The Joy of Spam

Today my friend surprised me with a can of spam. Now you might think, what kind of gift is that? But believe me, spam is unfairly underrated. While I know the idea of such a mystery meat is disgusting, and to some, even fairly nauseating, I would like to share my story with spam.

My dad is half Japanese, born in Washington. An army brat, he spent a lot of his childhood moving around with two fairly explosive parents who were not in any position to be raising a kid. However, after the divorce they settled back in my grandmother's home state of Hawai'i. 

In Honolulu my dad found a real home. As my grandmother was hard working single mother, my dad often spent time at one of his auntie's houses (there were 5 to choose from). There, he was finally coddled, given attention, and played with cousins. In addition, Hawai'i was a safe haven for a half Japanese kid who had been picked on and bullied mercilessly in other midwestern and southern states for alien in all-white towns. 

As he grew up, he began to itch for the mainland and ended up moving all the way to cold, snowy, grey Rochester. When he adopted my sister and I, he always longed to bring us back to Hawai'i and show us his roots and where he had grown up. 

While we have been back and forth to Hawai'i sporadically over the years, the first thing I always do when we arrive in Honolulu or Lihue is go to McDonald's.

Say whaaaaa? Ah but wait - there's a reason, I promise! The McDonald's in Hawai'i are one of the few places in the world where the menu is different. A famous and frequent Hawaiian breakfast is spam, rice, and eggs. It is humble, simple, and just completely scrumptious. It's not just that spam is a cheap substitute for ham or bacon or sausage - spam itself is crazy good! While I don't want to really know how it was made, I still have some inexplicable craving for it and insane happiness when I eat it. All of the flavors also really complement each other - the saltiness and crispness of the spam mixed with bites of hot, steamy rice, and the soft fluffiness of scrambled eggs. 

If you're ever in Hawai'i, make sure you try it! Or spam musubi. Even though canned meats are in theory, terrible and sound disgusting, don't knock it til you try it. However, I do also think my history with spam is related to food nostalgia. Perhaps it is also precious memories I connect to my dad and his side of the family that should factor into my spam love. It's truly interesting the influence family can play on your tendencies towards food.

Banana Bread and a Happy Family

I bought a huge bunch of organic bananas from Whole Foods this weekend and thought I would make my family a yummy mobile breakfast in the form of Banana Bread. I typed “banana bread” into Google and looked for a recipe that consisted of the ingredients I currently had on hand. I ended up with one from Martha Stewart’s Kitchen it is called Easy to Bake Banana Bread Recipe.

½ cup butter (1 stick)

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 ½ cups flour

1 tea baking soda

1 tea salt

1 cup bananas (very ripe, mashed)

½ cup sour cream (light)

1 tea vanilla

½ cup chopped walnuts

 

Anyway, I had most of the ingredients but not enough patience or time to follow the all of the methods and instructions that Martha had listed, so I improvised. I started with butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and sour cream, all in first. Mixed well. Then to the same bowl I added flour, baking soda, salt and my addition cinnamon, mixed well once again. Finally I added the bananas and mixed one last time.

I didn’t stop to take pictures, only at the end. But, I did grease and flour my stone loaf pan. Then I poured the batter into the pan. I had mixed nuts instead of walnuts, so I chopped them up and covered the top of the batter. I placed it in a 350° oven for 1 hour and approximately 10 minutes, just as Martha told me to do.

Once the timer went off, I pulled it out of the oven and this is what I found.

 

 

A perfectly cooked banana bread that smelled of warm toasted nuts and cinnamon! I let it sit for about an hour to cool down. Loosened up the sides with a butter knife and gently tipped the loaf pan over hoping it wouldn’t stick. I sliced and the middle was moist and slightly steaming from still being warm.

I will have one happy family in the morning.

 

 

 

Food in Film (Errr... Television) Part IV

Girls, "It's a Shame About Ray" 

Beat me with a stick, your sociology major, or your disputation about religiously consuming the polarizing Girls if you must, but like The Breakfast Club, Myazaki's features, and Tom Jones, Girls is a site for thematizing food on-screen. 

