The Funny Thing About A Fake Cuban
Some people are all riled up over the gorilla this week. That’s not me. I have a hard time understanding people’s affection for the animals they keep as pets, so deep feelings for an animal I’ve never met aren’t going to happen.
I eat meat. I wear leather. I use soap. I love cheese. I read glossy magazines.
Which isn’t to say I’m entirely heartless. I don’t want to see animals tormented. I do want to see their sacrifices be respected. And I think we should be treating those creatures who pay the ultimate sacrifice for our nutrition and pleasure much better than we currently are.
From what I gather, I’m not alone in my dissatisfaction with meat and dairy production in the United States. Whether it’s the quality of the feed, the conditions in which the animals live, or the methods in which they are killed, there’s a lot of room for improvement in the system. And it’s not just the animals. The speed of the line and specialization of tasks takes its toll on the human workers too. Plus the hard working farmers always seem to get screwed.
But let’s bring this back to food, because the controversy I want to tackle is about the vegan Cuban.
The Memorial Day Weekend Hangover
Who wants to be back in the regular grind today? I don’t.
It’s hard coming back from vacations and getting back into the swing of everyday life. What makes it even more challenging is that because this is a short week, there is even less time to do all the things that have to be done. Ugh.
Hopefully, at least you enjoyed the long weekend. I enjoyed my day off of blogging and putting my Yelp responsibilities on hold. I really needed a catch-up day on Monday after my weekend in Detroit. I headed out to the Motor City for my old college friend’s wedding. It was great. Never did I think that S would ever settle down, but I’m glad she’s found someone worthy of such a mighty commitment.
My old college friends and I were at the wedding until the bitter end. And then we went out and closed down the bars. I can’t remember the last time that happened. But there was more than binge drinking. I also let my guard down on my diet just a wee little bit.
While I did not get any Detroit style pizza or Slow’s BBQ, I still did pretty well for myself.
Funday: Baby Steps
How does time move for you? For me it moves quickly. That means a restaurant that I think just opened may already have six months or more under its belt. And I realized that it’s been a while since I tackled a Sell Out Funday post, but when I looked at the archive, I discovered that it has been almost nine months since the last collection of press releases and notifications.
We could have made a baby in that time. Instead, what have we been doing? I’ve got no idea.
Well, I’ve gotten deeper into beer, thrown some kickass Yelp events, and survived winter. Now it’s starting to be the spring and summer season when the social calendar really heats up. It’s unreal. I’m going to be missing things left and right, including some presentation where my son will be awarded a certificate for “Outstanding Academic Achievement.” But dammit, the school shouldn’t have put that on a night that I was already triple booked.
Are you a little less busy? Looking for things to do? Wondering where the cool kids are going to be up to this weekend and beyond? I’m off to Detroit for a dear friend’s wedding. So I’ll be missing a lot of local things. Hopefully you can go and I can live vicariously through your experiences.
Boil In
Soup. Not only is it easy to make, but it plays a really important role in restaurant kitchens. Soup is a great way to still make money off of scraps of food that might otherwise be wasted.
Restaurants are a shitty business. Heck, most businesses these days are. But the trick to any business is trying to squeeze revenue out of every part of the operation. When nothing goes to waste, the business has a shot at being profitable.
A couple years ago when I was at the Americana Diner outside of Princeton, I saw their stock pots. They were shockingly large. My friend chef Cory, says the secret to his food is the flavor of his stock. Stock is important to cooking. And it’s often the base of soups.
At the Americana Diner, I saw a surprising number of large, plump chicken wings in the stock pot. These wings could have been sold for a buck a pop. But instead of adding to the bottom line, the chef felt that her food was better served using these tasty bird bits in the stock which would ultimately improve the flavor of what was coming out of the kitchen.
But that’s not the case everywhere.
Shitty Tools
Perhaps my most cherished possession is my well-seasoned cast iron skillet. I’ve had it going on twenty years at this point. And in the right hands, the thing is glorious. They are gentle enough that I can cook omelets in the thing without them sticking to the bottom, they are heavy enough that I can put a sear on just about anything, and they are sturdy enough that I can use metal tools on them with almost reckless abandon.
Of course, you do need to know how to use them. In the wrong hands a great cast iron skillet might as well be a cheap and flimsy stainless steel saucepan.
