Author Archives: Jason

Hidden Valley Shakin in its Pleather Boots: Jay’s Garlic-Dill 5 Minute Salad Dressing Recipe

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I’ve never been much for creamy salad dressings.  As revelator(ily) awesome as Cool Ranch Doritos were upon their debut in middle school, the taste of their dressing counterpart has always seemed to me merely gloppy, as if the gloop factor is the primary taste as well as texture.  Blue cheese dressing is yummy because blue cheese is yummy, but as an adult I’ve generally stayed away because of the fat and the general feeling that Hidden Valley and its mega cousins merely dump some cheese chunks in a vat of mayo and call it a day.  I’d rather gnaw on a hunk of good blue cheese when I’m in the kitchen alone.

But my creamy salad dressing, now that’s the cat’s pajamas.

I’ll see your cream factor and raise it a fistful of taste complexity and a hint of heat.

My dressing will erase your student debt, enliven your sex life, and talk your way out of a speeding ticket.

It’ll clock Wayne LaPierre in the kisser and cause Eric Cantor to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

It will also, on a regular night when you’re wiped from work, provide in 5-minutes prep time a vastly superior alternative to the bottled dressing you’ve got in the fridge and a nice change of pace from the oil-&-balsamic routine. Continue reading →

Sunday Beer Ramble: Biscotti Break Stout, AC/DC, and the Legacy of Good Chief Powhatan

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I am currently drinking something called Evil Twin Imperial Biscotti Break at our local after writing Christmas Thank You Notes to family, a habit that I have contentedly allowed to fall to the wayside along with a raft of other Proper Southern Manners, but which I have now had cause to take back up after marrying Shannon, a Midwesterner.

Midwestern Manners are not all that different from Southern Manners, I now realize.  They share an emphasis on maintaining the propriety of presentation even, perhaps especially, if the meat & potatoes of a situation, interaction, etc. is spoiled and everyone would truly be happiest if that situation, interaction, etc. were just pulled out of the crisper, bagged up, and tossed in the can.  Midwestern Manners, however, are far more stubborn.  Midwesterners are going to send their Christmas Thank You Notes even if the cow has died and the tobacco crop had caught worms and the four youngest caught chills on the prairie and died in January but couldn’t be buried until the land thawed in March. Continue reading →

Dead Man Gnawing: The Vitis vine, César Chávez, and the Winning Ayatollah Khamenei (6,000 B.C. – present)

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Grapes.  They are the fruiting bodies of the genus Vitis vine, have been cultivated for food and libation since at least 6,000 B.C., are frustratingly expensive at the grocery store, and are generally recognized as being wicked yummy.

(Did you know that Syrah is thought to be “Syrah” because in the Persian city of Shiraz, the noted A+ wine producer of the 9th Century Middle East, the origin of the Bahá’í religion, and the home of that religion’s founder, which was demolished and paved over in ’79?  Nor did I.  But then I wandered down the Wikipedia Hole.)

So grapes; yes, yummy, expensive, and that takes us to Mister César Chávez.  Now I recall Chávez from elementary school posters that celebrated the grand and peacefully dissenting rainbow that is America, and I suppose that’s where I learned he organized migrant farm workers.  But that’s about all I knew.  Barack Obama, however, declared 105 acres of the Tehachapi Mountains in California a National Monument in October, and that sent me to the aforementioned Wiki Hole. Continue reading →

Salty Sweet Winter Squash & Apples

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I love winter squash.  Summer squashes like zucchini wear me out pretty quick, but winter squashes have stamina.  They’re nutty, buttery, have heft.  They’re full of all the B vitamins and omega 3s and fiber.  They’re a good source of folate.  I don’t know what folate does, but I trust that it’s good, and I’m okay with just eating winter squash and trusting it’ll hold down the folate fort for me.

I found a winter squash recipe at the Union Square farmers market last week.  As best as I can tell, the Natural Gourmet Institute next to the Flatiron Building is laying claim to it.  It rocks.  You should eat it.

