Omnivore Atlanta

1. If you are making instant couscous (and I always do because I am a lazy cook) all you do is microwave water and dump in the grains. After that, leave the work to science and couscous magic. The granules are fast absorbing and in less than three minutes a tasty, fulfilling dish appears right before your eyes! I make couscous almost everyday and the instant absorption never ceases to amaze me. Like, I don’t have to do ANYTHING.

2. It is better than rice. Hands down. Someone should invent sushi wrapped in couscous because it would become more successful and taste one hundred billion times better.

3. Couscous is not thrown at weddings and stepped on. Why? Because it is AWESOME and deserves respect…bitches.

4. The texture: moist, fluffy, rough, ridiculous esophageal fun.

5. You can pair it with most anything; gravies, stews, meat, birds, broth, cinnamon and sugar, and steamed veggies. Scarf it down for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert or a midnight snack!

6. There’s a nightclub named after it in Manchester, UK and it is a hit French film.

7. The Egyptians ate couscous. And they built the pyramids.

8. When used instead of beans in beanbags, it produces a softer, safer toy for children to throw at each other, making eye, ear, and groin injuries less frequent.

9. It basically inherits any flavor it’s mixed with, but maintains its individuality with grace.

10. Couscous is universal. Everyone loves it. Moroccans, Africans, Europeans, slacker college students, Democrats, Republicans, the Olsen twins, koala bears, and Thor God of Thunder.

11. I ate it for breakfast this morning and that is why I’m writing this.

(Photos from Wikimedia Commons)

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Sarah Palin wishes everyone a happy Thanksgiving. The Huffington Post explains the occasion:

On Thursday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin appeared in Wasilla in order to pardon a local turkey in anticipation of Thanksgiving. This proved to be a slightly absurd but ultimately unremarkable event. But what came next was positively surreal. After the pardon Palin proceeded to do an interview with a local TV station while the turkeys were being SLAUGHTERED in the background!! Seemingly oblivious to the gruesomeness going on over her shoulder, she carries on talking for over three minutes. Watch the video below to see for yourself. Be warned, it’s kind of gruesome.

The writers of “Saturday Night Live” couldn’t dream this up. It might as well be Tina Fey doing her famous impersonation.

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As a project for his non-profit organization, the Ludacris Foundation, Ludacris is providing Thanksgiving dinner to 500 families in the Atlanta area.

What a sweetheart.

The altruistic rap star can be seen on Atlanta’s north and south ends over the next two days handing out turkeys and desserts to registered families.

The events are private and meals will only be given to families that were selected by their communities affiliated with the Ludacris Foundation.

Shout out to Sam’s Club and GM for hauling in the chow!

(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

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I detest waiting in line for a restaurant table and 30 minutes is about my max. I don’t drink, so I can’t get drunk and make new best friends during the process.

CNN reports on some psychology studies about waiting in line and has lots of recommendations. Unfortunately, they are all about ways businesses can make waiting more tolerable for customers, not ways customers can deal with the boredom themselves in the absence of distractions.

My own methods include toting books to restaurants and, when really desperate, seizing the opportunity to practice “mindfulness.” But I’d rather be eating, dammit.

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I’d like to know.

It’s like, everything I choose to eat is bound to send me straight into Chemoville.

And I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t, on two occasions this week, been bombarded by my best friend and an intrusive old woman at Whole Foods, who both declared that the sugar substitute and the BROCCOLI I was enjoying “will give you cancer.”

So, in an attempt to prove that broccoli, in fact, DOES NOT cause cancer (crazy hag) and to bury my sugar scare, I dug up some helpful information.

It’s Sunday, I bought coffee. I’m using Equal. No calories, does the job. I’ve never been a fan of cane sugar and can’t really pick up the funny aftertaste people complain about with artificial sweeteners. My friend stands next to me at the coffee bar. Her thing is glaring, she glares a lot, and I felt her glaring at my coffee. She made a show of reaching for two Splenda packets, shaking them loudly together and emptying the contents into her cup. I was uncomfortable and chose to ignore her.

She sighed, “You know, my dad told me Equal causes cancer.” She references her dad A LOT, and The Colbert Report.

“Oh yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s why I use Splenda.” (more…)

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At .99/head, endive and escarole were the least expensive lettuces at Your Dekalb Farmers Market yesterday.

