‘Food’ Category

  1. Diet for an Atomic Planet, episode the first: The Unbearable Blandness of Eating

    February 1, 2011 by ms. xandra

    Let me tell you a story:

    Once upon a time a young lady became oddly obsessed with post-World War II culture in all of its incarnations:  the music, the fashion, the movies.  And then that young lady decided to take the last step officially certifiable:  she decided that the time had come to begin dabbling in Cold War-era American cuisine.

    And so I am pleased to bring you the first episode of Diet for an Atomic Planet, starring Mrs. Meta Given, the Betty Crocker of Pittsburgh.  All recipes below the jump are from the 1947 two-volume edition of Mrs. Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking.

    (more…)

    Category Food, Meta Given | Tags: | 4 Comments

  2. Breaking Cheese Carrot Update! Also, new years resolutions?

    December 28, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Hello my friends and darlings, how are you?  I am particularly excellent right now because I have finally answered a question that has plagued myself and several of my compatriots for time immemorial (ie:  since last May).  That question is:  what actually goes in a Cheese Carrot?  But we will get to that in a second.  First!  I am hereby announcing my new years resolutions!  I do not ordinarily make resolutions, but these are things that have been on my mind for some time so I feel like January is as good a time as any to implement them.

    RESOLUTION 1:  Blog more.  To that end, I have a new foolhardy project, which I will detail below!  Also, I will blog more at Blogging.LA because I don’t post as much as I ought to and I feel guilty about it.

    RESOLUTION 2:  Come up with a post-Ph.D. life plan.  I feel like now is a pretty good time to be doing this, since I’ve got about 2 years left of grad school if things go well, so I can start putting things in place.  The deal is:  I like academia.  I like it a lot.  I like learning and I like teaching and I like writing.  I am not totally burnt out on it yet.  I will totally finish my degree, and I will totally take a stab at finding an academic job.  HOWEVER, the reality is that there are fewer and fewer good jobs in academia.  So, rather than become one of those people who doggedly and futilely pursue non-existent tenure-track jobs, and find themselves living on ramen at age 40, I want to start thinking NOW about what I can do to get a job outside of academia, and, if possible, start doing things now that will make that possible.  This could take some doing, as my curent skill set is not, how you say, easily marketable.  And this is where, you, my friends, come in!  I have a few ideas about things I could potentially do, but I would like to know:  have you ever thought to yourself “Gee, that Alexandra would make a really good (insert profession here)”?  Because I am curious as to what other people think I would be good at.  WARNING:   If you say that I will be a good lumberjack or a good rabbi (both actual career suggestions that were recommended to me by a computerized aptitude test in high school) you will be disqualified.  Also, while I have entertained both “society wife” and “high-class call girl” as options, I feel that these positions would not truly play to my strengths.

    AND NOW CHEESE CARROTS.

    So, as you may recall, I made a cheese- and gelatin-based monstrosity last spring, for research purposes.  It was based on a recipe that I vaguely recalled from a 1947 recipe book by one Mrs. Meta Given, the Betty Crocker of Pittsburgh,   that I found in a book sale in a church basement.    As of last spring, the book was in my parents’ basement in Canada, and I was in Los Angeles, so I had to reconstruct the recipe from memory.  I remembered that it involved cheese, carrots, gelatin, and parsley, and I remembered that it was pretty unfortunate, and based on these remembrances, I attempted to recreate it.  And now, here I am in Canada, where I have finally excavated the actual cookbook from my parents basement and I present for you the genuine, 100% authentic and true Meta Given Cheese Carrot Recipe!

    (Please excuse the poor photo quality – these are taken with my phone because, alas, my camera got lost or stolen at LAX.  Because of the un-stellar quality, I shall transcribe below.)

    CHEESE CARROTS

    1/2 tsp plain gelatin

    1 tbsp cold water

    1/4 pimiento cheese spread(editor’s note: OH GOD WHAT COULD THIS BE???  Ok, maybe it is not so bad?)

    1/8 tsp salt

    Dash of Worcestershire sauce (editor’s note:  it’s the Worcestershire sauce that really elevates this from mere cooking to cuisine.)

    1/3 cup freshly grated carrots

    Parsley

    Soften gelatin in cold water for 5 minutes.  Melt over hot water.  Cool slightly.  Blend with pimiento cheese, salt, and Worcestershire sauce.  Chil just enough to stiffen slightly.  Divide into 1/2 teaspoon portions.  Roll each portion of cheese into a cone shape, then roll in the grated carrots until generously coated with carrot.  Place on a waxed paper and chill until firm.  Stick a small spring of parsley in the end of each.  Makes about 20.

    So…this is both less horrible and more horrible than what I remembered it being.  I was not THAT far off, however, and I do think that the use of cheese spread is better than the grated cheese that I used.  However, it pleases me that the gelatin is not as large a component as I thought it was because that means that making a vegetarian version of these is much more feasible.