You need squash, apples, thyme (fresh, if possible), honey, salt & pepper, butter.

First, get your squashes, let’s say 6 cups-worth or so.  That worked out to be 2 medium-to-small specimens for me.  You can use Acorn, Butternut, whatever is on hand, but you want them hard and you want them colorful.  Unless you are John Ford or Dorothea Lange, color is always good. Continue reading →

Brussels Sandwiches in a Pinch

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During the past few months, I’ve not gotten home from work until 9:00 on Mondays through Thursdays.  Shannon has been getting home at 8:00 Mondays and Wednesdays.

This has made cooking dinner a drag.

But in a pinch last week, Shannon hit on the idea of using left over Brussels Sprouts, which she’d cooked the night before with Dijon mustard, in a sandwich.

Genius.

Ours used the mustard Brussels, cherry tomatoes, and cheddar cheese melted and pressed between slices of farmers market bread.

I get the feeling you could stick these on any kind of bread with any kind of melted cheese and be good to go.

Community New Update: The House and Arsenic Rice

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This photo came up when I googled "super rice."

On October 8th, I wrote about the Consumer Reports investigation that revealed dangerous levels of arsenic in pretty much all the rice we eat.  In that post, I also mentioned that there are currently no federal laws governing how much arsenic is permissible in food.  The FDA regulates arsenic in bottled water, but that’s it.

Turns out three House Democrats (Conn. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, N.J. Rep. Frank Pallone, and N.Y. Rep. Nita Lowey) have introduced a bill—The R.I.C.E. Act—that would require the FDA set a legal limit for arsenic levels in rice.  Continue reading →

Curried Brussels Sprouts and a Vinegar Sop

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I surely ate Brussels Sprouts growing up, though I can’t seem to remember them.  They’ve merged in my mind with the steamed cabbage that accompanied corned beef and that I’d drown in red wine vinegar.

Your assumption might be that I turned the cabbage into a vinegar sop in order to liven up a limp, unseasoned vegetable, and you’d be right.  But I also came to view those limp leaves as an excuse to drink vinegar, something I will unabashedly admit I still do with some frequency.  I also clean our kitchen counters with vinegar, (though the white wine kind) and mix red wine vinegar and my buddy Reece’s honey as a tonic before bed.  Shannon’s grandmother’s best friend Naomi (pronounced, in rural Ohio, as “Nee-oh-ma”) drank it nightly without fail, and she made it into her early 90s without being prescribed a single medication.  It’s the wonder food!

I don’t eat much steamed cabbage any more, but I do rock the Brussels Sprouts, and sometimes with vinegar.  They’re a fantastic winter veggie that you should pick up at the market and prepare, possibly, in one of the following two ways.

Cooking and eating these very simple recipes will make you happy.

Brussels Sprouts with Curried Yogurt

Ingredients:   Plain, low-fat yogurt  /  Brussels Sprouts (the smaller ones are tastier)  /  One Onion  /  Garlic  /  Chili, either as pepper or power  /  Curry Powder  /  Salt

  1. Trim any woody ends off the Brussels and, if you’ve got those guys that are the size of those big, hollow gumballs, cut them in half.
  2. Steam them, either in some container built to be used with a pot on the stove or in a covered bowl in the microwave with a teaspoon of water poured in.  Remove them when they’re a bright, Easter-grass green.
  3. Meanwhile, slice the onion and sauté it in olive oil until it’s soft.
  4. Meanwhile2, mix half a cup of the yogurt with curry powder to taste. Continue reading →

Community News: Prop 37 and Our Lens on Life

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Prop 37, the California referendum that would have required the labeling of all food that includes genetically modified organisms, failed on Tuesday in a 47% to 53% split.  The initiative was riddled with holes indicative of the way the laws that regulate our daily lives today are bought and sold: exemptions for dairy products (feed the cows GM corn), exemptions for meat (feed them more!), exemptions for organic labels (wait, what?!)*

