I cater lunch to my department on Tuesdays. The menu is my choice, and people can sign up and pitch in $6 for cost of materials if they'd like to partake. Seeing an opportunity to glorify the democratic process with our upcoming election, I sponsored a lunchClub menu election for our November 2 fete.

The contestants:

1. Ham & Swiss Sandwiches, Butternut Soup (with Basil Pesto), Gingered Pumpkin Mousse

2. Spicy Glazed Meatloaf, Creamy Cucumber Salad, Cranberry-Pumpkin Cheesecake

3. Bologna & American Cheese Sandwiches, Baked Mac & Cheese, Rice Krispie Bars

After much campaigning, loud debate among voters and a manufactured hanging chad on the ballot sheet, candidate two (meatloaf) won the day in a close victory over candidate three (bologna).

(Which is part of why I found this article on Bologna-Laden Spin Sandwiches so amusing...)

The people have spoken, and much to my surprise... the people love meatloaf. The roomie concurs. She said she's seen many a restaurant sell out when they post a meatloaf special. Crazy.

Let's collectively hope Tuesday's voters similarly reject bologna in favor of something meatier.

Enid's (2nd Annual) Apple Pie Contest

I imagine being a hipster must be so trying. I mean, the trend-spotting, look-innovating, show-hopping (so you can be the first to be bored by any given up-and-coming band), cheap-beer drinking and “I’m so done with all the mainstream bullshit” attitude maintenance must be exhausting.

That same cool-factor fatigue must account for the packed house last night at Enid’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (oh-so close to nearly-played-out Williamsburg) for their 2nd Annual Apple Pie Contest. Enid’s, home of cheap beer, satisfying Southern-style brunches, old-school arcade games and hipsters aplenty.

I brought a pie, thinking the competition would be easy pickin’s. I mean, please… I live food and couldn’t imagine the Enid’s population in my neighborhood producing much more than frozen pies and limp little tarts on a random Tuesday night.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

Through that double-door poured pies. All kinds of pies. Guys with bushy beards and tight cardigan sweaters carrying pies. Girls with dresses over jeans (yeah, I know you hate that look, K…) carrying pies. Cute little gay boys with their boyfriends carrying pies. At least twenty pies and a half-dozen judges. Everything from a cream-topped apple-peanut butter pie to a domed dessert with a Halloween-pumpkin style face (that one took top honors… damn good!).
Flat pies with crumble tops, one in a casserole dish, and an apple-pizza pie with olives and sausage (surprisingly nice).

The judges tasted. They tested. They rated. They raved. They convened, argued, re-tasted and reconvened. My own humble pie was among the group of re-tastings. The roomie squealed in delight as they picked at the crust and sampled an apple chunk.

I analyzed the judges with a fellow pie-maker, Mason (co-father of the PB-Apple pie), who observed, “It seems like hipsters are really into domesticity lately. Everyone I know is knitting or crocheting and baking. I mean, look around.” Indeed. The place was chock-full of the hip. They circled the pie table like sharks with plastic forks, waiting impatiently to dive in for the kill.

My pie (Granny Smith and Macintosh apples, standard crust, pastry vines and berries with an egg-wash and sprinkled turbinado sugar on top) garnered the “prettiest pie” prize… a title with honor, a T-shirt and two drink tickets.

The winner, one of those bushy-bearded lanky guys in Mason’s posse, looked dizzy with excitement. He gripped his recycled bowling trophy and free brunch tickets. He grinned like a child. And lucky for me, he happily spilled his pie-making secrets with all the passion of a hipster who’s found the coolest new thing.

All I can say is: I’m ready for next year.

Yup. Them's some funny lookin' eggs.

The wise and wonderful Julia Child once told us, "It behooves us to choose eggs carefully and treat them right." Eggs are so vital to the culinary arts, it's said that there are a hundred folds in the chefs' toque to represent all the ways a master chef can prepare an egg.

People of all occupations have honored eggs as symbols of fertility and renewal for millennia, and the American Egg Board has been trying (for just about that long) to convince us all of the bountiful benefits of the "Incredible, Edible Egg."

