then I had "Bacon Wrapped Diver Scallops served with a Lavender Asian Pear Coulis and drizzled with a Balsamic Reduction, served with Sweet Onion Grits and sauteed Patty Pan Squash." We also split a bottle of pinot gris and a piece of cheesecake. Such meals bring me tremendous pleasure. I don't want to have to feel guilty about eating them.

Of course, this flabulous belly of mine is not the result of eating such meals; we can rarely afford to do so. It's the result of too many meals at home (which are actually often restaurant carry-out) that are centered around convenience. I've got to start paying more attention to what I eat and planning my meals and going to the grocery store regularly. If we're eating lean meats and veggies for dinner most nights it won't matter if I want to make a fatty soufflé for Sunday breakfast once in a while.

Somehow I just have to get it through my head that foodie-ness and weight loss are not incompatible. I just need to base my eating on cooking wholesome foods rather than on eating everything that sounds good. We will see how this goes.

Julie & Julia

The full title of this book is Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job, and Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living. You might think that a book that needs both a subtitle and a sub-subtitle needs a lot of explanation, but it doesn't, not really. Julie Powell set out to cook all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking within a year. And she blogged about it. And she got a little famous from it and got a book deal. This is the book.

I finished reading this book several days ago and I put off writing about it because I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it. It wasn't quite what I expected, but I'm not sure I can exactly put my finger on how.

Let's start with the obvious criticism. Before she started her blog, Julie Powell was not a writer. It shows. The writing isn't bad by any means, but it's sometimes hard to follow, and at times I got the sense that she was trying a little too hard to be clever. I was also vaguely put off by all the potshots she takes at Republicans; lord knows I'm a bleeding heart liberal, but I find that sort of thing irritating when it doesn't really have anything to do with the story.

Anyway. Julie started the project as she approached her 30th birthday and found herself living in New York City, being told by doctors that she'd better hurry up and get pregnant if she wanted any shot at having kids, and working temp jobs with no clear direction in her life. She started the Julie/Julia Project on a whim, but it quickly took over her existence. She found herself scouring the city for obscure ingredients, cutting up live lobsters, and dining on brains. The surreality of constantly cooking and eating such foods was compounded when the media started paying attention. She wrote about all of it for her fiercely loyal blog audience. The book recounts the whole thing; the cooking, the blogging, and the rise to (moderate) fame. It really is a fun, quick, and interesting read.

I think the thing that caught me off guard about this book is that Julie is bitter, misanthropic, and neurotic. I expected the story to be more beautiful, not laced with curse words and sexual innuendo. This didn't bother me, of course; I love curse words and sexual innuendo! It just wasn't what I expected. And I felt like the cover was misleading; it seems so gentle! Julie's story is anything but; she is not a happy person, and the recipes in MtAoFC are a source of torment at least as often as they are a pleasurable creative outlet.

Still, crankiness aside, it is impossible not to like Julie in the end. It might be stereotypically Generation X, but I can't say that late-20s ennui is something I haven't experienced. Julie attacks it head-on and in the least likely way. She's dark and funny but in the end, also deeply reverent. "I have no claim over the woman at all," Julie writes upon Julia's death, "unless it’s the claim those who have
nearly drowned have over the person who pulled them out of the ocean." That we get to read about this rescue is a pretty great thing.

Schlafly Beer Tasting at Keg Liquors

Keg Liquors in Clarksville is holding a tasting of Schlafly beers on Jan 31, 5:00-8:00 pm. I've really liked what I've had from Schlafly, so I'm definitely going to try to make it to this.

Keg Liquors
617 East Lewis and Clark Parkway
Clarksville, IN
812-283-3988

Wine Market Wine & Cheese Tastings

Neil informs me that the Wine Market holds wine and cheese tastings the second Wednesday of every month. This month, on Jan 9, the theme is "Fireplace Wines." 4:30-6:30 pm.

The Wine Market
1200 Bardstown Road
502 451-7446

White Castle

"You have to blog about this," says Neil. It's a little after 5:00 and we are sitting in the parking lot of a White Castle on Dixie Highway, staring at the J&J Boat and Trailer Supply across the street and sharing a Sack of 10 and an order of onion rings. We are washing it all down with enough Big Red to fill a small hot tub.

