Food and Drink

On cruddy, rainy, windy days like this, everyone loves a steaming cup of hot chocolate. It's a comforting way to warm up, and a nice treat for kids and grownups alike. Out of those little packets of Swiss Miss that hang out in the back of your kitchen cupboard (or used to)? Don't worry—making hot chocolate from scratch is way easier than it sounds, and uses only a few simple ingredients. In fact, we actually tried out a few different recipes in our kitchen as we searched for the best hot chocolate ever.

Did you know that chocolate, in its first form, was consumed as a drink? Spanish conquistador Cortés found chocolate being consumed at the court of Aztec emperor Moctezuma, and the Aztecs in turn adopted the custom of drinking chocoloate from their Maya neighbors to the south. The big difference was that the native Mexicans drank their chocolate cold, mixed with cornmeal and flavored with various herbs and hot chilis.

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For those of us who like to set things on fire... and then cook something over the flames, I stumbled across a nifty new product this past weekend: the Lazzari Baja Firepack! We were planning on making use of the BBQ grills out at a picnic area in Point Reyes, and I wasn't really hot on packing up a big chimney starter and bag of charcoal, nor was I thrilled with the prospect of using one of those "matchlight" bags that's chock full of nasty petrochemicals. So, understandably, I was thrilled to find the nifty little Baja Firepack on sale at Harvest Market in Novato.

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Dear Trader Joe's Produce Buyer,

First off, let me tell you how much a love your store. Inexpensive but good wine and beer, quality prepared foods for when you just don't feel like cooking, cheese, coffee, baked goods, and more. We must spend 90% of our grocery budget there. However, your produce offerings concern me. Yes, I buy your fruits and vegetables, but sometimes reluctantly, as much of it's over-packaged or in odd quantities (although I do love your cherry tomatoes and Persian cucumbers—keep 'em coming).

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If you've ever wondered if modern life is possible without a microwave oven, the answer is "yes." But it's not easy. Actually, I guess we lived without one for years back in the '70s, but back then there wasn't an industry of microwave-ready foods built up around them.

We had a microwave, or rather have one, but it's broken. We've decided with all the craziness and of course expense of Christmas to hold off buying a new one until after the holidays. Apparently Something Bad happened to it. Not sure what exactly, but it involved nasty-smelling gray smokie pouring out of the thing as I attempted to nuke some frozen broccoli for the children to eat for dinner. If there's one thing I'm paranoid about, it's fire, so I unplugged the thing from the wall and pronounced it officially dead.

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With chilly weather upon us, classic, rib-sticking comfort food gets more and more appealing. Fortunately, the Internet is really one big cookbook, where you can pretty much find any conceivable recipe. During a search for something (I don't remember what), I stumbled across Bernhard's Austrian Cooking (www.bernhards.at), a great resource for traditional Austrian recipes. A little more sophisticated than German food, Austrian food bears influences from Hungary, the Balkans, and Italy, and it pretty darned good. Bernhard is a professional chef in Vienna, one of my favorite cities, and offers his recipes in English with American measurements, so no metric conversion is needed.

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While our recent post on Phyllis' Giant Burgers gave a good overall impression of the place (its Novato location, at least), I was a little troubled by the fact that nobody over the age of 4 actually ordered and consumed a burger. Turkey burgers are not burgers, which is why they're called turkey burgers. Burgers, or hamburgers for the more traditional among us, are made of ground up pieces of cow. I don't eat a lot of burgers, but I do think that the burger is one of those bellwether dishes at most restaurants. That is, you can find out a lot about the place by ordering one. Did they care enough to make it outside the ordinary, or did they just go through the motions? If they made an effort then, in my opinion, this speaks well for other things on the menu. Now, in places that specialize in burgers and diner type stuff, the patty melt is the item to measure all burgers by, but that's a subject for another blog post.
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This year I'm playing suburban farmer after having decided to plant tomatoes once again. I've been trying to get the children interested in helping. Actually, it's "the child", since, at a year-and-a-half, Lexie's pretty much a lost cause, and just wants to throw dirt around. At 4, Trevor enjoys watering the plants with me and watching the little tomatoes grow on the vine. When I ask him if he wants to eat them when they're ripe, he scrunches up his nose and declares that he doesn't like "pomatoes". His loss.
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We're well into summer, and naturally one's thoughts turn to cold, frosty treats. One that stands head-and-shoulders above all others: the root beer float, AKA the black cow, AKA the zorch cow. This icy combination of all-American* root beer and vanilla ice cream seems simple at first, but deceptively so. In order to make one, you just plop a scoop or two of ice cream in a glass of root beer and that's it, right? Wrong! The craft of root beer float making is an art unto itself; a traditional craft handed down from generation to generation with a cult like devotion. Fortunately, I'm lucky enough to come from a family in which both paternal and maternal branches included worshipers of the black cow.

So, for the uninitiated or the merely misguided, here's how you make a real root beer float. First, assemble your tools. Tall glasses or mugs... check. Spoons. Straws are a necessity—if you don't have them then just stop right now and go get some or just don't bother. An ice cream scoop. Put the glasses in the freezer, although if this is an emergency unfrosted ones will do.

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