Food In The Fort

July is a pretty good time to get the hell out of Fort Wayne and seek out cooler, less *&%$ humid climes, and that’s just what me and the kiddies have done. We’re in NY; they’re down in the city with their dad and I’m upstate on the farm with my brother and the ‘rents. We’ll be meeting up tomorrow in the Big Apple and then it will be all about spoiling the grandkids: Macy’s fireworks, the Cloisters, a Broadway musical, shopping for Rachel and a restaurant that only serves variations on the cheese toastie for Jack. But until the kids steal the show, I’m enjoying some serious spoiling of my own: sushi last night, mussels and clams two nights before that, and a chocolate cake from Wegmans, the best supermarket on earth. It’s been good.

But I’m not one to keep all these good eats to myself. No, dear reader, although I’m not going to invite you come over for dinner,  I am going to send a few scrumptious recipes your way for a little taste of what life is like on the farm (where the only animal is my mom’s bratty dog Emily). Here’s what you can look for in the next week or so:

• “Surprise” Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
• Pork Fried Noodles direct from the heyday of Wo Hop
• The Perfect Pancake
• An interview with the brewmasters of Butternuts Beer and Ale

Hope to see y’all soon!

(Well, apparently about 169.000 people say that, according to Google, but that’s not the point.)

As poor Leo can tell you, I am just a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy bit obsessed with recreating recipes so that they taste just like my Mom made them. There’s her shrimp scampi recipe which is always a little less vermouth-y than I remember, the cucumber salad that is always too oily or too vinegary and the turkey gravy on which I don’t even come close. But the other day I nailed one of those maternal recipes to the wall: potato salad exactly as I remember having it as a kid. God it was good. It has a bunch of hard-boiled eggs in it and a lot of celery, but the key ingredient is the celery salt (which is also the key ingredient in a good Bloody Mary; no, my Mom didn’t make me Bloody Marys, that was my Dad).

So here it is, just in time for summer picnicking season: Read the rest of this entry »

I had been craving a fish fry for ages so, despite the fact that Leo and I had just made pan-fried fish on Thursday (it’s just not the same!), I decided to take the kids to Ya Boy. In case you are unfortunate enough to be unfamiliar with this wonderful establishment, it’s at the corner of Anthony and McKinnie, across from the 99 Cent Pus store – your one-stop-shop for knock-off purses, perfumes and bling. Being situated in this less than lovely part of town, Ya Boy does boast some unusual features such as bullet-proof glass separating you from the food preparation area and a little lazy susan contraption that allows them to give you your food without actually handing it to you. Brings back fond memories of liquor stores which sold vodka to minors in NYC when I was an undergrad… Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, that’s probably a gross exaggeration; all right, it’s an outright lie, but sometimes I wonder if I’m just doing it all wrong.  It happens like this:  dinner is either a quick, rushed meal in between work and some other obligation or a more involved affair which I come to with no appetite since I’ve eaten so much of the raw ingredients during prep. I can’t help it; I’m starving after school and it’s impossible not to snack while I cook.

So what’s a girl to do?  I end up liking all the wonderful things that I cook with Leo better the next day as lunch – the pasta with hummus, for example, was an entirely different experience when it wasn’t prefaced by preparation (but it still needed hot sauce).  Should I throw in the towel and only eat leftovers?  If I only eat leftovers, when will I cook them?  They will have to be un-leftovers at some point…so confusing.

Dear reader, please offer your helpful suggestion to a girl in trouble. How do you deal with the dinner time crunch and still enjoy what you’ve cooked?

This two-headed  lollipop by Luxus is one of our favorites. Rompope is a sort of Mexican eggnog and a real winner as a lollipop flavor. It goes especially well with the mild, chalky chocolate that was at the other end. One note of caution: these lollipops are Formica counter top hard. Those with soft enamel or otherwise bad dentiture would be wise to lick, not bite.

This post was part of our Mexican Candy Shootout! series. You can find all the posts in this series here.

Coconut rolls are a sweet staple of Mexican candy. You’ll find them in a dizzying array of shapes and colors much like the ubiquitous gummi. There’s no particular reason why we selected the two we did for comparison and we recommend that you try them all because they’re quite tasty treats.

Delicias del Triunfo has concocted a marvelous confection of shredded coconut, sugar and oil in a handy stick. What more could you want? A perfect candy except for the thoughtless wrapper design. The plastic wrapper is sort of tucked into the ends of the roll in such a way that makes detaching it from the candy problematic; little bits of plastic easily get stuck to the candy. Still, if you can avoid ingesting the wrapper bits – and what’s a little cellophane among friends? – this one’s a real winner.

La Coculense has managed against all odds to squeeze several extra helpings of sugar, artificial flavoring and yellow food dye into this compact coconut bar. While coconut lovers will like this one, we think Rollo Coco has the edge in the tight coconut roll market. Catherine does give props to the wrapper; unlike the Rollo Coco covering, this one came off without putting up a fight and leaving shreds of plastic.

This post was part of our Mexican Candy Shootout! series. You can find all the posts in this series here.

There’s very little we can say about this product from Lorena. We bought it because the colorful, grimacing cartoon fruit amused us and we thought it was candy. However, it turned out to be a condiment. Although it was interesting to have a little bit of spice on the candies, we remain unconvinced that fruit routinely needs to be seasoned. Perhaps we will come around in time, but until then the cartoon fruit on the Pico Sitos cannister mocks us from the rear of the spice rack.

This Nestle product tastes and smells like Swiss Miss instant hot chocolate mix or the really cheap chocolate “flavored” Easter bunnies. If you’re craving chocolate, you would be hard-pressed to do worse. Needless to say, we didn’t like this one, which is kind of sad since Carlos looks like such a jovial monarch. We can only conclude that he has been corrupted by the high-pressure world of candy endorsements and forgotten his people. Viva la revolucion!

 This post was part of our Mexican Candy Shootout! series. You can find all the posts in this series here

These little pecan flavored toffees by Canel, while very tasty in a sort of old-fashionedy way, were not what you might expect. They are very hard and the pecan flavor is not strong at all. However, we liked them a lot and, if you’re not concerned about chipping the enamel on your teeth, you will too!

This post was part of our Mexican Candy Shootout! series. You can find all the posts in this series here.

If the long name and curiously Hispanic looking Bruce Lee don’t intimidate you, then the La Brea Tar Pits-like texture and chemically enhanced lemonosity will. Safety precautions are recommended as we needed to stab the package with a sharp knife to get it open. Once opened, the dog seemed to fear he would be sucked in, trapped and preserved for all eternity. He refused to have anything to do with the green jelly, instead retreating to the corner of the kitchen to eye us warily. As for the taste… Catherine described it as lemon-flavored Vegemite while Leo was reminded of a trip to the dental hygienist. Admittedly, the name is fun to say but you are advised to stay away. Stay far, far, away.

This post was part of our Mexican Candy Shootout! series. You can find all the posts in this series here.