Salad elitism isn’t what it used to be.

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Uh oh, it’s foodie backlash.

Comedian Jessie Klein takes on foodie culture in her blog on the Daily Beast. A sample:

I’m sick of the foodies who need every morsel that goes into their mouth to be a Picasso painting, a Giacometti sculpture, a Proust novel, evoking the world with each crumb. Foodies who need everything to be caramelized, sauteed in a blabla reduction, nested in a bed of shredded whatevers, served with a mushroom top hat and a julienne of leeks that have been knitted into a sequined scarf. It’s not that wonderful food doesn’t make me drool—I’m a bit of a St Bernard when I start thinking about cheese—it’s just the foodie chatter I can’t stand, the circle jerking in print and on an ever growing number of websites over this new place and that revamped old place, the obsessive fawning over such and such amuse-bouche, the kerfuffle over truffles.

Nick Weston — chef, blogger and cast member of the UK reality show, “Shipwrecked” — detests the term “foodie” itself. On his blood-guts-and-good-flavors blog, Hunter-Gatherer, he writes:

1984 was a dark year. A year in which a book was released, written by Paul Levy, Ann Barr and Mat Sloan called “The official foodie handbook.” It was due to these people alone that the term “foodie” was first coined. I loathe the word, I hate it so much that I would rather drink turpentine and piss on a bonfire than utter it out loud. So, as you can imagine writing this is no easy task for me, but it has to be done. The word is so offensive that as I type it up it is the only word underlined in red!

That’s just the warm-up of his full-out rant.

Personally, I am indifferent to the word “foodie” but, like Klein, I do suffer bouts of contempt for foodie culture now and then, even though I’m also subject to Proustian reverie when something tasty gets all up in my palate.

The argument about foodie culture, as Klein is describing it, isn’t really different from the perennial debate about the comparative merits of fine and popular art, high culture and low culture. The term “foodie,” as Weston writes, was originally intended to cleanse the obsession with good food of the pretensions of words like “gourmet” and “gourmand.” Weston argues, though, the word has now assumed its own aura of classist pretension.

(more…)

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Homesickness of the immigrant usually manifests itself in cravings for food from the homeland. There are other things of course - culture, smells, friends, in my case free healthcare - that gnaw at the soul of the immigrant, but nothing is more visceral than craving food one can’t have.

I grew up in Australia, and when I moved to the U.S. I missed many things about home, but junk food and candy were at the top of my list. That’s partly because the highbrow culinary treasures of Australia are mainly immigrant cuisines, and ones that I’ve found here. So the truly unique foods there are mainly snacks and candy. The other reason is that I left as a young teenager, when my love for junk was at its highpoint. It’s funny, I never really took to American junk - it’s as if the heartbreak of leaving home and longing for its junk shut down my lust for new kinds of candy. Apart from Oreos and Reeces (neither of which you can get in Australia), I’ve never quite taken to American packaged sweets.

But I’ve never lost my lust for the Australian varieties. When we moved to Atlanta, I decided on the spot that East Atlanta was the ‘hood for us, so excited was I by the chance for proximity to the Australian Bakery Cafe, were I could get a meat pie any time, and often a box of Tim Tams. Tim Tams - the great Australian cookie (or, in the proper vernacular, biscuit). Wikipedia explains, “A Tim Tam is composed of two layers of chocolate malted biscuit, separated by a light chocolate cream filling, and coated in a thin layer of textured chocolate.” It’s the malt that makes them so exciting, and also the variety of ways you can eat them. Eat off the top biscuit and lick the cream out of the middle. Bite off either end and then slurp coffee though the creamy center. Disgusting!! Delicious!!!!!

Anyway, Pepperidge Farm is now selling Tim Tams at Target. I went and bought some, and am happy to report that they taste pretty much exactly like the Australian version (made by Arnott’s Biscuits). I thought I detected a little less malt flavor than in the originals, but I could be mistaken - I wasn’t doing a side-by-side taste test.

Now home is as close as the nearest mega-shopping center.

(photo from Wikimedia commons)

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The best part of waking up?

