Category: General

I may not know where to get decent Chinese food in this town, but now I know where to buy my crack: down near the corner of Cermak & State, where a very polite man offered me some as I waited at a red light around midnight.

I just read an article in a recent issue of Conde Nast Traveler (which arrives at my house for the roommate) in which someone had written an article bemoaning the sorry state of airport food. They went to airports all over the world and really didn’t find anything worth eating.
And I have to agree with that assessment in general — airport food is beyond appalling and I have on occasion walked through entire terminals in the hopes of something decent to eat, only to settle for Chili’s — but disagree in specific. I can think of three places I have had damned fine airport eats.
One is the international terminal in Boston’s Logan airport, where there is a foofy high-end place that cobbles together dishes from several of Boston’s celebrity chefs. Littlelee and I had a shockingly good meal there before our flight to Germany, consisting of smoked mussels in a mustard sauce and a top-notch lobster bisque. Expensive, but what do you expect in an airport?
Another is the Memphis airport, which was touched on by the article as having sad-sack BBQ, so perhaps I am confusing it with another airport (Nashville? Dallas?), but I distinctly remember getting BBQ in an airport that was entirely acceptable.
And last is the crown jewel of airport eats, combining unquestionable deliciousness with speed and affordability. Its only flaw is that, to my knowledge, it is not available in any US airport. Anyone who’s flown through Heathrow should know by now that I am talking about Prêt À Manger. Dear merciful heaven, what a great idea. Fresh healthy organic ingredients, frequent preparation of sandwiches and salads, straightforward but interesting flavors, and streamlined presentation — you can scoot in there and within 5 minutes come out with a fantastic non-soggy rock-shrimp & arugula sandwich, a packet of all natural black pepper potato chips, and an organic elderberry soda (my new favorite soda, yum). The parsnip chips pictured above are my last treasure from our multiple trips to Prêt À Manger during our euro-voyage, and they are really wonderful, sweet parsnippy flavor balanced with a good hit of black pepper. Why O why can’t we have such a thing on our own shores, especially in this day and age of reduced or eliminated airplane meals? Sigh.

How cute was the winner of Hell’s Kitchen? Adorable, adorable, adorable, and clearly the best of the lot. I want to eat in his restaurant.

No time to whip up anything interesting with tea this weekend, though it was truly tempting, considering I’ve been meaning to make Santos’s green tea cupcakes and matcha meringues for freaking ever. But it was not to be, and given that there are already 89 entries pending over at Clement’s, it’s probably not worth sending over my springtime post about finally finding my favorite morning tea, and the miraculous wave of joy and wellbeing that event sent over my mad, mad, mad, mad world. No need to give everyone yet another post to read, and at that an old one without even a recipe to recommend it. I can’t wait to read all the yummy recipes, um, probably next weekend when I have three spare minutes to rub together. *grin*

I am sitting here unable to leave my living room because I am transfixed by this show on Style Network: How Do I Look? It’s fashion-rific, with all the harsh but fabulous attitude of Trinny & Susannah, but with a bizarrely huge dose of psychology & relationship therapy. It’s completely intense, and a total trainwreck of reality television.

This blurb on epicurious is interesting inasmuch as it articulates an approach to both restaurant dining and home cooking that I have held for a while, without actually thinking about it very hard (or at all). The idea is that professional chefs do very interesting things, and we can happily enjoy them and admire them, while never even bothering to try to emulate them. Rather, what we do (at least as food whores such as we are) is absorb inspiration from them, which may come out as a new technique or flavor or dish in our own kitchens as we whip up something simpler, faster and just as delicious in its own way.

i am back from Germany and France with many food adventures to relate and photos to share, but I am insane between now and next week so it may be awhile before there are new posts — sorry everyone. Plus i have to catch up on everyone else’s blogging… *grin* But just as a tease, there was liverwurst with a white edge of lovely fat that just melted in the mouth, fabulous fresh strawberries with black pepper and fresh mint, the best cheese fondue ever, and really good german beer. And a currywurst — after reading Pim’s post, I had to try one. Hee!

It occurred to me just now that this blog’s 1-year anniversary came and went — in APRIL — without my noticing it ’til just now. Kind of cool that blogging integrated so completely into my daily life that I just do it when it’s needed, sort of like laundry or washing dishes, even when all hell is breaking loose. So, um, happy birthday foodnerd, i guess. *grin* Thanks to all the people who read and comment and make my little obsession even more fun — you guys are great, and I think of you as friends even though I’ve never met any of you and half the time I’m so lame I don’t even manage to respond to comments. The internet is strange — it is so public that one needs to be quite circumspect about putting personal information out there, yet somehow the most essential details of a food blogger’s personality always come right through.

On the way home from a client today I stopped for a quick lunch at Portillo’s in Addison IL. It wasn’t bad, nice tender meat and crunchy spicy pickled peppers & carrots on a standard-issue french bread roll. I see now what sets Johnny’s Italian Beef above the rest though — their gravy is more herbal, more savory, and you can adjust the amount of it so you can really soak that sucker down into a mushy puddle of flavor, so that the WHOLE SANDWICH oozes that dreamy flavor without the intrusion of any bread blandness whatsoever. Plus it has loads more atmosphere — Portillo’s was one of those annoyingly self-aware “retro” places with lots of random mid-century reproduction signs and an old gas pump, etc. as decor.

I’m sitting here watching The Next Food Network Star, and despite the fact that it should be either Hans or Susannah winning this shindig, I have to say that it is striking how much nicer these people are than your average reality/competition show star. I’ve been catching bits and parts of StripSearch, where studly boys duke it out to be part of the next Vegas male-stripper revue, and almost none of them seem in any way like someone you might want to meet, and they’re already scheming and whining. These food people have been nothing but nice, both in general and to each other, even in the middle of what is clearly a giant stressfest. I hope that more than one of them ends up with a cooking show within the next year. Add this to the fact that food bloggers seem to be across the board warm and friendly folks, and you have to wonder — are cooks just better people?
(ps — the eventual winner of the contest was consistently the most annoying through the entire contest, but yet their pilot was completely great and I would totally watch their show. What did the judges see that the program editors didn’t show us?)