First I learned about Stockbox. Which is brilliant. Even the New York Times thinks they're worth paying attention to. 

Today brings bliss: pop-up restaurants and a beer garden in a stalled-out construction project. I know of a few stretches where this would be really cool--frequently in areas that aren't really in neighborhoods so much as in between neighborhoods--not necessarily walkable, but missing out on annoying NIMBYs who'd freak out at the idea of people drinking a beer outside. 

On page 85, I stumbled across this line while reading the Pistachio Cake recipe (for the record: pistachio cake, lemon curd, pistachion butter cream). 
"Once all of the egg whites have been incorporated, you will have a snotty green soup in your mixing bowl. Right on."
I already loved the book and thanks to "Right on" I now love it 100x more.  

For complicated reasons that will remain entirely unexamined here, it reminded me of a lunch a handful of years ago, when my brother and I were both writing up a handful of short reviews for an alt-weekly's Best Restaurants issue. We were at an excellent barbecue joint, and we started a contest in ridiculous superlatives about how great his sandwich was. He won, or I think it was his line although we both tend to lose track of these things and it's entirely possible that its questionable brilliance half belongs to each of us: "I loved the sandwich so much, I fucked it on the table in front of my sister."  

No, the line was not actually used in print. The alt weekly wasn't that alt. 

Getting cabin fever with my cold, so I ventured out this afternoon for pho deep in the Rainier Valley. Afterwards, I popped into my favorite Vietnamese bakery--Q Bakery at Graham & MLK (which is not remotely Columbia City, as Yelp claims). I picked up a rather random selection of treats--custard puffs, something like housemade corn nuts, sesame caramel patties, housemade yogurt (which is half sweetened condensed milk and SO GOOD), a couple giant/delicious/preposterously cheap sesame bread sticks (seriously--the size of my arm, for 60 cents). After I was rung up, Cap'n pointed out a case tucked in the corner that had various canned goods--mostly pates of various kinds, and some fancy tins of mushrooms. The weird one was butter. 

The diameter was similar to a CD, and about as tall as a large can of tuna--either 11 or 12 ounce total. It was a sad greyish-lilac color, like a dingy 80s bridesmaid dress, with darker cursive writing on it. The name brand wasn't obvious, but I remember it starting with a B. Basically all I can find online for canned butter is this Red Feather brand, which is from New Zealand or possibly Australia, depending on which web source I trust. There's one Austalian company that seems to make five different brands of canned butter, primarily for the Asian market, but with at least a small clientele of survivalist weirdos from around the world. I hesitated at the $11 price--my fancy farmers market butter is about 65 cents per ounce and this stuff is about a buck an ounce. I'll pick some up on my next trip just to try it--a few bloggers mention that they tried other brands on a whim after a trip to an Asian grocery store, and were surprised at the high quality. 

Finding it feels a bit like finding milk in a vacu-bag. It's perfectly reasonable for that food to be in that packaging, and it could be totally common in other regions--but it's not at all what I'm used to seeing.  

I have this tendency towards skepticism. Sometimes it's beneficial, but it's also made me a less-than-great student (I don't believe what teachers tell me), a resistant medical patient (what, exactly, is the science behind your advice, and what is its source?) a less-than-cooperative employee (you really think that's a good business model?), and an accidentally unsupportive friend (you think he's 'the one'? gimme a break.) 

The tendency comes out loud but not especially proud in nutritional matters. I am not an expert, I am just a skeptic. When it was determined that my beloved husband had hereditarily high cholesterol, I was furious that his nutritionist was promoting almonds. The new (at the time, around 2007) study that almonds had all these great health properties? That was sponsored by the Almond Board of California. She was also a vegetarian, and was pushing him to eat less meat as well. Except we don't eat meat every day as it is. There were one or two pro-fiber changes he made thanks to her suggestions, but it had zero effect on his cholesterol numbers. More fruit every day isn't a bad idea--but it wasn't the solution he needed. And almonds are not a miracle food. No food is a miracle food, no matter what a marketing commission-sponsored study might say. 

Before that episode, I spent a few years reviewing numerous diet books for Amazon. They're all essentially the same--more vegetables, and either more whole grains and less meat, or fewer grains and more meat. A gazillion dollar industry is built on this. It drove--drives--me crazy. During these years, and beyond, I dealt with a deeply frustrating physical issue. At its root was an "incompetent disk" (I love that phrase) in my lower spine that caused all sorts of referred nerve pain and direct low back pain. Ultimately, I had the disk removed and that part of my spine fused, and had a terrific physical therapist and aside from lingering nerve damage, all is now well. But those pre-fusion years--years spent trying to delay or avoid that surgery entirely--were awful. Every healer I visited had different solutions, and different ideas for the cause. It was fibromyalgia. It was all in my head. It was stress. It was just something to learn to live with. It was body mechanics. It was curable by opiates, or vitamins, or antidepressants, or yoga, or some experimental medical procedure (most famous one: frying the disk with concentrated heat and letting it regrow) or cortisone shots. Finally, an impossibly painful procedure was able to determine that a single disk was at fault. I had great doctors, and terrible doctors, and finally the big surgery was what I needed to get better. 

So I get, first hand, the idea that sometimes drastic solutions are what works to solve health problems. And I get, more theoretically, that dietary changes can be those drastic solutions. Celiacs need to avoid gluten, diabetics need to watch sugars of all kinds, those with high cholesterol should balance their fat and fiber intake. But I am deeply, deeply resistant to the recent "elimination diet" methods that are currently everywhere in my circle of acquaintance. 