These recipes sound curiously edible, but you tell us:

Home Fries Roll

Cheesy Bacon Potato Sushi

The Egg Roll

Tamago Roll (…includes maple syrup…)

Fruit ‘n Nuts Sushi

Mango/Avocado Onigiri (acceptable for dessert)

Sugar Rice and Berries

Any more ideas?

(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

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Chow.com has a gallery of food tattoos up right now. I’ve seen better. Anyone out there have a food tattoo they want to send me a photo of? I’ll happily post it.

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Yay for food sex!

Mary Mac’s cures (apparent) hangovers.

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In a dramatic declaration of finality and reassurance, the Thailand Federal Drug Administration set fire to over 33,000 melamine tainted products including condensed milk and snack crackers.

The blaze was intended to comfort the people of Thailand; a proclamation that the days of toxic cheese crackers have ceased and deadly dairy is no more.

I hope the U.S. is taking notes, I mean, incineration is a pretty effective termination tactic. Burning massive heaps of poisonous food items really communicates “Good riddance scary chemicals and diseases!” in a way that irradiation and ambiguous messages from the FDA simply do not.

The next time there’s E. Coli in our spinach, I expect fireworks in the fields. Salmonella in our peanut butter? Toast those nuts.

Burn baby, burn.

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I’ve had the cold from hell for a week, so I’ve only eaten comfort food like Dynamic Dish’s stew of great northern beans and heirloom peas from Whippoorwill Hollow Organic Farm. I drank a glass of freshly made carrot-ginger-Fuji apple juice with it.

We ate at the restaurant’s new bar counter. It has five seats and, at least to me, is more comfortable than sharing the end of a table whose other end is occupied by complete strangers. Here, you can eat with strangers, but stare at the cookies and dates stuffed with chocolate and almonds between intervals of conversation.

David Sweeney, the restaurant’s chef/owner, says he’s not going to open for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Bummer.

Brad Lapin and I made our weekly trip to La Pietra Cucina where I ate short ribs over mashed potatoes. Brad ordered this (more photogenic) fish stew. Being sick, I figured I deserved the dessert, a chocolate-mousse-like concoction with hazelnuts. We’re returning for dinner this week with a visiting foodie friend from Rome.

I ran into Jennifer Zyman, CL’s cheap-eats writer, at Pietra. She reports on her own meal on her blog. Jennifer and her dining companion find certain flavors — salty and bitter — too strong in two dishes. Bitterness is a flavor I can’t get enough of, generally. (No comment necessary from the sweet peeps.) But I’m hypersensitive to saltiness and don’t recall getting an over-salted dish at Pietra.

I gave Jennifer a hug. I hope she didn’t wake up with my cold.

My final comfort food was pizza at Stella. The fall specials menu includes this white one topped with smoked prosciutto and streaked with balsamic reduction. I mainly enjoyed it, although too much of the prosciutto was stringy.

Wayne ordered another special pizza, featuring cherry tomatoes, anchovies and capers — similar to Fritti’s Napoli, but with a crispy crust instead of the billowy, melt-in-the-mouth one at Fritti.

I also sipped a good bit of juice from Arden’s Garden. During the sore-throat phase, the straight-up ginger- root juice was almost anesthetic. Of course, the price, over $10 for 10 oz. or so, is kind of numbing too.

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The guys over at Refuel Biodiesel are looking for restaurants to donate their used cooking oil to be turned into biodiesel. From their website:

Used Cooking Oil Collection
We provide the same high quality service expected of used oil haulers, at a comparable or lower cost. Our clients receive collection containers that are serviced regularly and carefully to prevent spills. We are reachable daily for service calls, and our locally based management ensures prompt, reliable customer service. Furthermore, we abide by all local and national regulations regarding grease collection, hauling, and processing activities.

By choosing Refuel for oil collection, you help:
•  Increase national energy independence and decrease dependence on foreign oil
•  Increase national security
•  Decrease local and global air pollution
•  Mitigate global warming

Supporting restaurants receive recognition on our website and at press events, and we provide window stickers to advertise your support for clean energy.

And if all that wasn’t enough, because we are a non-profit, your facility may be eligible to write off the used oil we collect as a tax-deductible donation.

