Riddle Solved?

It seems that we may finally know the answer to the age-old question:  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  British scientists have determined that it was the chicken!  Read all about it here.

Menu Scolaire

From 2nd through 8th grade, I went to school in a rural community. Lunch there was the same for everybody: meat, starch, veg, and dessert with a glass of milk. Well, okay, not for everybody. John was lactose intolerant, so he got water. But everything else was the same. I remember hot turkey sandwiches with mashed potatoes. Ketchup-coated meatloaf with cheese-topped mashed potatoes. My least favorite lunches included sloppy joes or sauerkraut. Karen would eat the sauerkraut, so the rest of us would put it in our hands and pass it to her under the table. Sloppy joes were not as easily passed, so we had to find ways to make them edible enough to get through half. My dad was the janitor there, and he can tell you about the canned peaches that were served. Or, in his words, “those damn slimy peaches”. To this day, I still don’t think he’ll eat canned peaches.

When I started high school, we moved to a larger town with a more “traditional” school lunch program. We had the regular school lunch line, with foods that most of us wouldn’t eat, and the pizza and burger line, filled with rubbery pizza and what appeared to be cardboard cutouts of burgers. My junior year saw the installation of a salad bar. If I did manage to eat school lunch, it was from the salad bar. More typically, it was a Dr. Pepper and Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies from the vending machine (sorry, Mom). The salad bar was a definite improvement and gave us the opportunity to eat something that resembled food. Many schools are “considering” this route, and I highly encourage it. Food service managers can say that kids won’t eat vegetables, but that’s because the vegetables they’re usually given have been overcooked to the point of grey mushiness. Or the vegetable is ketchup.

One of my favorite blogs is Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project. Mrs. Q eats school lunch every day, then photographs it and provides commentary. Most of what she eats falls squarely in the classification of “beige food”. Mrs. Q also allows guest bloggers. My favorite guest blogger is a resident of Toulouse, France, and provided a link to Toulouse’s website, where you can find school lunch menus all the way back to January. I had to take a look. Honestly, I nearly cried. I then called Vince and read some of the menus to him. He nearly cried. He also asked where these meals were when we were kids. Why don’t we deserve good food? I’ve decided to provide some sample menus as well. If you’d like to try your hand at reading them in French, they can be found here. Otherwise, please to enjoy in English.

Monday:
Mache and beet salad
Breaded fish
Pumpkin puree
Organic apple tart

Tuesday:
Leek tart
Organic roast chicken
Green beans
Chantailloux cheese
Fruit

Wednesday:
Radishes with butter
Salmon with sorrel sauce
Vegetable cakes
Strawberries
Cookies

Thursday:
Endive salad
Hamburger steak with tomato sauce
French fries
Roquefort cheese
Peaches in syrup

Friday:
Grated carrots
Ham or Fish sauteed in butter
Macaroni
Organic yogurt
Fruit

Other weeks, the kids got veal marengo, lamb curry, and beef stew. If the kids are eating school lunch, this is what they’re getting. If they don’t want what’s on the menu, they can bring their own lunch. No one is pandering to their tastes by saying, “Kids don’t want salmon in sorrel sauce, so we provide them with nachos and chicken nuggets.” The kids eat the salmon in sorrel sauce, and they grow up to have experienced a wider range of tastes. They’re also less likely to be picky eaters. Just ask LA about that.

I’m not saying that we have to take on the French menus in our schools. Maybe accept the spirit of what they do. We don’t have to serve our kids crap because it’s cheap and we think it’s all they will eat. Offer them something that actually looks appetizing (grey peas are no one’s idea of appetizing) and see what happens. You never know, we might end up with kids who like eating vegetables more than Flamin’ Hot Cheetos covered in nacho cheese.

Yum Yum and Other Tidbits

While the American supermarket has every item that I want on a daily basis, sometimes I want to dress up, go to a fancy specialty food store, and make my pantry feel pretty.  This was part of the reason LA and I ended up in South Park:  I wanted to go to Dean & Deluca.  I love Dean & Deluca.  Mainly I love to go there and wish I had the money to buy all the things that they sell.  I stand at the chocolate counter and stare in amazement like a...well, like a kid in a candy store.  Fleur de sel caramel chocolates, strawberry balsamic chocolates, peach caramel chocolates.  I want it all.  But it's not just the candy.