"Oh no!" I say. What kind of self-respecting food blogger admits that she eats at White Castle? Ever?

"Not just about eating here," Neil says, "but a meditation on why those of us who really like food also like junk."

I think about this for a few minutes, watching the clouds roll across the sky behind J&J and munching my little cheeseburgers. I'm suddenly shocked at my initial reaction. I am, after all, no food snob. Being a foodie means being in love with food, food of all sorts. Sometimes it means high-end restaurants and Alice Waters cookbooks, but sometimes it means corn dogs at the state fair and bags of Oreos. And sometimes, apparently, White Castle. So what am I so ashamed of?

Part of the problem, I suppose, is that fast food really goes against a lot of what I think food should be. It's processed to death. It's full of nasty stuff. Most of it contains more fat and more calories than anyone has any business eating. I have problems with meat to begin with, and that used in fast food is the worst of the worst. I feel bad, sometimes physically always spiritually, ever time I eat it. So I usually don't.

Why, then, did I call out "Ooooh, White Castle!" as we drove up Dixie Highway? We had just hiked two miles at Tioga Falls. Otis had gone with us and was conked out in the back seat. We were muddy and relaxed in the way that comes after physical exertion, our bodies loose with the unseasonable warmth of the day. We were feeling...

Uh...

As I write this I am sitting at the kitchen table. I just looked up at Neil and said, "Why did we go to White Castle?"

"Because it was there? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time?"

"But why?"

"For those first two burgers. No, the first burger."

It's true. The first burger was delicious. Not because the ingredients were good, of course. I think it was more the familiarity of it. The same was true of that first sip of Big Red; I was immediately transported back to the Friday nights of my childhood, eating dinner at White Castle with my mom before our weekly trip to Kroger. (The onion rings were, objectively, pretty good.)

Between us we could have had two cheeseburgers, an order of onion rings, and a small Big Red and gotten everything we needed from this meal.

Perhaps this is why I felt ashamed to blog about White Castle. Because it speaks of gluttony, but a worse kind of gluttony than that expressed by, say, eating a whole loaf of French bread with olive oil. Because we didn't really enjoy it, not most of it, and we knew that we wouldn't the moment we turned into the drive-thru. Fast food is not about enjoying food, it's about stuffing yourself cheaply and quickly. If you stop to think about it, if you try to savor it, if you attempt to enjoy the play of strange beef and onions and American cheese across your tongue, well... it's just better if you don't.

These are just my tastes, of course, and I imagine that there are plenty of people who might disagree with me. People enjoy what they enjoy and that's fine. But I think we would all do well to stop and think about what we're eating and why. How does it make us feel? Guilty? Vaguely disgusted? Or ebullient and joyous? I prefer joyful food.

Wine Tasting at Gemelli

Gemelli Wine and Spirits holds monthly wine tastings, each focusing on a specific kind of wine. I've been to a couple of these and had a great time. The folks at Gemelli are both knowledgeable and entirely unsnobby; I've heard them answer some truly basic wine questions without the least bit of attitude. For this I love them. These really are tastings for people who want to learn more about wine, not for people who want to stand around feeling self-congratulatory about how much they already know.

The next tasting, which focuses on Zinfandel, is Thursday, Jan 24, 6:30-7:30. The class is limited to 16 people and costs $15 per person. Reserve your spot by calling 895-1400.

Gemelli Wine and Spirits
3626 Brownsboro Road

Oooooh, Mojito

My mother called this morning and asked if I wanted to meet her at the optometrist to help her pick out new frames. I would have done it anyway because I love my mommy, but the fact that she offered to buy me lunch didn't hurt. I scrambled out of my pajamas (and into some clothes) and headed out to Springhurst which, for you non-Louisvillians, is an explosion of shopping centers, tract housing, and traffic. (When I lived nearby in the 1980s it was nothing but farmland, and I now find the whole area somewhat distasteful. But I will spare you my urban planning rant.)

Mom picked out some stylish new frames and then it was time for lunch. A few nearby chain restaurants (Rafferty's, Cheddars) were mentioned, but in my never-ending proselytizing about local restaurants, I suggested Mojito. Mom had never been there and agreed to try it. So off we went to Holiday Manor.