Interested restaurants should contact Refuel at this email address: Atlanta@RefuelBiodiesel.org

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I was copied on the following letter to the editor from Harold M. Barnette, relative to my review of The Bureau:

To The Editor:

After having read Cliff Bostock’s food column in CL for many, many years I was profoundly disappointed with some of the remarks about the Edgewood corridor in his review of The Bureau.

The comments were uninformed, smug, and uncalled for. They added nothing of value to the review. As one of the “original” recent migrants to Edgewood I readily attest to the mixed bag of denizens to be found here. In addition to Café 458 there is a population of formerly homeless mentally ill served by a very worthy group, Project Interconnections, Inc.

Some of us remember how the on-going disaster that our country has become originated with Ronald Reagan in 1980, whose administration gutted the social safety net, turning thousands of mentally ill into the streets.

Even as it makes strides toward revitalization Edgewood is doing its part to serve those less well off who are every bit as much citizens of this land as the more affluent you or I. Ditto with the comparison to Buford Highway. The historic and social/cultural experience of “inner city” denizens is very different from that of every group that voluntarily immigrated to this country, a fact we triumphantly acknowledged through our courageous choice in the recent presidential election.

Such snarky put-downs are not cute—they just reinforce and encourage ignorant attitudes. This is not intended to beat Cliff down. I have read enough of his stuff to know that he is a better person than this column suggests. Many if most Americans have had their moral sights lowered by our collective experience during the past 8 years.

Now may be a good time to reflect on the values of humility, modesty, and sympathy for those struggling with misfortune. And the people who could benefit from such reflection do not all live in the exurbs.

I wanted to respond to this letter because I find it mystifying. My column’s remarks about the cultural shift occurring on Edgewood are a critique of my own earlier use of the term “gentrification,” which, with a reader’s prodding, I concluded inherently suggests exactly the kind of thing that Mr. Barnette is now, oddly, accusing me of.

The term suggests “improvement” of a neighborhood by displacement of its dominant poor residents or the establishment of dependency between the underclass and its new “gentry.” I don’t think it’s arguable that the poor were displaced in Midtown, Virginia-Highland and Inman Park. I have never felt this was a good thing. But I think the term “gentrification” inherently suggests that it is indeed a good thing. I was disowning the word’s use because it disguises the suffering that this change can cause.

In my column, I said this:

It is easy to dismiss such people as nuisances, or even as exotic figures that might be depicted by Goya. But the suffering is real. Maybe nothing expresses this mélange of cultures as well as Café 458, which feeds the poor on weekdays and the comparatively affluent on weekends.

Why Mr. Barnette reads that as snarky befuddles me. It’s a description of what is true. It is not a critique of Cafe 458, whose work I greatly admire. It’s certainly not a trivialization of the suffering I see on Edgewood. I’m observing the interactions of two classes. It is way too early to assume anything about how the dynamics will resolve themselves, regardless of good intentions, which I have not questioned anywhere in my column.

As for my comparison of Edgewood to Buford Highway, my point was that the latter experienced the reversal of what seems to be happening in the former. The affluent were replaced by the poor, but the area ended up quite prosperous. Thus the assumption underlying the term “gentrification,” that improvement depends on the displacement of the poor, is false.

Mr. Barnette wants to attribute this to the enterprising motivation that brought immigrants here in the first place. Perhaps. But — and this was not part of my column’s subject — I would look deeper and ask whether it is possible for the privileged to establish ongoing residency among the poor without performing in loco parentis and reinforcing rather than rupturing the power dynamics of class hierarchy. I believe Cafe 458 and Samaritan House are sincerely addressing that question in the design of their programs. But I would refer Mr. Barnette to the expansive literature on colonialism, foreign and domestic, before assuming that differences in the behavior of immigrants and the inner-city poor are unrelated to the way affluent settlers view themselves and their own role in relationship to the poor.

I am sorry if anyone else found my comments hurtful. My brief reflection on “gentrification” was intended to show how the way we language something may say something we do not intend. It appears that I may have compounded that problem rather than clarifying it!

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Sunday, Nov. 15, celebrate with the salt of the earth at the Field of Greens festival at Whippoorwill Hollow Organic Farm. Whippoorwill is 74 acres of organic greens, 35 miles east of Atlanta in Walnut Grove. Atlanta’s farm-to-table favs are turning out for chef demos from the Brick Store Pub, Farm 255, Woodfire Grill, Food 101,