First, there is of course an obvious and well documented history of this country's food-based health fads. We are a nation of plenty, and because immediate starvation has only rarely, and only in the short term, been a national issue, most of our citizens find other ways to fret over food. Mr. Kellogg founded an accidental empire on his grain-based dietary advice. When I was a kid, half of my fellow students were claimed by their moms to be hypoglycemic, and thus in need of a midmorning fruit snack. (I have not met a hypoglycemic in at least 25 years. Where did they go?) Now, it seems that everyone is allergic to something. And when I say "something" I mean broad categories of proteins. People report experiencing symptoms that in general sound to me like being human. Mild headaches, occasional digestive upsets, lower-than-ideal energy, sporadic itchiness, a bad mood. They eliminate all sorts of foods in search of an ideal state of health, a personal skin-enclosed utopia. There are some allergy tests that do not have, to me, a particularly reliable record--around 70% accuracy. In school, that's what--a C minus? Not good enough in my book. 

I'm not saying that there are never reasons to eliminate a broad category of food from your diet. The last time I ate oysters, I ended up with violent vomiting for 24 hours followed by a bright red rash that coated me from clavicle to patella for a week. I visited my terrific allergist, and sure enough: no more mollusks for me. That was not the case a few years ago, and I assume (and hope) that it could easily change in the future. I also ended up being visited by the paramedics after eating a Brazil nut. For years, it was "no tree nuts"--although I knew I could eat all the almonds I liked, so this never made sense. Turns out there is no botantical "tree nut" category--so many things we know as nuts are utterly different. Variations on this are why some people get a rash from cow's milk but can eat chevre 'til...well, 'til the cows come home. I get that bodies are different, and reactions are different, and just because to me an allergy means "hives and breathing trouble" that isn't necessarily what it means to everyone. 

After my years of crippling pain, and that damned pain scale, I know that sometimes even a minor reduction in feeling lousy is worthwhile. When I signed up for the spinal fusion, I was told to expect a 3-point reduction in pain on that chart. Considering that doped to the gills I averaged a 7, a 3-point shift sounded awesome. But now, my daily experience is ballpark of a 3--if I don't take my meds, my legs are pins/needles to varying degrees, and without careful attention to posture and regular stretching, I am guaranteed a severe, life-affecting headache. It's how I roll, and I don't need opiates or accupuncture. I also don't feel the need to pursue an ideal state of zero on that pain chart. Some days, I experience that, and it's great. But it's unlikely that it'll ever be the norm, and I don't honestly care that much. When you have lived for years at the other end of that scale, a 3 is great. A 3 is dancing, and long dinners out, and gardening, and going for walks, and using public transit again, all on the same day. It's not thoughtless perfect health, and that's fine. 

For me, the only circumstances where it would be worth elimating gluten, dairy, eggs, soy or whatever would be if I was down past 5 on that scale, on a regular daily basis for a lengthy period of months, and it was proven to me after a couple of weeks of avoiding that food category that I was getting that 3-point improvement. I do see that in some cases, and good for you if you're one of them--dealing with a chronic health issue is no picnic. Be of stout heart and firm mind and best of luck to you. But when I see people living utterly normal lives trying these diets in search of magic, it drives me crazy. If it was the 1600s you'd belief that baths were unhealthy; if you lived in the 1700s you'd believe in balacing your humors via bloodletting and laxatives; if you lived in the 1800s you'd chew each bite 100 times and drink sulphorous water (another laxative); if you lived in the 1920s you'd have decided it was all because of your mother, and if it was the 1970s you'd be hypoglycemic. 



 

I am both delighted and skeptical and sad about this: Pepperidge Farm has licensed Tim Tams. Generally a good thing, right? No more special trip to Cost Plus or begging people who live in/visit Australia to pony up the goods.

Except I am not completely sure they're identical, and it's the end of April and according to the link above, they are only available October through March. I found my first package last night. The plain chocolate was sold out (s'fine, I like the caramel even if Cap'n prefers the plain), and there was no sign of shelf space for the dark chocolate. Which means I either ignore them until my birthday month when I will quite possibly be inundated with them as gifts, or run all over town searching out more packages. Since I'm used to only having them after, say, helping out some grateful Ozzies I shared a deadly armed robbery in the jungle with, driving to a few shops doesn't seem like too big a deal. (True story. Another true story: a single Tim Tam was once secreted in a small box, passed to me, and I was shushed upon opening it; it was Not Meant for Sharing with the Tim-Tam loving child nearby, which made it feel like a deadly weapon rather than a cookie. ) At any rate, the rareness contributes to the fun. They're not a regular household item, and possibly not worth the effort.

I'm not utterly convinced the chocolate coating is the same. It probably is, why would it be different, but it's hard to be certain without side-by-side comparison. Aside from that righteous mistrust of global food practices, the sadness is because this sort of brand licensing makes me feel like all the actually creative products are done. Pep Farms can buy successful cookie recipes, so why would they want to invent a new Brussels or Chessmen or those delicious Bordeaux? Or, bleh, even add new versions of those damned (and inescapable) Milanos. Stupid Pep Farm has already discontinued my childhood favorite (apple squares, like the turnovers but smaller and free of raisins). Pep, I don't think you're going to rock this party until the party ends, friend.

And if they're going to be all lazy and license other people's brilliant products, it'd be great to bring back some of the obscure short-lived flavors (chile chocolate!) that might do better here than down under. Like my brother once said: If you're going to be a tool, at least be a power tool.