In season 2, episode 4, Girls kicks off with a fancy dinner party at Hannah's (Lena Dunham) home, in a transparent effort to declare herself a real adult - one worthy of wine-accompanied entertainment - rather than the codependent college grad she is.

She cooks Pad Thai and a Bundt cake for her friends and theirs'. In preparation, we see Hannah scowling at her computer screen - which presumably shows the recipe from an online source and meticulously cutting onions in her attempt to create an artifice that screams, "I'm a big girl now." 

Her friends arrive in quasi-formal attire and play at adulthood together around a well set table. Here, food signals independence. An emancipation from meals cooked by your parents at home, or meals consumed in a college mess hall, or meals from take-out places in New York. The financial independence and domestic know-how required to gather ingredients and prepare a meal from scratch for, not only oneself, but for a dinner party is Hannah's interpretation of mid-twenties independence, even if she is a bit big for her breeches. It is the twenty-something equivalent of trying on mom's mascara for the first time as a kid.

I know I'm not being presumptuous here, because someone around the table criticizes Hannah's lack of grown-upness, and she meets the criticism with "Um, of course I'm grown up. That's why I cooked all this food!" widely gesturing to the meal with her arm. Oh, Hannah - always with the grand expectations and minimal self-awareness.

The food here signals not only an attempt at fostering one's adulthood, but a failed attempt, specifically. Her cooking does not negate her inability to pay the bills, or accept employment outside of her internship, or to resist the temptation to call mom and dad with the slightest problem. Hannah's meal is one that, to her, genuinely signifies her entry into being grown up but of course this signification is not enough. We, the audience, knows that. Poor Hannah doesn't. And this dramatic evocation, resonance, even irony, is conveyed perfectly by the image of food.

Spring Sometime Soon

Spring seems to finally be getting here and with that my desire to bake lighter, fruit based things is rising. My winters are usually spent making rich, full-bodied cakes and pumpkin spice quick breads. Cold weather and dark nights spent in front of the fire require a bit more substance to make it through. I tire quickly of recipes though, and always want to try something new. Asking me to make the fudgy brownies as last time is not going to make me a happy camper. Every time I offer to make something for dessert towards the end of the colder months I hope against hope that someone will request something – anything – new. Chocolate cake may quite possibly crush my hopes and dreams. Thank goodness spring comes every year.

Without a real kitchen or ingredients, my desire for spring baking is yet to be sated. I made a valiant attempt to scrape together to at least enough to make delicate candied orange and lemon slices that remind me of mild English summers. My coursework and the lack of citrus fruits had me wishing for the end of the semester more than ever. Only six more weeks until I will finally be home and can cook up a storm. Until then, I will dream of the sweet spring cake I really want to bake: A fluffy triple layer lemon cake, filled with fresh lemon curd, and swathed in pillows of light lemon buttercream

  

Lemon White Cake

Ingredients:

¾ cups butter

1 cup sugar

2 tsp lemon extract

1 tbsp finely chopped lemon zest

2 ¾ cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup milk

4 egg whites

½ cup sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease and line three 9-inch pans. Make sure to line the bottom of the pans with baking parchment, for this cake sticks like crazy.
2. Cream butter and sugar in a bowl. Add lemon extract.
3. In a small bowl, sift flour, salt, and baking powder together.
4. Add flour mixture to creamed butter in four parts alternating with the milk.
5. In another bowl, whip the egg whites until foamy. Add the sugar in small increments. Beat until stiff shiny peaks form
6. Fold the eggs carefully into other mixture.
7. Distribute batter evenly in the prepared pans. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean. Also, the top, when pressed, will sound a bit like a sponge full of bubbles.
8. Remove from oven and cool in pans for 5 minutes. Take a blunt knife and go around the sides of the pans to loosen the cakes. Invert onto a rack and let cool before filling and icing.
9. Secure first cake layer with a dab of icing to desired serving vessel. Spread thickly with lemon curd, top with another cake layer, spread with lemon curd again, and top with last cake layer. Chill cake while making buttercream.
10. Frost entire cake with a thin layer of buttercream to trap all crumbs. At this point, freezing the cake for roughly half an hour makes the final frosting easier. Begin by spreading buttercream over top of cake and work down sides. Enjoy!