In spite of that disappointing reality, approval of the ballot would have brought to the fore a public discussion in a country dying of its own obesity and caloric emptiness.  We are what we eat, and we should consider our own physical well being a value beyond calculation in dollars.  Prop 37 lost because its opponents (spending $44 million, compared to $8 million) had the support of the rural counties where so much of our food is grown.  They convinced those communities that Prop 37 would cut into their profits, and for most folks those profits are already slim.  So those concerns are real for people, even if not for Monsanto, who donated $8 million themselves and would certainly not be harmed by a dip in profits.

And maybe 37 really would have cut into those profits.  Interviews with Industrial Agriculture companies indicate that those companies would switch to non-GM, and thus likely more expensive, ingredients rather than risk the market share loss anticipated from labeling. Continue reading →

Concrete Jungle: Easy-Peasy Seed Saving for Next Year

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I’ve been meaning to save my own tomato seeds for years.  It always felt like one of those things that was not merely a good idea but a full-on AWESOME, supremely Jay kind of thing to do.  But, probably for curious reasons that are worth me pondering further in solitude, I never found the time to learn do it.  It was proving to be a bit like learning to bend notes on the harmonica.

Except that bending notes on the harmonica is really tough, and saving your tomato seeds is shockingly easy.

All you do is…

  1. scoop seeds out of your tomatoes and cover them in a cup with maybe an inch of water,
  2. cover the opening of the cup with a paper napkin or towel to let them breath,
  3. remind yourself over the coming days that the mold soon growing across the water and your seed goop is perfectly normal,
  4. remove the seeds after a week or all of the seeds have sunk to the bottom of the glass on their own,
  5. wash them clean in running water,
  6. dry them on the counter, turning to make sure all sides dry,
  7. and pop them in the freezer wrapped safe in an envelope, stored for planting next Spring.

Like most vegetable (i.e. – fruit) seeds, tomato seeds are covered in a protective waxy coating.  In the wild (and this is all my personal deduction), this coat ensures they survive until they’re safely nestled in the ground.  Then the weather and soil wear the coating away so the seeds can sprout into new plants. Continue reading →

Cool Things I Learned from “The New York Times Magazine’s Food & Drink Issue”:

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Isn't this a nifty way to get them out? Yes, it is.

The original kitchen whisks were handfuls of twigs used in 17th Century Europe.  Two hundred years later, the Victorians began making them out of wire.

Al Michaels has “never eaten vegetables.”

Ital food, the food of the Rastafarian religion, is vegan except for the inclusion of fish.  And here I was thinking that the West Indian places in my neighborhood that sell “soy chunk stew” with roti were making concessions to the marketplace.  As if Rastas make concessions.

5,000 years ago much wine was made in qvevris, huge beeswax-lined clay pots that are buried in the ground.

California’s Central Valley is the world’s largest Class 1 plot of soil.  It’s the largest supplier of canned tomatoes in the world and grows most everything under the sun.  Three of its cities are among the five poorest in the nation, and the microscopic dung from industrial megadairies and feedlots and the exhaust trapped between the valley’s mountain ranges make the air taste like shit and rank amongst the most polluted in the country.  The place is going down it it doesn’t get checked.

A farmer named Paul Buxman is promoting his California Clean system, which unlike an organic classification system allows for chemical fertilizers but limits participants to farms less than 100 acres and which have active plans promoting healthy soil and local ecosystems.

We have no national food or farming policy that protects our farmland from depletion or promotes the public health.

The Times ran an illustrated telling of the Frederick the Great Potato Scheme I believed I had noted here (but was apparently mistaken, and which I will now have to address next week), adding the fact that folks to this day place potatoes on Old Fritz’s grave

There exists a photo of Bob Dole eating a hot dog in such a way that it sure looks like he’s giving a blowjob.

Because there's no better way to turn The Politician into The Common Man than making him eat in public.