Do you have a sudden hankering to run for the border when piously observing the Lenten holiday? If so, fear not stalwart Catholics, for Taco Bell is again reminding you to satisfy your sinful carnivorous urges with a bean burrito, taco, or quesadilla all without- you guessed it- meat.

As someone who works in the land of we’re not lying it’s PR and marketing, this doubly makes me go wtf? As a food snob who enjoys slumming it at the corner Taco Bell after a eight hour bender it makes me go WTF even more. I know there are a fair amount of Catholics in this world (I used to be one), but Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, I want to know who was the marketer that dreamt this shit of a marketing campaign up!?

Three cheers for Taco Bell and their awesomely LENTASTIC tacos!!

Anyone who has made a tiered-cake of any sort from scratch knows that it’s a both a time and labor-intensive process. Having made a this type of cake a whopping two times in my life, I understood that I was both in for one hellavuh baking ride and that I was a blithering baking novice. C’est la vie- what was done was done. For weeks I spent researching cakes: flavors, fillings, fat content, crumb texture. I baked cake after cake after cake, sampling different fillings and frostings with each. While I was drowning in cake batter, something began to nag at me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I was in the midst of the stuff of dessert dreams, yet some snarky sense of dread chuckled lowly at each cake I pulled from the oven. What was that sense of dread you ask? Surely nothing could go wrong when you are creating a splendid vanilla cake with apricot filling covered in vanilla buttercream frosting three-tiered cake? To your questions I say– Yep, you are one-hundred and twenty percent right—except for one teeny thing I forgot to account for. I was baking in Bakersfield during the month of August, when temperatures are easily around 108 degrees Fahrenheit. But isn’t that why we have air conditioners and refrigerators you say? Yes, but there’s this annoying little rule and it was about to land on my cake. It’s called Murphy’s Law.

The fascinating thing about baking in a city where the outside temperature is 108 degrees is that if you happen to be in a house built circa 1970, keeping the house cool can be one hellavuh problem. This fact assailed me the moment I arrived at and entered my mother’s house. The air conditioner was running full blast and still the coolest she could get the inside of the house was 85 degrees. She looked at me as I came through the door, her eyes and mouth drawn tight with apprehension as I set down the bags of baking supplies. “We can still order a cake from Smith’s,” she nearly barked. Again I shook my head no. I was too far off the map now. Here there be monsters.

The next morning I found myself assembling the layers in the kitchen. I was making good time. Kitchen mess was at a minimum. Things were good! Still, I kept eyeing the buttercream ingredients warily. That nagging feeling of impending doom was getting thicker and I still couldn’t quite place its source. I’d just finished leveling the last tier when it dawned on me: my mother’s refrigerator wasn’t large enough to house the cake. I looked at my kin assembled in the den. Most of our tribe had traveled cross-country to make it to granny’s birthday party. There simply wasn’t any room for the cake as the refrigerator was overflowing with food to feed the horde. At that moment such creative expletives flew from my mouth that my mother chewed me out. I was midway through my stream of consciousness expletive rant when another realization slammed into my brain: that butter and Bakersfield heat do not mix, especially in an 85 degree house. My only option was a Crisco-based frosting.

I ransacked my mother’s pantry for her butter flavored Crisco while I silently begged the Kitchen Gods to let me find my only good Crisco frosting recipe. In my head I could hear future generations laughing- not to mention the herd assembled in the living room- at the Great Cake Disaster story! I dug through the recipe books I had brought to my mom’s on a whim and luckily found the grease and sugar stained recipe wedged in one. In mere minutes the frosting was made but the consistency was off. It was too warm. Into the refrigerator it went only to be too cold when I pulled it out. This happened over and over for 30 minutes. Just as I was starting to feel like Goldilocks the frosting turned just right. I had two hours left until I had to get dressed and in those two hours I needed to frost, decorate, and repair the cake as I was sure the frosting was going to slide off the cake. And slide off it did.

As I stood in the kitchen, whispering expletives as I frosted each layer white, my family gathered and watched me work. They were fascinated. When the heat in the room and the heat of my hands turned the pink frosting in my decorating bag to near liquid, my family said, “Don’t worry: It’s fine just plain white.” I laughed and stuck it in the freezer. “I can decorate it at the restaurant. Don’t let me forget that bag.” When the frosting slid off the cake, I’d hear my name, stop dressing, and fix the cake with chilled frosting. The frosting finally crusted as the Sister-Cat, Boyfriend, and I drove to the restaurant, AC on full blast with the cake perched precariously on my sister’s lap. Who would have guessed?

