One storm was brewing in the west, and another was brewing between the three contenders in the Brooklyn Brunch Showdown. “Please,” one contender whispered to me off the record, “bring on these brunch amateurs.” But despite some brash displays of confidence, it was shaping up as a Grub Match far too close for anyone to call. In this Olympic season of eating, would Peaches, Beast or Café Luluc take home the gold? We were about to find out. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Food for the Sporting Life
The people earnestly contemplating the wall of power bars at the grocery store used to make me roll my eyes. What’s the point, anyway? A meal should not come in the form of a bar, and I was skeptical of how they were really any different than taking a handful of vitamins. But now that I’m training for a marathon next fall, I’ve had to change my tune. A little.
I have come to accept the fact that runners really do need a burst of carbohydrates to keep their muscles limber and electrolytes to keep them from retching. If I don’t get these things within thirty minutes of finishing a run, I’ll be limping up and down the subway steps the next day like a three-legged turtle. And sometimes a proper meal is too far away to be practical. So here are some of the highlights of my reluctant foray into power foods.
Power Bar: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip flavor, Carbohydrates: 42g, Protein: 16g, Calories: 240
Like Kleenex or Xerox, this was the bar that gave its name to a whole category of products, so it seemed like a good place to start. The taste and texture were pleasing, but man, was there a lot of it. Continue reading
Beers to That! The Drink to Clink
One happy day my fridge looked like this!
Sitting on the deck, my knuckles scraped, shins bruised, and hair everywhere, the bottle of beer in my hands could have been a flute of Dom Perignon. But it wasn’t; it was better. It was, in fact, an IPA Maximus from Lagunitas, because that is what you drink after a day of moving everything you own and everything your Significant Other owns across town in 90-degree weather. You don’t drink champagne after that.
You don’t drink champagne after your kickball team won its first game ever and you don’t drink it when you’ve lost every one. You don’t drink bubbly after working out in your garden all afternoon. You don’t fall onto the couch after an exhausting day at work and take a long draw from a bottle of champagne. That’s ridiculous, right? But champagne remains known as the beverage of celebrations. I’d like to challenge that assumption.
Beer has a reputation for being the proud drink of the common man, and I feel there’s nothing wrong with that characterization. But I’d like to suggest that beer is also, more than any other beverage, the drink America celebrates with. From the “Champagne of Beers” all the way up to your finest Belgian Double, beer is the drink to clink for every accomplishment, small or large. Because some days, just getting through the last hour of work and making it home to sit in pajamas and eat mac and cheese out of the pan is as much an achievement as getting married or winning the lottery. Beer is everybody’s drink for everyday victories.
When Ben got up off the deck and offered to bring me another IPA, I accepted eagerly, knowing we still had a lot of moving and organizing to do, being relieved to have the big part of the move complete, and feeling so happy to be right there, right then, with that beer.
Eric’s Grub Match Pick, Beast
Chicken = Grub Match secret weapon
Our final contender in the Brooklyn Brunch Showdown is smooth operator and chicken whisperer, Eric Lidman. He explained to us the beauty of potato salad and why he (and his dog) consider Beast in Prospect Heights a true neighborhood gem. Here’s more from Eric:
You’re headed to a deserted island to live on grass and coconut milk–what’s your last meal before you go? Full breakfast—eggs, bacon, cheese, fresh bread with butter and preserves, cheese, fruit, yogurt, cheese … breakfast, it’s not just for, um, breakfast anymore.
You’ve come into uncountable gobs of money—who do you hire as your personal chef? Batali, if I had to choose…though I’d resurrect Julia Child, if at all possible…
What’s the single most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten? Dinner, October 2011, Adour at the St. Regis Hotel … lobster bisque, beef cap bordelaise with bone marrow, poached rhubarb with yogurt cream and strawberries, all washed down with a 1964 French cabernet …I almost passed out when I finished.
Have you ever worked at a restaurant? Burger King, for 2 shifts. I was fired for inadvertently closing the burger steamer lid on my supervisor’s hand. Continue reading
Summer Cocktail Spectacular
Temperatures are once again rising like a flock of seagulls on the wing. It’s important to hydrate…and why not throw in a little gin while you’re at it? We’re calling on all you gifted mixologists out there to cool our sweaty brows.
Send your signature summer cocktail recipes to submission@pitchknives.com. We’ll try the ones we like best and rate them according to taste, creativity and capacity to refresh.
It’s only right that the winners receive a token of our gratitude. What will it be? An artful swizzle stick? A crocheted beer coozie? A hand-mixed glass of Shannon’s signature cocktail, the Bee’s Knees? You’ll just have to win to find out.
So get to it! Shake, stir, and please, please chill. The address for entries is, one more time, submissions@pitchknives.com.
Concrete Jungle: The Kids, Various Neighbors, Garretta’s Laugh, & a Hundred-Plus Sunflowers in a Hurricane of Enthusiasm
Two Sundays back Shannon and I followed through on an idea I cooked up last winter. We would start seeds indoors, organize a children’s morning in our community garden across the street, and lead a hand’s-on, dirt-on-the-knees lesson in, well, all things Plant.