Egg-worship now reaches a new level, thanks to Iloveegg — a site that brings us eggs as superheroes, sports stars, cheerleaders, cowboys and astronauts. The "egg song" is a long download, even on a fast line, but it's just the ticket when you get that irresistable itch to see dancing, singing, morphing eggs in all their multifaceted glory.

A few months ago, they had a piece on NPR's On The Media about songs that get stuck in your head: earworms.

And no, I won't infect you, dear reader. I'm not that cruel.

Apparently, musicians, women and neurotics are most suseptible, but in my experience, it's fatigue that does it. The tired mind is fertile soil for the pernicious earworm. For some reason, the 1980s provide me with the most miserable worms.

They're on my mind (or in it, I suppose) because I've been plagued for the last few days with an '80s hit parade of wretched bubblegum tunes from Boy Meets Girl to Chicago to Starship. Blorg!

I agree with Neva Grant's cure... an equally "catchy" but less bothersome song is the only way out.

I watched a broadcast taping for The Splendid Table at The Museum of Television and Radio last night (it airs Nov. 6th, so you can hear how fab it was for yourself), and the discussion between chefs Thomas Keller (The French Laundry and Per Se) and Anthony Bourdain (Le Halles) made me pine for the long days (and long nights) I spent as a line cook.

I miss the present-moment lifestyle, the comraderie and the constant sensory blast of the kitchen life. I miss exploring the qualities of unfamiliar vegetables. I miss the sense of pride and the instant gratification. I miss being able to speak with my co-workers in the kind of blunt, direct language that a sugar-coated office vernacular would never accomodate.

I do not, of course, miss disfiguring cuts and burns, becoming a stranger to my friends and family, the lack of any sort of balance in my life, or constant calls from collection agencies and the good old student loan corporation.

Mindful of those who straddle the poverty line, here's my link of the day:
Cheap Stingy Bastard's guide to food & drink

Sometimes I wonder if Canadians are smarter than Americans.

Then I read a story like this "Last Expos Hotdog Draws Big Price" and I remember that foolishness obeys no national boundaries.

At least we can be thankful the money went to charity.

Sushi Rice Man rules the bowl... and perhaps the world?

In yet another example of how Asia will soon dominate the universe and leave North America in the dust of fallen empires, I'd like to bring up food representation trends in comics.

A manic struggle with coffee overconsumption this morning led me to think of Shannon Wheeler's long-running Too Much Coffee Man — one of few food-based comics in North American media. While food makes incidental or character development appearances in many newspaper dailies (Dagwood Bumstead's signature towering sandwiches, Garfield's lasagna, Andy Capp's pints and chips and most famously, Popeye, who has probably inspired more spinach consumption in children than any USDA 5-A-Day program could ever dream of achieving...) there haven't been many significant food-based characters since the Shmoo created an "unprecedented media frenzy" following its 1948 birth in the Li'l Abner comic.

Meanwhile, Japan leads today's food-character charge with the cheese family, burnt bread guy, sushi rice boy, beer man, orange boy and those weird little Nyan Nyan Nyanko kittens, among other San-X Food Cartoons. There's also that crazy Kikkoman, not to mention Japanese Gourmet Comics, while India charts the politics of distribution and availability in Indian Food Comics.

Asia has thrown down the gauntlet (or perhaps the spoon?). I'd say we have some catching up to do.

Birmingham Zoo, Tree Frog

Did you ever read (or see) "Flowers for Algernon"? The play/book/movie (the movie was called "Charly") tracked an experiment in which a man and a mouse both ingested a medication which developed intelligence. For a time, both Charlie (man) and Algernon (mouse) do well — stunningly well — but when Algernon's mental and physical health rapidly, irrevocably degrade... well, you can imagine Charlie's distress.

Like Algernon, our little amphibian friends (sensitive guys that they are) signal environmental danger. When they start dying off, we should really take a cue, get off the couch and make some noise.

It's not just the frogs, folks.

Apples travel to the fourth National Apple show. Postcard by Arcadia Orchards Company of Spokane, Washington in the early 1900's

Long, long ago, when Queens was field and farm and forest (imagine that!), Newtown Pippin apple trees produced brimming bushel baskets of green-skinned, yellow-fleshed fruit.