They have a great selection of sanding sugars for baking, raspberry shallot mustard, a million types of salt.  Plus they have a spectacular cheese and charcuterie section.  We were looking at the cheeses and were offered some samples.  First up, a smoked blue cheese.  I can honestly say I'd never had one of those before.  Not a creamy blue, it was still very smooth, with a mellowness brought about by the smoking.  I didn't think it could get better.  Next we had an ashed goat's milk cheese.  I was surprised when LA took a piece, since he usually is fairly vocal about his dislike of goat cheese.  The middle of the cheese had the slightly chalky consistency typical of a fresh goat's milk cheese, it was very creamy around the edges, similar in texture to a Camembert.  LA and I both liked that one, although not as much as the blue.  Finally, we were offered a piece of an aged sheep's milk cheese.  When LA grabbed it, I knew he hadn't heard what she said.  We both bit into it and declared it the best of the three.  It was nutty and reminded me of Gruyere.  While LA was contemplating buying some of it, I said, "It's sheep's milk", at which point he began to gag and carry on like it was the most disgusting thing he'd ever eaten.  I reminded him that, only moments before, he'd loved it.  Didn't matter.  The love affair was over.  He continued gagging until I took him to one of the sample stations around the store and he got a piece of bread. 

We also considered buying some "Pepper Delights", although the card was laying on its side and I thought they were called "Peter's Delights".  I'd hate to think of what those are.  The Pepper Delights were small green peppers stuffed with prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella.  A couple customers assured me that they were addictive.  I asked the quite-attractive counterman if they were spicy at all.  He said that they were far too spicy for him, but maybe we'd like them.  After the issue 6 feet away at the cheese counter, I decided to forego the Pepper Delights.  I didn't have any bread in the car to feed LA if he didn't like those.  So far, I had avoided all traps, but I was unable to resist the pastries.  My heart was set on a lemon meringue tart, but, at $7, my wallet was against it.  My wallet won.  I settled for a lemon cupcake.  Which I ate the following day.  That thing was huge!  I ate it in one sitting and regretted it for several hours.  I'm not used to having so much sugar in my stomach at one time.  I had initially planned on eating the cupcake right away (in front of LA), so I needed a beverage with which to wash it down.  Dean & Deluca carries bottled water in the shape of a flask!  Was there any way for me not to buy it?  I think not.  Apparently I got some looks later, in the car, while I was taking a drink from it at a stoplight.  I was actually proud of myself and the restraint that I showed in Dean & Deluca.  I would've happily walked out of there with my arms (and LA's) full of gourmet delights.  That will have to wait until the next trip.

Besides not wanting to torment LA, my other reason for not eating the cupcake right away was that I'd been informed I would be doing some pie testing later.  I'm not much of a sugar fiend, so I have to limit myself to a small amount per day.  When we got back to LA's, he provided me with slices of two pies.  The first pie was a peanut butter pie, whose recipe had been given to him by a non-cooking friend.  One cup of peanut butter, one cup of sugar, and two containers of whipped topping, combined and plopped into a graham cracker crust.  I'm not a big peanut butter fan.  I like it with jelly, and that's about it.  I took a small sliver of that and still only ate half of it.  If you are a peanut butter fan, then it's a great pie.  He served it straight from the freezer, making it incredibly convenient as well.  If you want an easy dessert for a hot summer night, that may be the way to go.  Unless you don't like peanut butter.  That's where the second pie comes in.

The next pie was blueberry yum yum.  And it really was yum yum.  Blueberry pie filling, sugar, Dream Whip, and cream cheese in a graham cracker crust.  I'm not typically a fan of blueberries, but this was so good.  LA gave me a small piece and took the larger piece.  In retrospect, I should've distracted him and took the larger piece when he wasn't looking.  The yum yum can be made with any berry pie filling, and, like the peanut butter pie, can be made and kept in the freezer.  Both pies only require assembly.  If LA can do it, so can you!  (He'd probably tell you that, too.)

As a side note, I'm a little behind on my Saturday Night Live, but I caught an episode in which Zach Galifianakis (who I love), as a gay beauty pageant dad, tells his wife, "You smell like a bunch of stinky ol' Bojangles sausage biscuits."  Do they even know what those are in New York?  I, for one, love a Bojangles sausage biscuit.  With some Bo-rounds.  Hmmm, I might be going out for breakfast.