So I started some sunflowers inside, staggered the timing so we had one about six inches tall with its new yellow face and five just green, half-inch sprouts with plump leaves. We armed ourselves with about a hundred seeds of sunflowers of various heights and colors, two boxes of crayons, and a big bottle of tangerine orange juice.
We had, as we explained to Garretta, our neighbor and grandmother of our first four participants, an educational program. The explanatory exchange went something like this:
Jason & Shannon: Okay, kids, let’s talk a little about plants for a—
Garretta: You four get on over to that plot and start pulling those weeds!
(Kids shoot from the picnic bench like bees are at their butts.)
Jason & Shannon: Well, first let’s talk about roots. See—
Garretta: Pull those weeds because we aren’t gonna be here all day; we have to go to that park to play in the water.
Jason & Shannon: Damn, Garretta, we have an educational program planned here!
Garretta: Ha-ha-ha-ha….. Continue reading
Dead Man Gnawing: Man Made Maize and the Gods Made Man (3,700 B.C.)
Writing about genetically modified food last week got me thinking about Humanity’s history of mutating the plant world to its gastro-nutritional whim. It is those directed mutations that created civilization itself. For instance:
This Mayan maize god was, among many diverse roles, the partron of scribes.
In the beginning, the gods of the Maya created humans out of mud. But the mud men squinted at the world, and could not take it in. They could not move to chase game or to seek shelter, and their thoughts were clogged. The rains washed them away.
The gods then made humans out of wood. These men could speak and see and move. On all fours, they climbed through the jungle canopies and rambled over the valleys, but they failed to honor the gods as the gods saw fit. Perhaps their taste of freedom was too complete. Perhaps they razed the jungles where their flesh was found. The gods thus destroyed them.
And so the gods tried a third time. They made Man out of maize. And this Man was in harmony. Continue reading
Casey’s Grub Match Pick, Café Luluc
Cute baby = Grub Match secret weapon
This week’s pick for the Brooklyn Brunch Battle comes from sports development exec, supermom and peanut butter aficionado Casey Romany. Café Luluc, in Carroll Gardens, won her heart with its “simple, reliable deliciousness.” Here’s more from Casey on how one brunches in style, even with a baby on board.
Have you ever worked at a restaurant? Three food service experiences. I worked at my uncle’s fish store on Friday’s when I was 15 selling fish fry. My family did not appreciate the incredible fish stank that lingered after I got home. When I was in high school I worked at Brueggers Bagels; I will love bagels forever. And in college I was a waitress at an Irish pub, but I barely made enough tips to cover my parking expenses.
Do you have any food pet peeves? When a restaurant does not have decaf coffee…there are a few Brooklyn Brunch spots out there that have no love for the caffeine free!
Lunch at the End of the Line: Making Frankie and Albert Proud
I’d heard Morris Park, near the end of the Eastchester-Dyre 5 line, was sometimes called the Little Italy of the Bronx. Given that, there were certain things I expected to find there (pizzerias, Italian bakeries, cigar shops with young Sinatra’s mug shot blown up and displayed prominently), and I was not disappointed. When I spoke to a couple of Morris Park natives, they gave me some tips about the longstanding neighborhood favorites like Patricia’s (a classy Italian joint famous for its Spaghetti à la Frank Sinatra), Emilio’s (a pizza place that they assured me was “cheap but really good”), and Hawaii Sea (an Asian fusion restaurant where one of them had worked as a busboy when he was sixteen).
What I hadn’t anticipated was that the entire eastern side of the neighborhood would feel like an urban university campus because it was home to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Students are notoriously good at ferreting out good and inexpensive lunch spots, so I did some asking around. A young man of imposing size and thoughtful sincerity told me that “everybody” went to the pizza place named Coals. Several others had mentioned the same place, and when I walked past, the fragrant promise of copious amounts of garlic coaxed me inside.
This, perhaps, is a good time to address the problem of pizza snobbery that is rampant in New York. Continue reading
Community News: Chief Justice Roberts on Your Fruits and Veggies
The hubbub over Chief Justice John Roberts deciding in favor of the Affordable Care Act—specifically, the way he found it constitutional on the basis of taxation rather than the power of the federal government to regulate commerce—got me thinking about our gardens and dinners. See, a shocking amount of American law that I think essential to an equitable society rests on the rather narrow Constitutional text “The Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce.” A significant aspect of the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for instance, depended on the Court’s determination that the Commerce Clause gave the feds the power to regulate businesses that served mostly interstate travelers. Thus motels and restaurants across America could not discriminate against black Americans. Equality through Commerce. Crazy, right?
Okay, so what does this have to do with food? Well, the House is currently considering the next Agricultural Appropriations bill, which happens to contain a rider, known as “the Monsanto rider,” that has received, curiously, little to no coverage in the national press. This rider requires that the Secretary of Agriculture grant a farmer or industrial agri-giant a permit to plant genetically engineered crops (GMO), even if a federal court has ordered the planting halted for safety or environmental impact studies. You can read it here.
Monsanto, DuPont, etc., only have to ask, and every ruling by a federal court or enforcement of current consumer protection laws on the part of the White House or a federal regulatory agency is overridden and they can plant whatever crop they chose. Even state congresses become powerless: if they try to create local or state laws to protect eaters and farmers, they are in violation of federal law, a federal law that is written to override all other pertinent federal laws. Continue reading