    The cookbook this comes from – Meta Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking – is a source of magic and wonder.  And also, as evidenced by th above,  horror.  And so, I have decided to embark on an extended journey with this cookbook, to really get to know the ins and outs of mid-century American cuisine.  So what I am going to do is make a recipe from Meta Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking once a week.  This is not going to be some Julie and Julia thing where I cook my way through the entire entire book because, honestly, I would like to emerge from this with my life and my stomach lining both intact, so I will be picking and choosing my recipes depending on what I can stand.  I can tell you right now that I will not be making ANYTHING from page 445:

    Prune milk, sage milk, tomato buttermilk, tomato milk…strangely enough, these have limited appeal.

    But there are plenty of other things in this book that are equally silly and about half as disgusting.  So stay tuned!  Sunday Dinner with Mrs. Given will start some time in the new year!

    Because of the un-stellar quality, I shall transcribe:

    Category Academe, Books, Food | Tags: | No Comments

  3. This salad is going really well.

    December 5, 2010 by ms. xandra

    My kitchen looks like a murder scene and I think there might be grey matter in my bundt pan!  Must be Saturday.

    Category Food | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Current state of affairs (or: wither the humble jalapeno?)

    September 11, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Aaron:  I went to Jons* the other day looking for rakia** andthey had some!

    Alexandra:  Neat!  I went to Tesco*** the other day looking for salsa and they didn’t have any!

    Aaron:  It’s probably just as well.

    Also, I forgot to tell you the story of the time Tanya and I thought we were going dancing a couple of weeks ago, only we got to the bar and NOBODY WAS DANCING, and the DJ was being That Guy, The One Who Only Plays Ultra-Obscure Northern Soul and Ignores the Fact that the One Time He Played a Supremes Song Everybody Actually Got Up and Danced, and I ordered us a margarita at the bar because it was listed prominently on their cocktail menu.  It took two bartenders almost 10 minutes to create this margarita, while consulting a recipe book, and then they served it in a martini glass rimmed with table salt.  Oh well.

    *LA-based grocery store chain that carries lots of Asian and Eastern-European food products

    **Balkan liqueur, hard to find outside of Balkans

    ***Major British grocery store chain

    Category Adventure, Food | Tags: | No Comments

  5. Recent Culinary Adventures, episode two!

    June 4, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Bless me father, for I have sinned.  I made this thing out of gelatin, cheese, and carrots:

    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.

    Category Adventure, Food | Tags: | 2 Comments

  6. Recent Culinary adventures, episode one!

    June 2, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Happy 601th blog post!  Did you know that I have been blogging for five years?  That is FOREVER in internet time!

    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!

    Category Food | Tags: | 3 Comments

  7. VOCABULARY WORD OF THE DAY:

    May 2, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Megavertebrate.

    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

    Category Adventure, Food | Tags: | 3 Comments

  8. Adventurtimes!

    April 22, 2010 by ms. xandra

    So I went to Seattle for the Pop Conference!  It was pretty successful, I’d say:  I met lots of cool folks, and managed to not make out with Chuck Klosterman or similar (this was facilitated by the fact that Chuck Klosterman was not there; and I was accompanied by my gentleman caller, who may have frowned upon such behaviour).  And I gave a paper about Lady Gaga, so that was pretty neat.  I have come so far as a scholar!  It was but a year ago that my students in the LGBT Pop class were all turning in terrible papers about Poker Face and I was like “who is the Lady Gaga that the young folk are so excited about?”  Ah, yes.  Don’t say we’re not busy doing important things over here in Musicologyland.

    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.

    Category Academe, Adventure, Awesome, Food | Tags: | 1 Comment

  9. Monsters and burgers and pie, oh my.

    March 16, 2010 by ms. xandra

    You know that scene in Ghost World (aka Still My Favourite Film After All These Years Because I Remain an Angsty 17 Year Old At Heart) where Enid and Rebecca are in the diner and Melorra, that really irritatingly earnest girl who is exactly like every perky human that I hate (because actually I am a Cynical Old 76 Year Old At Heart) comes in and is like “this place is so funky”?  HERE LOOK, I found you that scene in case you forgot – the part I’m talking about starts at 2:30:

    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.

    Category Adventure, Awesome, Food | Tags: | No Comments

  10. Breakfasttime Adventure!

    January 31, 2010 by ms. xandra

    A couple weeks ago, the Estimable Miss VV and I arose with the sun (or, well, clouds, actually – it was SoCal’s semi-annual Rain Week – not as exciting as Shark Week, but just as wet) and ventured forth for a double-whammy of giant, round breakfast foods with holes in the middle.  This was an exciting event, because it means that finally we have eaten at all of the former Big Donut locations that remain in SoCal.

    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.

    Category Adventure, Food, Los Angeles | Tags: | No Comments

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