So, there is a story here:  back in the long-ago days of when I was singing in choir in Kitchener-Waterloo with Leith, the church we sang at was having a book sale, and we found an AMAZING two-volume Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, from 1954, by one Ms. Meta Given, who seems to have been, like, the poor woman’s Betty Crocker, from Pittsburgh, and who is potentially fascinating.  Someone’s dissertation should be on atomic-age cookbooks and gender and domesticity, and there should be a chapter on Meta Given, but because I am in Musicology they want my dissertation to be about music, or something, so that won’t be my dissertation, sadly.  ANYHOW, the Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking is ridiculous and has lots of horrible gelatin-based things in it because it was the Atomic Age, and, you know, Better Eating Through Chemicals and things!

And one of the most amazing recipes was cheese carrots.  I cannot remember the actual specifics of the cheese carrots recipe because the book is at home in Canada somewhere in my parents’ basement, so I had to recreate this from vague memory, and in my vague memory the recipe for cheese carrots was this:  you take your carrots, you grate them.  You take your cheese, you grate it.  You mix them with gelatin, mold them into teensy, canape-sized carrots, and you make carrot greens with sprigs of parsley.  Um, yeah, I know right?

And then one day, for reasons far too complicated to explain to anyone who has not been in Musicology wing of the Schoenberg Music Building this past quarter, I needed to make food that was a culinary representation of the musical oeuvre of Lady Gaga (for homework, because graduate school has done nothing but equip me with useful and practical skills with real-world application), and that is when I decided that cheese carrots were the only possible thing.

My blissful unawareness of certain important facts like, say, the proportions of the ingredients, did not prevent me from boldly sallying forth on this journey of culinary blasphemy.  So when the cheese carrot batter was too runny to roll into tiny canape-sized carrots, we MacGuyvered a mold out of a loaf pan, cardboard and some tin foil, poured the mix in, and giant cheese carrots were, unfortunately, born.

They’re more art than food, really, and remarkably inoffensive in flavor.  But the texture is . . . just not the texture of something you really want to eat. Oh, 1954.  Truly, you were another planet.

As a counterpoint, I also made this blackberry/muscat jelly from a Nigella Lawson recipe, and it was legitimately delicious, although less like Lady Gaga.

Also:  in the UK gelatin is measured in leaves, and in the US gelatin is measured in packets, and neither of these units of measurement  is not even remotely related to the metric system and therefore I throw my Canadian hands up in exasperation at both of them.  For the record, 1 leaf gelatin = 1/4 packet of gelatin, or something, I think, I don’t actually remember.  So this recipe calls for five leaves of gelatin which is 1 and 1/4 packets, which is a stupid amount, because what do you do with 3/4 of a packet of gelatin?  Add it to your cheese carrot batter, I guess.  Too bad.

Is that math even right?  Who actually counts things anymore, anyhow?  Whatever.

Anyhow, I wanted to tell you all about some recent food-based adventures I have had.  First of all:  Giant Breakfast.

So you start with an ostrich egg, which you crack with a mallet:

The insides will look weird and sort of gross,

but mostly like a normal egg, only gigantical:

You should probably devil it.  The classiest eggs are devilled eggs.

And as a side dish, you should toast some mini donuts and call them giant cheerios!

I also hear that giant egg goes rather well with giant toast, giant pancake, giant french toast and giant veggie sausage patty.

Giant breakfast = giant success.  And we had egg salad sandwiches for a week.

Special thanks go to Gentleman Caller, for his fancy pants camera and photography skillz, and to everyone who came and braved ostrich egg with us!  And extra special thanks go out to the champagne in the giant mimosas.

STAY TUNED NEXT TIME FOR ADVANCED (DISGUSTING) ADVENTURES IN GELATIN!  The cuisine of 1954:  It’s here, It’s now, It’s slimy and unfortunate!

I learned this word at the Wild Animal Park, which is where our adventuring took us this fine Sunday mid-morning.  Megavetebrates include rhinos, elephants, and similar.  I learned this word from our safari tour guide, who was loose and fast with the slightly inexplicable metaphors (ie:  ”the Cheetah’s fur is butterscotch and cream”) but who has provided me with a vocabulary word that will surely make an excellent name for either my heavy metal band or my pan flute quintet.