Blueberry Yum Yum
from L.A. Berlyn

1 purchased graham cracker pie crust
2 cans blueberry pie filling
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 box (2 packets) powdered dessert topping mix
2 16 oz packages cream cheese, softened
1 cup milk

Combine sugar, dessert topping mix, cream cheese and milk.  Spread half of the cream cheese mixture over the pie crust.  Top with the pie filling.  Spread with the remaining half of the cream cheese mixture for a marbled look.  To have a white cream topping, pipe the remaining cream cheese mixture on top, rather than spreading it.

Lunch Counter

Some mornings come earlier than others.  Yesterday's didn't come early at all.  It came so late, in fact, that I missed the farmers' market.  So LA and I had to find something else to do.  Hmmm, what to do on a very warm Saturday?  We headed on down to South Park.  (Cue Les Claypool.)  We did have ourselves a time, too.

The food court at the mall wasn't appealing to either of us.  We passed on McCormick & Schmick's since they do steak and seafood, and I really don't want to deal with LA going into anaphylactic shock over lunch.  He didn't feel like Mexican food, and M5's menu didn't appeal to him.  That brought us to The Counter, for "Custom Built Burgers".  The Counter is a small, mostly West Coast chain with a menu consisting, unsurprisingly, of mostly burgers.  The restaurant is small and industrial, with high ceilings, visible ventilation, and a lot of blue paint.  Too much blue paint, in my opinion.  Even the staff wears blue t-shirts.  While we were waiting for our food, we got to watch the World Cup.  If you call periodically glancing at the monitors above the bar "watching the World Cup". 

LA went the easy route and ordered the Hobo Pack.  The menu describes this as "an assortment of grilled vegetables topped with fresh herbs".  While it didn't specify which vegetables, LA was told that it did contain mushrooms and he would not be able to order it without them.  He ordered it anyway, deciding that he would just pick them out.  What he got was a parchment packet filled with an assortment of grilled vegetables.  I saw corn, red peppers, zucchini, and mushrooms.  He loved it and said he would start making it at home.  Minus the mushrooms.

I like to make things difficult for myself, so I custom built my burger.  While options are good, too much of a good thing can be overwhelming.  For my burger, did I want beef, chicken, turkey, or veggie?  1/3 pound, 1/2 pound, or 1 full pound (post-cooking weight, not pre)?  Did I want it on a bun or on a bed of lettuce?  If I wanted a bun, did I want a regular bun, whole wheat, or an English muffin?  Those were the easy choices.  I was allowed one cheese, but had to pick from among 11 different options.  I could have up to four toppings from a selection of 20.  I can't imagine picking carrot strings, hard-boiled eggs, and pineapple as toppings for a burger, but obviously someone else can.  Mustard and mayo aren't good enough for The Counter's patrons. I still had to choose from among 20 sauces. My mind was spinning by this point, and I wished I'd just picked the BLT from the standard menu. Before the headache kicked in, I settled for a 1/3 pound beef burger with Tillamook cheddar, bacon, dill pickle chips, scallions, and organic mixed greens, with garlic aioli on an English muffin.  Oh, and the fries are extra.  But what's a burger without fries?  So I got those too.

The burger arrived perfectly cooked and one inch thick.  Some may say that I have a big mouth, but I encountered some difficulty consuming the burger.  I think "nibbled" best described how I ate my burger.  The fries were shoestrings, sprinkled with seasoned salt.  They were very good.  I used the garlic aioli as a dipping sauce.  Aioli is really just a fancy word for mayo, so I was expecting garlic-flavored mayo.  I didn't detect even a hint of garlic.  I also didn't detect a hint of cheddar on the burger, although I could see it was there.  The bacon was a little on the undercooked side, but tasted fine.  I was most happy with the scallions.  They gave the burger an unexpected kick that was lacking from the cheese and the aioli.  A tasty burger, yes.  Worth the price?  Not really. 

I know this is South Park, where I should be happy to pay more for the privilege of appearing wealthy or trendy.  The waitress told LA that she is a vegetarian.  I said that of course she is.  All servers in a place like that are vegetarians.  It may even be a rule.  She was friendly and polite, but more interested in chit-chatting with her friends than taking care of her tables.  This also may have been a rule, since only one server spent more time serving customers than talking to coworkers.  I wasn't unhappy with the experience at The Counter; just not impressed.  The food was good, but not good enough for me to make another trip.  I don't need 20 sauces and 11 types of cheese.  I can get a burger with much less hassle anywhere, for the same price or less.  And not have a headache when I leave.