Notes:

My lemon curd recipe varies to what I have in the kitchen and if anyone else will be eating it. Epicurious has a very good recipe for your basic lemon curd that will make enough for this cake and then some.

I use an adaptation of Colette Peters' basic buttercream. For this recipe I use ¼ cup fresh lemon juice and ¼ cup heavy cream. Depending on my mood, I will add lemon extract, but find that the juice is enough.

Dining Hall Daze

There were two miracles in Tyler tonight.

1. There was avocado in the salad bar. Proper avocado. The actual from-the-fruit green-stuff sliced in a little salad bar section. What did I do to deserve this?!

2. Kitty corner to the avocado was Goat Cheese. Proper goat cheese. The creamy yummy white stuff that goes perfectly on a salad with avocado. My friends and I were so excited we made goat noises at each other throughout dinner.

After water polo practice tonight, I felt the sun shining on me (despite the hybrid rainy misty grossness of Spring fighting to become a reality) as I compiled a spinach salad with the two miracles from above (both literally and, possibly, symbolically). How happy for my tummy to have a spinach salad with goat cheese, beans, avocado and cucumbers with a little olive oil and balsamic! But this post is not about the salad.

Side Note: Water Polo Club meets 3:30-5pm on Sundays and 6-7pm on Tuesdays if there is any interest out there!

No, the true epiphany of the night was through a seemingly improper combination.

There were fortune cookies at dinner, and midway through our meal, my partners in crime and I opened a cookie to the fortune "You will soon achieve perfection". I think we came close...

 Follow me here: 

Cinnamon Rasin bagel

Goat Cheese

Nutella

Yes, my friends, a gold mine. The tart creaminess of the goat cheese was instant friends with the nutella. Chocolate and cheese in general–need I say more? The bagel need not be cinnamon rasin, but have you ever had goat cheese and cranberries together? Tart and sweet but not nutella sweet. There was true complexity in that darned bagel as it was passed around the table without a care for sharing germs. I only managed to get a snapshot of the final bite, surrounded by its constituents. The picture itself is far from perfect (someone should teach me how to focus a cameraphone) but this was a dining hall creation for the books.

Nutella (upper left), Delicious Bagel Creation (middle), Goat Cheese (behind fortune) and fortune (front and center)

The lesson here is a good one: always look in the salad bar. There are surprises, and sometimes it's goat cheese, and sometimes excessive goat cheese is eaten and brilliant ideas materialize. 

Super (guilty) Markets

Dark chocolate pie with coconut-almond-oat
crust. Somewhat made with sustainably
grown and processed ingredients.
Not really.

Over spring break, I made my Dad his favorite french onion soup, baguette, and a vegan chocolate fudge pie. So, I walked over to the local Whole Foods in pleasant, mid-March Virginia air, promising to return in the next forty minutes so that we'd be eating before nine pm.

An hour later, I found myself still encapsulated within the warm and well-lit walls of the super market, receiving an angry call from my father. 

"What could you be doing in there?" He demanded. "How long does it take to buy some onions and maple syrup?"

I sighed heavily. If only he knew...

Braided baguette. Not sure about the flour,
it's what we had in the cabinet...
how convenient in my quest to avoid
drowning in the guilt of being
a person in 21st century.

I used to love walking into super markets. Gliding through automatic doors, greeted by a sudden gust of warm air and pyramids of perfect, colorful produce; strolling the aisles stocked with snacks, coupon-dispensing machines, and hundreds of varieties of beverages.

It was therapeutic, as I'm sure it must be for millions of others. I mean, who doesn't enjoy wandering through thousands of square feet of well-advertised food? But that wasn't what was taking me so long that day in March.

For a little over a year now, I have been studying the concept of sustainable food. Through classes and personal research, I have learned in depth about the environmental, political and social impacts of our global food system. 

I have felt that feeling of relaxation and happy anticipation in the market be replaced by over-whelming guilt and and discomfort over the past few months.

Super markets contribute significantly to food waste, climate change, deforestation, air and water pollution, the proliferation of destructive and abusive agribusiness conglomerates, the social injustice rampant in multi-national agricultural corporations, and many other things one wouldn't something they enjoy to contribute to.

