Election Diet!

"Deadlock" By David Maitland

Elitist Sloppy Joes with Right Wings…

Right Wings

Raspberry Mary mother of jams, finally it will be over tomorrow, less that 24 hours to the finish line. And if you are in the mood to celebrate or comfort yourself there is always food. Seriouseats, ran an article on election food for a broad spectrum of emotions. It’s better than just wonder bread or beef jerky or insert <something that is healthy but tastes awful>, it’s food you can eat.

Mother-of-All Boat Sushi Places

This is a YO! Sushi restaurant in London. BTW, if you are interested they have one in Terminal 3 of Heathrow Airport, just in case you are traveling and find yourself there.

Crawly, Squiggly & Cute

I hate worms, especially caterpillars as they tend to be weird even by worm standards. But this Japanese Tea commercial is cute as hell.

Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.seriouseats.com posted with vodpod

Junk food of Champions

Bacon, sweet peppers – yellow, orange & red, cream cheese, tabasco.
Cut the peppers in half, fill with cheese, wrap with half a bacon slice (cut horizontally), bake at 375 degrees for 12 mins. Drizzle with Tabasco and serve with beer. Oh did I mention, I was supposed to have bought jalapeño peppers and goofed it up by buying sweet peppers, so had to salvage it with some Tabasco. The better alternative to this is to just use jalapeños, cream cheese and bacon. Simple and heart clogging, wholesome junk food!

The Indigenous, The Pretentious, The Aphrodisiacs

I was excited when I began reading Wired’s piece on strange canned foods. But I have to tell you, some of them are not all that strange, in fact I’d like to taste a few, one I have already tasted.

We live in a time when chicken feet, pig ears or Cordyceps Sinensis (aka Chinese caterpillar fungus) are no more culinary shockers, so I was disappointed that Wired had not include some of the more weirder stuff. In all fairness, I’d like to bring to light Mopani worms, snail eggs, gold & pearl lollipops. While Mopani worms are fairly common in Southern Africa, snail eggs common in Europe, the gold and pearl lollipops are just pretentious aphrodisiacs.

I know we are running out of reasons to charge extra for a cup of tea, but “Monkey picked tea“? Turns out monkeys were trained to climb steep mountains and pick wild tea from there. This product comes from China at about $40 for 57g and if any of you gets to brew this monkey tea, I am not saying invite me, but leave a note on how you liked it. Or you could just invite me!

Mario Unclogged: Christmas Day

I had no idea the section reserved for Mario Batali in the Serious Eats website was called “Mario Unclogged” as in he is not wearing his clogs. Glad they put a picture of those little orange clogs, it’d have never struck me otherwise.

What’s the coolest sounding thing you can’t eat?

My Answer: Amanita. It’s a genus of killer mushrooms, it eats away your liver and no antidote is available. This genus consists of many edible varieties but the risk is definitely not worth the reward. Given that 95% of all the mushroom poisoning cases reported point their fingers at Amanita and at least 50% of these cases were caused by accidentally or ignorantly consuming the Death Cap aka “the world’s most dangerous mushroom”. The fun part is that death caps are relatively rare in most parts of the US, but they are fairly common in the San Francisco bay area. Time to go mushroom hunting, Ki ready?

Saturday morning Farmers’ Market

Saturday morning was spent at the Farmers’ Market looking, scrutinizing, sampling, talking & laughing. The spoils of the day ranged from maitake mushrooms, mixed germinated beans, raw feta cheese to great tasting free range, pasture raised eggs from Eatwell Farms. I learnt that raw feta cheese can be preserved by storing them in brine or whey, not that I am going to do it, but it’s good to know.

The mixed germinated beans were fun, I cooked it with my nutty flavored organic rice with red wine vinegar – very simple and healthy. I paired this with some saucy maitake. I am trying to break away from letting spices overpower the food which usually is the case with Indian, Thai or Mexican food and consequently killing the natural flavor of vegetables or meat. My new style is to use very few ingredients, with techniques like boiling, steaming, baking & broiling. So if basic ingredients is all I’ve got then I’d better go for the best eggs, asparagus, carrots, cheese you name it.

DestapaBanana

This is so sweet. DestapaBanana is a new invention which lets you sort of hollow out a banana while keeping the peel, you may then fill it with cream or in this case chocolate I think. “The creator of DestapaBanana comments: “The message is clear, DestapaBanana values and increases the current sales volumes, highlights bananas as a new type of desert and open the doors to more businesses and consumers.””

Paula Deen has offered to then wrap the banana in bacon and flash fry it, which you can then dip in a butter cream sauce for an untimely death ultimate experience – okay I totally made this one up, but I won’t be surprised if she did.