Venice by Way of New York by Way of Kannapolis

I may be living on a shoestring, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to treat myself periodically to a meal made by someone other than me.  Especially if it's inexpensive.  It was this desire that led me to Venice New York Style Pizza and Italian Cuisine.  Not only is Venice located very near my favorite wig store (no, I don't wear a wig.  Yet.), but they have signs advertising their daily lunch specials for $5.95.  That's hard to beat.

On our first visit, LA and I were initially the only customers, but more people came in while we were there.  We both immediately took to the decor, with LA saying that he felt like he was dining on a train due to the unique booths.  We took forever to order, mainly because we were having too much of a laugh over their menu.  The menu items weren't the issue.  The spelling and grammar were.  As a pizza topping, you have the option of getting "green papers" or "banana papers".  The Buffalo shrimp come with a side of "Ranch Dre".  The "Chicken Rap" includes "chider" cheese.  Many of the pasta dishes are available "backed", such as Backed Cheese Ravioli.  You can even get Spaghetti Wits Meatballs.  Our personal favorite was the "Child Lasagna".  I believe they mean it is a child's portion of lasagna, but, without an accompanying description, you really are left with just an assumption.  The server must be used to people's reaction to the menu, because she seemed totally unphased by it.  When LA asked for his stromboli with banana papers, she said that it was the printer's fault and that they'd be getting new menus.  She even provided us with takeout menus, so we could enjoy the typos in the comfort of our own homes.

Enough about our spelling snobbery.  LA ordered a small pepperoni stromboli.  What arrived was almost the size of his arm.  I can't even imagine what the large must look like.  The stromboli was pretty standard, with a side of marinara.  LA raved about the marinara.  I ordered broccoli chicken alfredo, which, surprisingly, was spelled correctly on the menu.  The fettucine arrived in a delicious cream sauce that was a little lighter on broccoli than I would have preferred.  As promised, it was topped with grilled chicken.  I couldn't make out the seasoning used on the chicken, but it was absolutely delicious.  And it was grilled.  Menus often say grilled, but the chicken is often either parcooked and put on the grill for 30 seconds, or it's cooked by another method altogether.  While LA thought that the cream sauce was too thin, I thought it was perfect.  It wasn't overly heavy, which I find is often the case with restaurant alfredo sauce.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the chef actually knew what he was doing.  Go figure.  The pastas come with a side of garlic bread.  In this case, it was a chunk of Italian bread, sliced in half, slathered with garlic butter and oregano and baked.  I ate it all.

On our next visit, a few customers were already there.  We began with the homemade potato chips with a side of ranch dressing.  Maybe I'm too cynical, but I was more than a little surprised when homemade potato chips arrived.  Very thinly sliced, skin-on Russet potatoes, fried until crisp.  Some weren't as crisp as others.  Just another way to tell that they were homemade.  It's easy to forget just how good homemade potato chips are.  I know I should stay away from the fried foods, but it's hard to do when they're that good.  I would recommend the potato chips to anyone going to Venice.

LA ordered a personal cheese pizza from the Express Lunch menu.  A larger-than-expected thin-crust cheese pizza was brought out on a pedestal (literally).  When I asked LA how it was, he told me again how much he loves their marinara.  That was far more descriptive than the "Good" that I normally get out of him.  My side salad came first.  Lettuce, tomato, carrots, and green olives with a side of not-homemade blue cheese dressing (despite what the menu says about homemade dressings).  The side salad also comes with onions and green peppers, but I opted out of those.  The only thing I really have to say about the salad is that it came too soon after the potato chips, so it just had to sit there on the table and watch me eat the chips.  After the salad came my lasagna.  The menu indicates that the lasagna is comprised of layers of pasta, ground beef (not child), and cheeses, topped with a homemade sauce.  My expectations being low, I was prepared for frozen lasagna with some fresh sauce poured over it before heating it.  (I worked in one establishment where the homemade lasagna was just that--frozen Stouffer's lasagna, topped with our own sauce.)  Again, I was happily surprised.  The whole thing was homemade.  The whole thing was huge (I took more than half home with me).  And the whole thing was delicious.  It also tasted just as good the next day, when I reheated it.  LA also took half of his pizza home with him, although he later ate it in the car, having been reheated in the heat of the car.  Mmm, car pizza.