Thus, it's become increasingly difficult to enjoy an bell pepper display without considering the underpaid South American farmers who must travel far away from their families in order to plant, grow, and harvest these genetically modified, pesticide and herbicide laden veggies. 

It's even harder to appreciate the massive selections available when possessing the knowledge that such a selection of veggies (no matter the season) is unnatural; that the appealing black-pepper and olive oil family-size box of Triscuits has a carbon footprint that rivals that of a 20-year old American.

This hyper-consciousness feels as if it came on as suddenly as a lightbulb; sometimes I wish I could flip the switch back down just so I didn't feel like that vegan or that Smithie...if you know what I mean. 

But I can't, and although I'd rather be aware than ignorant it can be extremely inconvenient in making financially responsible, time-efficient decisions. 

In conclusion, I can spend twenty minutes weighing the benefits of buying local, organic onions or the conventionally produced ones from Mexico.

I can spend even more time gazing sadly at the different maple syrup choices, preferring grade-B, organic, Vermont syrup is a ridiculously expensive habit. Would it really have been that bad if I had bought the non-organic grade A from California, processed in Texas, and shipped to Virginia? It was ten dollars cheaper.

Vegan french onion soup. Delicious,
and made with organic onions.
Yes, I paid a lot more for them.

Don't even get me started on the coconut milk I needed for that pie. Seriously.

My Dad heard my frustrated sigh and sucked his teeth with exasperation.

"Lily. Please tell me you weren't trolling the aisles searching for organic, vegan, local, sustainable shit made by workers with health-benefits and days off. You know how long the soup takes to make."

In the end, the dinner was great, mostly organic, and as sustainable as I could muster.

BuzzFeed Food

If you like BuzzFeed and if you like food, I'd be surprised if you hadn't spent a shameful amount of time looking at their food posts. Over the weekend, during my hours of procrastination, I came across two articles that I thought I could share with you all. 

This first is the definition of food porn: 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelysanders/cooking-projects-aint-nobody-got-time-for

Each picture is perfect. Each string of pasta or even tiniest sprinkle on a cupcake is so flawlessly placed. As I was scrolling through (and speechlessly drooling) I kept thinking "well shit if I had enough time on my hands, I'm sure I could tackle some of these projects!" But the title of this post is completely accurate, and I definitely don't have time to put that much effort into anything I plan to eat, at least not in the foreseeable future. 

The second BuzzFeed post made me feel loads better about not having time to put into working on these projects: 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelysanders/epic-pinterest-food-fails-2013

Even if I did have the time, my attempts would unquestionable come out looking a lot like those^^ pictures. So why bother, right? These two articles made me think about the way we see food depicted in the media: on pinterest, tumblr, etc... 99.9% of the time, our food isn't going to look as immaculate as we are told it is capable of looking. 

For some reason, I thought of the new Joseph Gordon-Levitt (again, drool) movie Don Jon, perhaps because of the common internet phrase food porn. In the movie, if you haven't seen it (*spoiler alert*), Jon has to realize that true, meaningful, and enjoyable sex isn't the same as what is shown in his precious pornos. Similarly, I think many people need to go through the same process that Jon does to realize that amazing and delicious food doesn't necessarily have to look like it does in the media. 

The pictures below were my personal favorites from the two articles. 

Doubt: The Dinner Scene

            Inspired by the many posts of food in film, I decided to look at a dinner scene from the movie Doubt (2008). For those of you have not seen it, the film is based on a Pulitzer-Prize winning play that is set in 1964 at a Catholic school in the Bronx. The school is run by the austere principal Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), who believes in the power of fear-based discipline. Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a recent arrival at the church, has completely the opposite view. He is personable and believes that priests should make more of an attempt to interact with the students rather than remain as aloof moral exemplars. The plot is centered around a conflict that arises when Sister Aloysius notices Father Flynn paying special attention to one of the students and suspects sexual abuse. Throughout the film, Meryl Streep’s character attempts to find solid evidence to destroy Father Flynn.

The truth is, the first and last time I saw this film was about five years ago. I remember the content being dark and the actual scenery being very dull to match this sentiment, but other than that not very much. However, there is a scene that came to mind when I thought about how food has effectively been used in film.

