Posts Tagged “lunch”
My mother made grilled cheese with Wonder Bread (“builds strong bodies 12 ways”) and two slices of processed American cheese. Served it with a can of heated-up Campbell’s Cream of Tomato Soup. I came home from school (remember when kids came home for lunch?) ate it and went back to school. Not bad. Not that great either.
Any way you slice that turkey, Fellow FoodBeest, Thanksgiving can be high stress. This week the pre- Turkey-Day plan is to avoid eating anything that vaguely resembles poultry. And comfort food looks like a very, very good idea.
Here’s one good way to use your homemade mozzarella – or the stuff you bought at the store. It’s a very Italian sandwich that you can make as a panini or just as a nice toasted sandwich.
Ramps are wild leeks and look pretty much like green onions – if green onions had wide green wings to unfurl. They are sweet and a little pungent – like a cross between young spring onions and garlic. But they’re also just a funky enough that you know they are a wild flora and not cultivated. They’re the first fresh, locally grown produce of the spring and they’re barely available for even a month, heralding the arrival of asparagus, fiddlehead ferms, and garlic scapes.
Given the hype, you would think that this place served something like foie gras on a bun. Or like maybe they cook their fries in duck fat. Or that someone like TV’s celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain had declared it one of “13 Places to Eat Before You Die.”
Clearly Restaurant Week seems to be good for restaurants, especially in filling the post-Holiday/pre-spring restaurant doldrums. The question, then, is what is it that restaurants are out to accomplish during Restaurant Week? And what impression do they want to leave with their diners?
I reminded myself of those legions of human beings who eat goat all the time. I rolled up that warm corn taco and took a bite. How did it taste, Fellow FoodBeest? It wasn’t bad. It tasted like braised meat. Slightly dirty meat, actually. And no, I can’t quite explain what I mean by that, but it clearly wasn’t beef or veal or lamb or even pork.
What’s most relevant for a FoodBeest, is that this is the land of wild salmon so fresh that ruby red filets practically swim into the kitchen. Huge, juicy mussels abound that make the ones I find in Chicago weep with jealousy.
What if fresh produce could provide food almost as fast – and definitely as good — as the stuff we grab in a bag or a box? It can! Check out this eggplant waffle panini lunch and these blistered Shishito peppers as a snack or hors d’oerve.
These beautiful Israeli and Palestinian women became just women – cousins, really – who were engaging with one another as friends and relatives do. And it wasn’t inside their stories; it was over shared food.