Although Mojito has sandwiches and such, the tapas are what it's really all about, and we decided to split four of them. Our choices:

Ensalada Mediterranea: lettuce, Marcona almonds, pine nuts, shaved fig bread, feta cheese, olives, grapes, raisins, cucumbers with a muscatel dressing

Boniato Frito: sweet potato fries served with smoked honey

Picadillo Empanadas: Beef with spices and olives in a tender crust

Queso Fundido: Melted cheese mixed with chorizo and (I think) Serrano ham, served with bread

We ended the meal with the goat cheese flan and two Cuban coffees.

My mom is a pretty open-minded diner and Mojito is very good, so I wasn't surprised that she liked it. I was pleased and amused by her reaction, though. With her first taste of the sweet potato fries and smoked honey she declared that she was in heaven. She said that the flan was the best she'd ever eaten. At the end of the meal she said that Mojito was her new favorite restaurant. That's some pretty strong praise!

It is a sad fact that Mojito is located in a part of town that I rarely have reason to visit. I'm quite spoiled living near the Highlands and Frankfort Ave, the two major food districts in Louisville. But Mojito is definitely worth the trek out to the East End. I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to eat there more often, because it really is outstanding. The food was delicious and beautifully presented, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the friendly and attentive service. We hadn't quite planned on spending $50 for lunch, but it was worth every penny. I can't wait to go back.

An Alice Waters New Year

You know how sometimes you make love to your partner and it's just unbelievably good, and then a few hours later you do it again and it's even better, and you feel giddy and kind of amazed at yourself and your partner? Yesterday was like that, but with food.

We woke up around 11:00 with the mildest of New Year's Day hangovers and set out to fix breakfast/brunch. I was going to make scrambled eggs, as I usually do on lazy mornings (usually Sundays) when we have nothing to do but eat and relax. I really love making scrambled eggs because they're easy and so good. I just throw in whatever's handy - garlic, onion, roasted red peppers, spinach, smoked salmon, etc - and top them with cheese. I almost went this route yesterday but then decided to get ambitious.

A few months ago I bought The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. I could - and should - write an entire entry about her and this book. The gist of it, as the title suggests, is that if you use high quality ingredients (especially seasonal, locally-grown produce) you don't have to do much at all to create delicious meals. For a person like me who is just starting to really learn to cook, it is a fantastic primer. Anyway, so far the only thing I had made from this book was focaccia, which turned out pretty well, though this is due more to the fact that I managed to pretty successfully replicate the discontinued anisa focaccia from Ramsi's than anything else. Anyway. I thought it would be fun to cook something from the book for breakfast (which was quickly turning into brunch). What would Alice Waters have me do with eggs? How about a soufflé? I had never made a soufflé before and the idea of cooking something that was supposed to get light and fluffy but may very well fail to do so was a little intimidating. But one of my informal New Year's resolutions was to cook more, so I decided to go for it. Neil and I also decided to use her recipe for fried potatoes, which was incredibly simple: cut them into chunks, boil them, fry them, season them with salt.

The soufflé recipe called for goat cheese, but we decided to use Boursin instead, having just bought a couple of packages of it because it was on sale. I started cooking. I created my first roux, then my first béchamel. I marveled at how the texture changed as I added the milk. In went the cheese, then the egg yolks. I beat the egg whites until stiff peaks formed and folded them in. Then I poured it all into a baking dish and popped it in the oven.

This whole undertaking was complicated by the fact that our oven has been running hotter than it's supposed to. We bought an oven thermometer and at first it seemed to be off by about 25°. We adjusted it accordingly but the temperature fluctuated wildly. This did not bode well for my delicate soufflé.

While that was baking Neil prepared the potatoes.

We take cooking very seriously.

We couldn't figure out why they weren't browning as they were supposed to until I realized that while we had halved the amount of potatoes (the original recipe made 4 servings), I had absently told Neil to use the full amount of oil. Oops. He poured off the excess and after spending some time on a paper towel-covered plate before serving, they were fine.