There are two clips below. Because the first clip is cut off early, I figured I’d add the second to get the full comparison.

From these clips, is can be seen that there is a very distinct contrast between the atmosphere in which the priests and nuns have their meals. The difference is reflected in the content of the conversation (or lack of), the food and drinks on the table, the manner in which the food is being eaten, the lighting and overall color scheme.

In the portion with the priests, they are smoking, drinking red wine, and eating red meat dripping with blood. There is music in the background, which is difficult to hear over the laughter and conversation. There is a conversation regarding a “fat lady” which is rather disrespectful, especially for a priest. In a sense, these holy figures seem kind of impure and barbaric.

The movie then cuts to a scene of the nuns, in complete silence, being served milk. The table cloth is white, the plates are white, the glasses of milk are white. There is just a lot of white. Unlike the previous scene, everything on the table is perfectly aligned and although I cannot tell exactly what is on the plates, it’s definitely not a big slab of bloody meat. In the beginning of the second clip, the table is again completely silent except for the clanging of utensils on the plates. I don’t know if anyone else felt this, but I was even uncomfortable watching the awkward silence.  

In a way, I think this scene is trying to contrast the personalities of the main characters, Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn, but also illustrate how priests held a different place in the church hierarchy. It was not unusual for a priest to smoke and drink, but for a nun, it was unheard of.

For anyone who has seen the film, or has just watched the clips, feel free to disagree with my analysis. Maybe someone got something a bit more out of the clips.

Siggi's vs Smári: A Comparison of Icelandic Yogurt

Siggi's Plain Yogurt

I do not own this photo. Source

Icelandic yogurt, or skyr, is a traditional dairy product of Iceland with roots dating back to thousands of years. Adding cultures to raw milk, the milk is then strained of whey and thus results in a yogurt much thicker than traditional yogurt. The process also permits skyr to contain 2-3x the amount of protein as conventional yogurt. In a 150g serving of sky, you can receive 12-15g of protein and the equivalent of 3-4 glasses of milk. Traditionally, skyr is not flavored but national brands today have filled shelves with flavored skyr ranging from peach to blueberry to pomegranate.

Already a fan of Siggi's Icelandic-styled yogurt, I picked up a few containers of a newer, lesser known brand called Smári and decided to compare the two. Here's what I found when comparing the two brands' version of plain skyr.

Siggi's Icelandic-style yogurt (150g)
Nutritional Information:
80 kcal
15g protein
20% dv Calcium
0g fat
4g sugar
Ingredients: Pasteurized Skim Milk, vegetable rennet

Smári's Organic Icelandic Yogurt (170g)
Nutritional Information:
100 kcal
20g protein
20% dv Calcium
0g fat
6g sugar
Ingredients: Pasteurized Skim Milk, contains no animal rennet

Smári's Plain Non-Fat

Yogurt

I do not claim ownership of this photo. Source

What makes Siggi's special:
Siggi's founder Siggi Hilmarsson, an Icelandic expat in the States,  promises to use milk from cows who have not been fed growth hormones like rBGH and who have been fed grass while raised on family farms (in New York State). Siggi's is certified gluten-free, kosher, vegetarian and made with no artificial ingredients, sweeteners, or coloring. (*Siggi's is not certified organic.)


What makes Smári special:
This brand uses Jersey Cows (in Wisconsin) whose milk is 15%-20% richer in protein than average. Smári is certified organic, kosher, vegetarian, low-sodium and gluten-free.


The Taste Verdict:

I was actually surprised that the container of Smári, although 20g larger than that of Siggi's, contained more protein. Texturally, I found Siggi's skyr to be much richer than Smári's. Siggi's has a rich enough consistency that you're almost tempted to bite down. Alternatively, Smári yogurt, while creamy and thicker than traditional yogurt, was about as rich as Greek yogurt. This particular skyr needed to be stirred before consumption to blend the liquid into the solid yogurt. This "problem" did not arise when eating Siggi's. If you, like me, look for your skyr to be rich beyond Greek yogurt and have a tacky quality to it that needs to settle in your mouth for longer before you swallow, Siggi's wins in this regard.