Over the years I’ve amassed quite a great collection of cookware. From large stainless sauté pans to enameled cast iron dutch ovens. I’ve got a chinois for straining my delicious dinners, and I’ve been getting more and more comfortable with my relatively new pressure cooker.
By now I’ve jettisoned all the anodized aluminum from my life. I’ll blame the idealism of my early 20s for investing in those pots and pans.
Anyhow, this past weekend, I found myself in my sister’s small Manhattan apartment. The kids were hungry for eggs, and the best thing I could find to cook ’em was a flimsy stainless steel saucepan.
A Bad Taste In Your Mouth
We all eat. If you’re lucky, for the most part, you get to eat good food. And by good, let’s withhold value judgements, and just say delicious. You get to eat delicious food. Cereal with ice cold milk can be delicious. So can a slice of pizza, or a crisp apple, or a cup of soup.
Let’s say you aren’t so lucky. Even still, in this day and age, most likely the food you eat isn’t actively bad. We’ll put aside for a moment that this phenomenon is largely thanks to the invention of modern preservatives that will keep mold away, and extend the shelf life of processed foods. The upside is an existence virtually free from eating rancid foods.
But we eat. A lot. Most of us eat every day, and multiple times per day. At that rate, eventually, your luck is going to run out.
That could mean a bad piece of sushi or an off oyster. Perhaps one rare burger contained a colony of bacteria hell bent on doing you harm. Heck, maybe you did yourself in by overindulging with some favorite beer, wine, or spirit.
We’ve all been there. And I’m not going to linger on the physical consequences. What I want to discuss are the psychological ones. Because sometimes, all it takes is one bad experience to turn people off something forever. I get it.
What I learned recently, is that this has a strong corollary with bad experiences at restaurants.
The Fear of Xenophobia
Politics don’t suit a food blog. I learned that a long time ago. Although there are some people who say that we make political statements all the time by the food we buy and what we choose to put in our mouths.
I just came back from a bit over 24 hours in New York City to visit family. Yes, there was food. Some of it was excellent. But the food part was secondary. As always, there are more places I want to try, than places I am able to visit. The same goes for people too.
One of the things I love most about Manhattan is what an international city it is.
Walking through Central Park, it’s easy to imagine that you could hear almost every language spoken on Earth. There’s not a lot of xenophobia there, because multiculturalism is part of the fabric of the city. It’s hard to have an irrational dislike of people from other countries when they are your friends, neighbors, and colleagues.
But maybe a little xenophobia wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Saturday Night At The Food Court
This Saturday night I’ll be in Manhattan, and it’s unlikely that I’ll find myself in a food court. Mrs. Fussy is staying behind while I take the kids on an adventure to spend some time with my side of the family.
And by staying behind, I really mean running her first half-marathon. Because in a family full of couch potatoes, someone has to be able to run and get help in case there’s some kind of emergency.
I went into our marriage knowing she was a little bit crazy. And she went into our union knowing that I was obsessed with food. With eyes wide open, we took the plunge regardless. But there is no question, that she is the one for me. Every now and again, there is a moment that cements that fact.
Like Mother’s Day, for example. In lieu of gifts, we all woke up stupid early and drove her to some 10k race, where we cheered her on a half mile out from the finish line to her personal best time. Afterwards, instead of going to some fancy restaurant, we all went to Dan’s Place Two. It was the one place that had no line. And you know what? The food was absolutely incredible.
Then, just last weekend when my in-laws were in town, the two of us went out for date night.
AskTP – May Days
It’s been so long since I’ve sat down to write an Ask the Profussor with just a reasonable number of questions that I’ve forgotten what it feels like.
The commitment I made at the start of the blog was that every question asked in the comments section of the blog would receive an answer, just so long as it included proper punctuation. It may not be a good answer, or a timely answer. But questions are important and they should be encouraged.
Some of the features on the FLB have come and gone. Ask the Profussor has been here since May 2009, if in a slightly modified format, and hopefully it will continue until I hang up the guns and ride off into the sunset.
Don’t forget to check out the mystery link of the day, which is included at the start of every question. It’s mostly there to help break up the page visually, but it’s also something I think you’ll find interesting.
Now without further ado, onto the questions.
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