The cake became the stuff of family legend and not, I’m proud to say, because of my frosting woes. It’s now remembered as a true, handmade gift of love. In my book, that made all the craziness worth it. That said I’ll always double-check the refrigerator from now on.

and now they’re coming your way….

I heard about the VGT Omnivore’s Hundred while perusing the food blog lists. The rules are easy, just mark which of the 100 listed foods you’ve had the pleasure of wolfing, sampling, or regurgitating.

It’s not one of those be-all and end-all foodie lists, still it’s interesting and has a wide variety of edibles. I say edible because I’m not sure everything is actually food.

If it’s in bold, I’ve eaten it. If not, I haven’t. I haven’t eaten 28 items listed. Coolness.

1. Venison (Bambi is scrumptious)

2. Nettle tea

3. Huevos rancheros

4. Steak tartare

5. Crocodile

6. Black pudding (At the Witchery in Edinburgh Scotland, where the people making reservations before us told us about the ghost they’d encountered in their room the night before)

7. Cheese fondue

8. Carp

9. Borscht

10. Baba ghanoush

11. Calamari

12. Pho

13. PB&J sandwich

14. Aloo gobi

15. Hot dog from a street cart

16. Epoisses

17. Black truffle

18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (Pomegranate Wine)

19. Steamed pork buns

20. Pistachio ice cream

21. Heirloom tomatoes (qualification: home grown tomatoes from harvested seeds)

22. Fresh wild berries (qualification: berries that weren’t obtained from a shop, but from friends’ (and strangers’) yards)

23. Foie gras

24. Rice and beans

25. Brawn, or head cheese (I’ll try this just to have a tongue of steel and a stomach of…I dunno…lead?)

26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper

27. Dulce de leche

28. Oysters

29. Baklava

30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas

32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (Splash Café in Pismo Beach, CA makes the BEST FUCKING CLAM CHOWDER!)

33. Salted lassi

34. Sauerkraut

35. Root beer float

36. Cognac with a fat cigar

37. Clotted cream tea

38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (My best friend Kelly’s recipe for this is bloody lethal. Good bye world!)

39. Gumbo

40. Oxtail

41. Curried goat (I love curry and goat but I’ve yet to have them together)

42. Whole insects (my boy loves insects. I can’t get into them yet.)

43. Phaal

44. Goat’s milk

45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth (Ardbeg muthfuckas)

46. Fugu (no blowfish for me yet!)

47. Chicken tikka masala

48. Eel

49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut

50. Sea urchin

51. Prickly pear

52. Umeboshi

53. Abalone

54. Paneer

55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal

56. Spaetzle (I’m reminded of a journey to the only German restaurant in Bakersfield, CA where the owner told my friend (her employee) to make sure the nice group of Germans coming to eat that night didn’t know she was of French heritage.)

57. Dirty gin martini (the only way to have a martini babe!)

58. Beer above 8% ABV (Chimay Blue Label)

59. Poutine

60. Carob chips

61. S’mores

62. Sweetbreads

63. Kaolin (qualification: in the form of freshly picked fruit/veggies that haven’t been washed)

64. Currywurst

65. Durian

66. Frogs’ legs

67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake

68. Haggis

69. Fried plantain

70. Chitterlings, or andouillette

71. Gazpacho

72. Caviar and blini

73. Louche absinthe

74. Gjetost, or brunost

75. Roadkill

76. Baijiu

77. Hostess Fruit Pie

78. Snail

79. Lapsang souchong

80. Bellini

81. Tom yum

82. Eggs Benedict

83. Pocky

84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.

85. Kobe beef

86. Hare

87. Goulash

88. Flowers

89. Horse (Possibly, there was this odd incident at the castle in Heidelberg, Germany when I was 17.)

90. Criollo chocolate (All RICHART chocolate is made with Criollo chocolate and I had some on my recent chocolate crawl adventure.)

91. Spam

92. Soft shell crab

93. Rose harissa

94. Catfish

95. Mole poblano

96. Bagel and lox

97. Lobster Thermidor

98. Polenta

99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee

100. Snake

]]> http://noshposh.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/oh-the-things-ive-eaten-the-vgt-omnivores-hundred/feed/ 0 noshposh http://noshposh.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/rynn-melon-vingette/ http://noshposh.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/rynn-melon-vingette/#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:27:59 +0000 noshposh http://noshposh.wordpress.com/?p=44 ]]> It was the maniacal giggling emanating from behind a mound of bananas that captured my attention. The source of the laughter came in to view as I rounded the banana cart.