ALSO, how cute is a baby elephant???  You have no idea how cute a baby elephant is.  It is so cute.  And there where, what, five of them?  And they were so wobbly and smiley!  Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the cuteness because at this point in the afternoon I was too lazy to get my camera out of my bag and was content to let my Gentleman Caller do the phototaking, but here is a picture of a sassy lion chilling in the back of a truck which is also pretty awesome.

BUT MOST AWESOME OF ALL:  on the outskirts of Escondido, California, we came upon a produce stand.  And at said produce stand, what did we find?  OSTRICH EGGS.  For the reasonable price of $25, which, compared to the $40 they were charging at Ostrich Land, is a bargain!

Here it is, our very own Ostrich Egg!  Shown aside some less giant but no less noble chicken eggs for comparison:

OSTRICH EGG NUTRITIONAL FACTS:  Contains 500% Daily Intake of AWESOME.

I am very excited for next weekend’s Giant Brunch, featuring Giant Egg, Giant Toast, Giant Pancake, Giant Sausage, and, most importantly GIANT MIMOSA!   Who’s in?

INSPIRATIONAL RECIPES FROM BRAVE CHEFS WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE:

Deviled Ostrich Egg

Scotch Ostrich Egg

Ostrich Egg Omelette

Ostrich Egg Frittata

Ostrich Egg with Tarragon and Pine Nut Tarator

And also I think you’ll be able to download and listen to my talk on iTunes University!  I’ll let you know if this actually happens.  This is pretty cool, but also slightly mortifying, because it means that my technological snafus are forever immortalized, as is the moment in my presentation when I meant to say Jay-Z but accidentally said Kanye instead.  But oh well.  Nobody’s perfect.

I accidentally managed to book us into the Shepard Fairey room at the hipster hotel.  I mean, I intentionally booked us into the hipster hotel (it was cheap and has free waffles at breakfastime!) but I did not bargain for the Shepard Fairey room, which meant having to cope with this wallpaper for four days:

Also, this icon, which clearly indicates “milk bottle, present, Hershey Kiss,” was on the little cabinet in the room, and the cabinet did not contain any of these things, so I must assume it is hipster code for “towels, condoms, coffee,” which is what the cabinet did contain.  MYSTERIOUS!  I am still disappointed that I didn’t get any Hershey’s Kisses, but I probably shouldn’t complain because there were, indeed, those waffles.

As is my wont, I dragged my gentleman caller stumbling through Seattle on a steady diet of neon and donuts:

And we went to the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company, where I bought a map of the known universe.

I am ten years behind in emails right now – Canadian friends, I will write you tomorrow, I swear it on the ghost of Annette Funicello’s girlish figure.

This basically actually happened in real life the other day.  We were at Pie ‘n’ Burger and this girl came in and she WAS Melorra and she said to the dude she was with “I love this place!  It’s so…retro!” in exactly that perky, uncynical tone of voice that I so often fail to understand.

So anyhow, that was hilarious.  And Pie ‘n’ Burger was basically a dream come true.  Look at how photogenic this cheeseburger is!  I honestly cannot stop looking at this picture.

And then I had a slice of butterscotch meringue pie (I KNOW, right?) that was so delicious that I forgot to take a picture.  You will just have to go to Pie ‘n’ Burger and see for yourself!

And then we went to the monster park in San Gabriel!  (See this post I wrote for Metblogs for further details.)  Here I am conquering a giant cement octopus in the name of all womankind:

And here is Nikki, taming having just tamed the wild pink whale:

I love giant things made of cement.  They’re the one thing I can actually be earnest about in this day and age.

First stop –  Bellflower Bagels, a former Big Donut, repurposed in the only possible way in which one can repurpose a giant donut:

And then we got lost!  But not very lost.  Only a little bit lost.  But it was lucky that we did get lost, otherwise we would never have discovered that Norwalk, California, is a secret mecca of totally great mid-century architecture.

We discovered, for instance, this total gem of an old grocery store, now a swap meet:

And the truly, truly glorious Cerritos College gymnasium:

More photos of the gymnasium, one of the bestest examples of 50s architechture that I ever did see.

We quickly found ourselves back on track, and donuts loomed large on the horizon!

A well deserved second breakfast, if ever there was one.

]]> http://www.barbarellapsychadella.com/2010/01/31/breakfasttime-adventure/feed/ 0 http://www.barbarellapsychadella.com/2009/11/19/unsurprising-really/ http://www.barbarellapsychadella.com/2009/11/19/unsurprising-really/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:48:39 +0000 ms. xandra http://www.barbarellapsychadella.com/?p=1657 So, uh, the Vignette Pinot Noir Wine Country Soda?