Like any non or low fat plain yogurt both yogurts have a sour taste that may be destabilizing at first but quickly disappears as you grow accustom to the sourness and hone in on its savory aspects. I tried both the plain flavor and the blueberry flavor from both brands, and while the plain flavors were comparable, among the flavored skyrs there was a clear and definite winner. I was caught off guard by how sour, almost acidic, Smári's blueberry skyr was. After being a longtime fan of Siggi's products, both plain and flavored, I thought my taste buds would know what to expect. Smári's blueberry skyr was nauseatingly sour with no end in sight. By contrast, I found Siggi's blueberry flavoring to have a natural sweetness that complimented both the savory and sour qualities of the skyr.

Smári yogurt is a commendable, slightly cheaper alternative to Siggi's with a packaging that's a hybrid of Siggi's and Greek yogurt, but it certainly behaves more like a Greek yogurt. For the blueberry (and possibly other flavored skys) I would definitely choose Siggi's on taste alone. For both brand's plain 0% fat sky I would choose Siggi's again since its thicker texture that you can sink your teeth into is what I personally look for in a skyr. If you're adamant on eating certified-organic only products, Smári's skyr is the one you'd probably prefer.

-Stacey Ladusch

Sources:
http://siggisdairy.com/
http://smariorganics.com/
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/

Snow Fungus Sweet Soup With Red Dates and Lotus Seeds

Growing up in the southern part of China, I have tasted various kinds of Chinese sweet soups. However, the snow fungus sweet soup with red dates and lotus seeds has always been one of my favorites. It can be served as a dessert after dinner, as breakfast or as an afternoon snack. I personally really enjoy having a bowl of iced snow fungus sweet soup in hot summer afternoons.

The ingredients of this sweet soup are comparatively healthy and nutritious. According to traditional Chinese medicine, snow fungus is a good tonic for the elderly and especially helpful for those with weak respiratory and immune system. It nourishes the lungs and is effective as a home remedy to treat dry coughs, including a dry throat. Also, the high collagen content of snow fungus also makes it a great food for our skins. My grandmother always asked me to take snow fungus more frequently in order to keep my skin stay

clear, youthful and wrinkle-free.

  dried snow fungus (good quality dried snow fungus
  is slightly yellowish in color)

Moreover, red dates, another ingredient of the sweet soup are also have great nutritious value. They are said to “stimulate the production of white blood cells, which improves immunity, and decrease the levels of cholesterol in the bloodstream, helps protect the liver.” Also, “Though they are eaten by everyone, red dates are especially popular with women for their claimed beauty and health effects, because they are renowned for enriching and replenishing blood.” (http://www.cits.net/china-guide/china-traditions/chinese-dates.html)

red dates 

Like red dates and snow fungus, lotus seeds are also great for our health. They are a rich source of phosphorus, protein, potassium and magnesium and they contain very low level of sugar, sodium, cholesterol and saturated fat. Traditionally, they were used to treat people with insomnia since they were known to have effect in alleviating restlessness.

Yet, what the best of this soup is that it is really simple to make! The following is my recipe for the snow fungus sweet soup with red dates and lotus seeds.

Ingredients (you can find all these ingredients in Chinese grocery stores)

·         1 piece dried Snow Fungus, about the size of your palm

·         10-15 dried Red Dates – pitted

·         10-15 dried lotus seeds

·         1.5 liter Water

·         Rock Sugar (can use ordinary sugar or honey instead)

Instructions

1. Soak snow fungus in a large bowl filled with water for about 15 minutes or until soft. The snow fungus will expand in water, about 1-2 times its original size, and become almost translucent.

2. Remove and rinse under a running tap to remove dirt particles. Using your hands or scissors, cut off the discolored parts and hard stem. Next, tear snow fungus into small florets. Rinse thoroughly and drain the water.

3. In a large pot, add the soaked snow fungus and the other ingredients (except rock sugar).

4. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer slowly for about 30-45minutes. When the water turns brown in color and all ingredients are tender, then add rock sugar to taste.

Depends on your preference, you could choose to have it immediately or put it into refrigerator and drink it later. Also, as a fan of coconut, I really like to add some coconut milk into the soup and in fact the soup works well with many kinds of dairy products. So feel free to add milk/ coconut milk/ soy milk/ almond milk in to the soup!