Crouched in front of a shelf cut into the side of the banana cart was my boyfriend. On the shelf before him were a variety of melons that could easily have been the brainchild of Dr. Seuss himself. Both of Boyfriend’s hands rested on a melon. I watched as he squeezed each melon with an alternating rhythm, his vaudevillian giggling increasing with each squeeze.

“They’re like Nerf melons,” said Boyfriend. “Very squeezable. Squeezy. Squeeeeeeezy.”

It was then that someone’s blue-haired granny turned into our grocery aisle and took in the scene before her. I watched her face darken in an obviously disapproving scowl.

Both the moment and old blue haired begged for a sarcastic comment- the gods nearly had nearly decreed it so.

“Stop molesting the melons. You’re making my breasts jealous,” I quipped.

Out of my peripheral vision I saw granny’s mouth drop and her face turn ashy with shock.  She gripped the shopping cart handle till her knuckles whitened. With a huff and a push to her cart, she fled the scene.

“That wasn’t nice,” exclaimed Boyfriend, still crouching, his head turning to watch granny’s escape.

“You’re the one groping the produce,” I retorted.

“Yeah,” he said with a slow pause. “I am.”

I watched Boyfriend bring one hand to his knee. With his other hand he gripped a yellow and green stripped “Nerf” melon tighter. He pushed himself up and with a graceful swoop of his arm, brought the melon to rest directly in front of my face.

“We’re getting a Nerf melon.”

“What kind of melon is it?” I inquired.

Boyfriend turned the melon round in his hands till he found the label.

“It says Casaba.”

“And what are you going to do with the Nerf melon?”

Boyfriend wrinkled his nose. An expression I’ve come to know as “what an asinine question” graced his face.

“Eat it,” he replied then stalked off towards the cashier.

Thirty minutes later we were positioned side by side, laptops open, scouring the web for Casaba melon recipes.

“Watermelon salad, cantaloupe salad, honeydew salad. You know, I just don’t like salad that much.”

Boyfriend laughed. “Yes you do you just don’t like melon that much.”

“Touché,” I replied with a tilt of the head.

Boyfriend reached out and grabbed the melon. He twirled the melon in his hands and began tossing it in the air like it was a football.

“Barbequed casaba?” he asked.

Now my own faced darkened with the ‘what an asinine question’ look. It was a question only a desperate foodie with a shot memory would’ve asked.

“We’re out of propane,” I replied.

“What about the prosciutto?”

“The last of it went on our pizzas last night.” I turned from my laptop to face him. “It’s a hundred and eight degrees outside.* Are you really thinking of cooking?”

Ignoring my comment he stood, melon in hand and walked to the fridge.

“Forget the fridge,” I said. “Get the rum. And not the Bacardi. Get the Leblon”

Grinning, he grabbed the bottle of Leblon rum from the liquor cabinet. He soon made short work of the melon and quickly deposited it’s pale lime-colored flesh in a blender with ice and a fair amount of rum. He sugar rimmed two highball glasses. The frozen rum and Casaba made sloping noises as it filled each glass.

“Dinner is served,” he proclaimed. I noticed his glass was already half drained as he set my own high ball in front of me.

“Kudos to the chef, in all his melon molesting glory,” I said as I raised my glass and put the glass to my lips.

A self-satisfied look and wicked smile came to his face. “Not as good as your melons. But satisfying nonetheless,” said Boyfriend.

I sputtered, showering the table with frozen rum and melon.

“I see you agree,” said Boyfriend.

And to that, I have no comment.

*Yes, it was 108 degrees farenheit outside. I was visiting Boyfriend who currently lives in a place Buck Owens once called home and is in So. Cal.

Nite

*snore*

July 1

Breakfast: One overripe banana sporting an oh so fashionable leopard print coat has been shoved into my mouth. I ate it with such speed that I can’t remember what it tasted like. Frankly, in my OH-MY-GOD-I’M LATE-FOR-WORK frenzy I wouldn’t have noticed if it had tasted like ferret.

July 2

Hot coffee and 2% milk stamped with an expiration date from two weeks ago today. Here’s to living dangerously.

July 3

Same hot coffee and 2% milk as yesterday. Only today it’s expiration date reads from two weeks and 24 hours ago. I am such a rebel.

July 4

I woke up at noon. Forget breakfast, where’s lunch?

July 5

Breakfast of champions equals the leftover crumbs of barbecue, cheese, and salt and vinegar potato chips from your friend’s Independence Day celebration. And a beer.

July 6

1 Corona Lite with chorizo, eggs, and yummy tortillas.

July 7

I ate so much over the holiday I am abstaining from breakfast this fine morning. I’ll probably avoid food altogether now that I think of it.

Call the exorcist.