Finally, it was time for the soufflé. I pulled it from the oven and it immediately began to deflate. It didn't matter, though. It was still beautiful. I inelegantly got it onto our plates with a spatula, Neil added the potatoes, and we sliced a red grapefruit in half. We had planned to make mimosas with a bottle of Toad Hollow Amplexus, but in the end we decided that we didn't want to use such a decent bottle of wine for that purpose, so we drank it by itself.

The soufflé, though inglorious on the plate, was amazing. Neil and I looked at each other in disbelief as we ate, unsure of how something so good could have come out of our own kitchen. The creamy, herby flavor of the Boursin subtly permeated the silky texture of the eggs. The potatoes were just barely browned and tasted of olive oil; they were not as they had been intended, but were delicious anyway. The wine was dry and crisp. We were both truly giddy during and after this meal (the wine surely helped with that). We decided that such a wonderful brunch had to be followed with an equally impressive dinner. Back to The Art of Simple Food we turned.

The focaccia recipe that I had made once before could also be used for pizza crust, so we decided to have pizza and Caesar salad. Among the combinations of toppings that Alice Waters suggested was gorgonzola, figs, and rosemary, and we both thought that sounded great. I set to work making the dough for the crust, and while it was rising we went shopping. At Barnes & Noble I bought Julie & Julia, a book by a woman (Julie Powell) who cooked every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year's time. I'm about halfway through it and I'll surely blog about it when I'm done. Anyway, we returned home to find that my dough had risen impressively. I split it in two, put half in the freezer, and prepared the remainder to become pizza.

Meanwhile, Neil was busy with the salad. I have to tell you that we eat the bagged Dole Caesar salad kits all the time. That is, in fact, the only sort of Caesar salad that has been consumed in this house. Alice Waters, of course, was having none of that. First we cut up some country-style bread, tossed it in olive oil, and baked it to make croutons. Never mind the salad; I could have eaten them all fresh out of the oven. Neil washed our head of organic romaine and, as instructed, dried it in small batches with the salad spinner. When it was all washed and dried we rolled it in a clean towel and put in the fridge to await dinnertime. Then we made the dressing: crushed garlic, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil, anchovies, egg yolk, black pepper, and Parmesan cheese. "This is not like any Caesar dressing I've ever seen," I said. But truly, what did I know of Caesar dressing besides that which came out of a plastic envelope? I remained hopeful.

When the dough had gone through its requisite periods of rising and resting, I flattened it, brushed on some olive oil, and sprinkled it with gorgonzola. Neil had soaked the dried figs in water and then cut them in half; they went on next. Then we pulled the leaves off a couple sprigs of fresh rosemary and added more cheese. We baked it for 10 minutes, keeping a careful eye on it because of our wonky oven. While it was baking we tossed the romaine with the salad dressing.

The pizza was incredible. The funk of the gorgonzola, the sweetness of the figs, and the pine-like flavor of the rosemary combined beautifully. The crust was perfect; thin but not flat, crispy on the outside but soft within. I declared the pizza so good that I almost didn't want to eat it; I didn't want it to be gone.


The salad, too, was wonderful, and not like the Caesar salad that I am used to. The garlic gave the dressing a surprising bite, but it was tempered by the cheese and the croutons. The romaine was fresh and crisp quite unlike our usual bagged salad.

With this meal we had a bottle of Bloom Gewutztraminer, which was just sweet enough and complimented the food quite well.

What a wonderful day. A food blog isn't necessarily the place to go into this, but for the past decade or so I have battled with myself over my writing. I used to think of myself as a writer and I did quite a lot of it. It was an important part of my identity, and it was That Thing that I did that made me lose track of time, made me feel like I was merely a vessel through which some greater force was doing the work. Writers - and people who have other sorts of passions - know what I mean. It's the thing that makes the rest of world drop away. Writing, for a variety of reasons, usually isn't like that for me anymore. But yesterday, despite my unfamiliarity with some of the mechanics of the process, cooking made me feel that way. And that was quite a revelation.

For lunch today we had leftover pizza and salad. Tonight we're fixing one more Alice Waters recipe, an onion panade, along with more salad. Tomorrow it's back to the real world of work and busy-ness and, for the most part, meals that don't require a couple of hours of preparation. But this has certainly been amazing two days of food, and I hope I bring at least a little bit of this feeling with me throughout the rest of the year.