Yeah.  Pretty much just . . . grape soda.

In other exciting news:  last night I said “I have a stomachache.  I’m worried that it’s the flu, but hopefully it’s nothing.”  Today I get to school and am informed that everyone has been told that I was diagnosed with H1N1 by a medical professional.  So that’s pretty funny.

In other, actual exciting news:  I have a dissertation advisor!  Which is very exciting.  We had a meeting today where I popped the question and then we just kept saying “I’m so excited!” and “This is so great!” over and over to each other.

So, thank you, Cheerwine, for being an integral part of my pretty decent evening.  Thank you also for coming in a neato glass bottle that I am going to put on my shelf of other neato glass bottles.  Thank you to whoever invented this recipe for Cheerwine Cake, which sounds ridiculous, and which I will probably have to make this weekend, because now that I have found it, how can I not?  And thanks especially for the weird optical illusion in the above photo that makes it look like the wine glass is hovering about two inches above the table.

Yours most effusively,

Alexandra A.

It is pretty delicious.  It might be a little bit too sweet for my tastes, but what is super exciting is the way that it smells like vanilla.  This has got to be the most fragrant, aromatic pop (yes, POP, you crazy non-Canadians) I have ever had.

IN UNRELATED NEWS:  I am on the lookout for a really good pattern for a slightly high-waisted, a-line skirt, so if any of my ladyfriends who know their way around a sewing machine have a line on one, let me know.  I’m a fan of the A-Plus A-Line on burdastyle, but it doesn’t come in fat girl size and I don’t have the wherewithal to grade patterns up.

So, as you are no doubt aware, the fab VV and I hit up Galco’s Soda Pop Stop earlier this week. And, because, really, any instance of food and/or beverage consumption is really just an invitation to write a blog post, I am totally going to review some exotic soda pops! We bought nine different pops each, and I’ve been really good and have only been drinking one a day. So far, I’ve had the following:

Ok, well, VV and I tried these together and split them.  She got the Cel Ray (celery soda!), I got the Mr. Q. Cumber (um, cucumber soda!  Obviously).  Dear skeptics:  shut up right now because these vegetable flavoured sodas were amazing.  Both were not too sweet and not too vegetable-ish but really nice and refreshing.  The Cel Ray had a sort of V8-ish kind of aftertaste, and the Q. Cumber was really clean and light.  And yes, of course, we did mix them together in the interests of Soda Pop Science, and I’d actually say that the Cel Ray Q. Cumber Cocktail was probably the best of the three.  ALSO, IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH:  People in the know have informed me that you can get Cel Ray at Canter’s.  Why didn’t anybody tell me you could get Cel Ray at Canter’s?  I am so totally having celery soda with my next matzo ball.

The A.J. Stephens Raspberry Lime Rickey was potentially one of the most delicious things I have ever consumed.  I can’t even tell you.  It was just so good.  It was good because the raspberry flavor wasn’t that horrible fake-tasting raspberry, you know?  And also the color is clearly amazing.

Of course I drink my Manhattan Special out of a martini glass.  Was there ever any question, really?  Anyhow, this was wonderful.  As a pretentious coffee snob I feel qualified to make that assessment.  I would seriously consider replacing my usual afternoon coffee with this, if it wasn’t full of sugar.

Fentiman’s Mandarin and Seville Orange Jigger!  I have no idea what a jigger is.  Shockingly, wikipedia is being completely unhelpful in this regard and has provided a useless list of definitions of “jigger” that includes nothing that resembles soda pop, and one or two things that are kind of offensive.  But whatever.  This was good shit.  It was slightly medicinal tasting at first, but that kind of went away.  I really liked the bubbles in this, weirdly enough – they were really tiny and soft.  And apparently Fentiman’s is not soda pop – apparently it is a Botanically Brewed Beverage, which makes it fancier.  I also got a Curiosity Cola, which I think I’m going to try tomorrow.

Oh, yum.  Yum yum yum yum.  The Nesbitt’s Peach tasted like fake peach, like a peach Jolly Rancher, but not bad fake peach, you know?  Like really, really good fake peach.  And also, it is hot pink.  No complaints here.

Stay tuned for reviews of:   Fentiman’s Curiosity Cola!  Vignette Pinot Noir Soda!  Manhattan Special Vanilla Cream!  Cheerwine!  I will try to post them daily instead of in a big batch, but, you know, best laid plans and stuff.