Celebrated by royalty (Queen Victoria) and 18th-Century movers and shakers (Ben Franklin and Tom Jefferson) alike, informed palates gushed over this "prince of apples" with effusive praise.

This week, NY Mayor Bloomberg has declared the Newtown Pippin the official apple of New York City, and commemorated "Apple Week" (Oct 11-17) with all manner of "appletivities" produced by the fine folks at Slow Food NYC.

All this is bittersweet news for the long-forgotten Newtown Pippin, since it unfortunately highlights the environmental low to which the fruit's fatherland has sunk. Today's Newtown Creek area is a polluted, scarred industrial wasteland that produces nothing "eaten and praised by royal lips". Instead, this neighborhood boasts the "Most Polluted Waterway In America". Wouldn't it be nice to see the Newtown Pippin's spotlight shine just a little light on the woes of its native soil?

In my rush to pack on a few pounds (to pad my initial weigh-in, of course) before our insane-o office weight loss contest, I neglected to visit the freshly opened NYU-branch of beard papa, that Japanese (??) cream-puff mecca I've read so much about...

Curses! This pledge to three months of low-calorie, high-fiber eating absolutely precludes something so fatty and sweet and lacking in redeeming nutritive value.

Damn the lack of whipped cream custard (encased in a crispy choux pastry shell) nestled in my greedy fingers! The wait until January 11 will be long, indeed...

My self-absorbed nature adores quizlets. My inner hedonista loves cheese. And now, they join forces to make:The Cheese Test

Today I learned I'm truly an insightful camembert at heart. How could I possibly have thought my life was complete before now?

"The thought of 2,000 people crunching celery at the same time horrified me"
— George Bernard Shaw, a vegetarian, explaining why he turned down an invitation to a vegetarian gala dinner

Having seen a definite expansion of my waist as of late — alas, life as the hedonista comes with its own set of perils — I decided to nip this action in the bud and have accepted an invitation to join our office Losers' Club... requiring an entrance fee of $50, a weight-loss goal of 15lbs or more and a dedication to three months of exercise and culinary privation.

If, by January 11, I have lost a greater percentage of body weight than my office mates, I will win the cumulated entrance-fee pot. Tempting.

Realizing that I've embarked upon this project in the worst season (as I crunch celery stalks, my cubemate reminds me that we are approaching the yummiest time of the year... ) and that voluntary deprivation is antithetical to my worldview, I look on this "club membership" as a personal challenge and experiment.

Is it possible to maintain a high-fiber, 1200-1500 calorie diet across the yummiest season? Will the contest drive successes across the board? I'm little motivated to do something like this on my own, but I do thrive on competition, and I'm interested to see how my diet method's results stack up against those of the folks working on Atkins.

I suppose we've always known that food is political.

From the involvement of pastries in the French revolution to Ghandi's protest march over salt taxation (and later, his protest fasting) to the Reagan Administration's contention that ketchup is a viable vegetable option for school lunch programs -- food production, distribution and taxation has always been a hot-button topic. It's about the interplay of resources, physiological need and power.

On a lighter note, however, thanks to a recent article in The New Yorker, I discovered that cheese is, in fact, the keystone joining food, politics and literature. I'm hoping this fellow's inaugural cheese attains that shining moment in the icy January sun.

The theory is this:

A person can illustrate whatever needs to be said about life's major themes within the extremely structured confines of 5-7-5 with a tomato tie-in.

Therefore, I write haiku about tomatoes.

I've been doing this for quite some time, and it seems to work well. Tomatoes are fruit and vine, fruit and vegetable. They're flexible enough allow discussion of pleasure and passion, life and death, growth and rage and fragility, etc. etc.

I wrote the first ones about ten years ago. I think I have around fifty. (I know, that isn't a lot of progress for ten years, but I've had other projects going.)

Here's some early ones:

one
Tomato in snow.
Wind and frost bite tender skin;
Red on white shivers.

two
Sauce runs down my shirt
Shocking splatter, napkin dab;
A lunch date in ruin.

three
A zesty tongue jig
For red slices dashed with salt.
Summer loves my mouth.

four
My French fries grow cold.
Ketchup rolling from the jar.
Eternity, this.

five
Tomatoes play games.
They excel at hide and seek
beneath broad green leaves.