After two visits, LA and I both had the same impressions of Venice:  good-sized portions for the price, all the important items are homemade (salad dressings notwithstanding), and everything we've had has been very good.  We were highly impressed, moreso than expected, and we plan to make this one of our regular joints.  We aren't, however, looking forward to the newly-printed menus coming soon.  Part of the charm of Venice is the ability to laugh at the "printer's" mistake.  I'll just have to keep my takeout menu to remind me.

Venice New York Style Pizza and Italian Restaurant is located at 1121 S. Cannon Blvd. in Kannapolis.

That's a Lot of Garlic

I'm always eager to try a new food.  I'd stumbled across a couple of recipes for garlic scape pesto, and, never having heard of garlic scapes before, I knew I had to try it.  I love pesto and I love garlic.  What could go wrong?

The garlic scape is actually the stem of the garlic plant.  We most commonly eat the garlic bulb, but the stems are edible as well.  Garlic scapes look remarkably similar to the green part of scallions, and I actually got them confused with scallions on more than one occasion.  I'm sure I'd seen garlic scapes many times, only I assumed they were funny looking onions.

After reading the recipes, I decided to seek out the garlic scapes.  I didn't have to go very far--I found them at the farmers' market.  I duly paid the price for a bunch of the scapes, then put them in the refrigerator.  Each day I would look at them and think, "I need to make pesto today."  But I always had an excuse.  After several days, I finally had the now-or-never moment and made the pesto.

The pesto is very similar to normal basil pesto.  I used the garlic scapes, walnuts (they're what I had), grated Parmesan cheese, salt, and olive oil.  Very straightforward.  I put it all into the food processor and let it go until it was the right consistency.  I then ate it with some cooked pasta.

The verdict?  I thought I loved garlic, but apparently I don't LOVE garlic.  The pesto was very garlicky.  So much so that I couldn't even finish all the pasta.  I must've had garlic breath for three days.  It was garlicky and pesto-y, but I don't believe I'll be having it again.  Garlic scapes are one product of spring and summer that I won't be looking forward to next year.

If you think that there's no such thing as too much garlic and you'd like to try the pesto anyway, click here for the recipe that I (sort of) followed.

That IS a Tasty Burger!

At some point during my magazine-flipping or internet-surfing, I came across a photo of a pimento cheese bacon burger.  It looked heavenly.  I didn't read the accompanying article or recipe.  I just figured I'd make my own with pimento cheese, bacon, and a burger.  So I began planning.

With this recipe in mind, I bought some pimento cheese from Sandra with Harvest Catering.  I've had good pimento cheese and bad pimento cheese.  The supermarket variety is sweet and bright orange.  I'd love to say that it qualifies as bad pimento cheese, but I can't.  I happily eat it.  But Harvest Catering's is very good pimento cheese.  Grated cheddar, cream cheese, and pimentos.  I didn't have any bread, and my ground beef was frozen, so I ate the pimento cheese with crackers.  Until I ran out of crackers.  Then I ate it with my finger.  The point is that I'd eaten all of the pimento cheese by the time the ground beef had thawed, so I didn't get to have my long-desired pimento cheese bacon burger.

I was counting the days until I'd run into Sandra at the farmers market again, and today was the day!  Sandra has two varieties of pimento cheese: mild and jalapeno.  For a change of pace, I opted for the jalapeno.  While I was out, I also picked up some Arnold's Select Whole Wheat Sandwich Thins, which look like really thin English muffins.  I prefer to use English muffins as hamburger buns, so I figured the Sandwich Thins would work just as well. 

Dinner time had finally arrived.  I was using ground beef from Scally's Natural Beef for my burger, with some bacon from my freezer, and Harvest Catering's pimento cheese.  I also added lettuce, pickle, and mayo to make it a traditional burger.  Before final assembly, I toasted the bread.  Just as protection against sogginess.  So how was the burger?  More heavenly than the original photo had led me to imagine!  I almost cried when I finished eating it, because I didn't want the deliciousness to end.  I was even tempted to make another one, but that would just be gluttony.  I think I've discovered my new favorite burger.

Harvest Catering is at the Winecoff School Rd farmers' market on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and at the Kannapolis Research Campus market on Thursdays.  The Scallys are at Winecoff School Rd on Saturdays.