Okay, it’s official for those who caught this on the web days ago. Bo, a Portuguese water dog and gift from Senator Edward Kennedy (who owns a few), is to be the Obama family’s dog inside the White House. Bo hails from a kennel in Texas – a return. Oops was that from the unofficial firstdogcharlie.com website? Bo was front-page news (above the fold) in today’s Washington Post. You’d think the Post would have better things to put on the front page like…. The Third annual Washington Post Peeps Show Contest!!!
Update: (photo) The winning Peeps diorama is by Melissa Harvey of Arlington. “Night Peeps” is inspired by Edward Hopper’s (get it? “Hopper”) “Nighthawks.”
This week’s message focuses on stepping up the work of the Food and Drug Administration. President Obama made two appointments this week: Dr. Margaret Hamburg as Commissioner of the FDA; and Dr. Joshua Sharstein as the Principal Deputy Commissioner (overseeing drug safety). In addition there will be a Food Safety Working Group.
Let’s just say I wasn’t too happy about the peanut butter scare as peanuts are one of my favorite foods. I put peanuts in my entrees. Eat them without the salt. Trader Joe’s was the only store I noticed still stocking peanuts and peanut butter on their shelves during the scare. Trader Joe’s must have higher standards for their products and food venders than others. I bought their peanuts and peanut butter. I ate it. I’m still here. I do think some of the energy bars bit the dust.
“Food fright” is becoming an American past time. My friend Marsha Weiner, who programs food film festivals, talks about how many of the food films from the US are documentaries emphasizing what’s wrong with our food, what’s wrong with how we use food, and how we consume food; very few focus on how food is enjoyed and savored. Perhaps based on the FDA’s practices in the past, maybe they had just cause to go negative on food. Thank goodness for feature films like “Big Night.” And the Food Network has made cooking a new sport.
I believe food safety should not just be a matter of standard and basic practice but respect and responsibility, so we can get back to eating (without fear) not just for health, but for food’s flavor and the community it brings.
Two years ago I packed my video camera and accompanied my friend Johari Rashad and a suitcase of her prized homemade mini pound cakes to New Orleans for my first Mardi Gras ever. Johari was returning to NOLA, her adopted home city, to bring some comfort food to friends she hadn’t seen since before Katrina. I was documenting the return for my “What Ever Happened to Church Lady Cake” project. This is a media project documenting church ladies (and a few good men) who bake – from scratch! That’s what church lady cake is all about. Food as a ministry as well as comfort. Some of these ladies doctor up box mixes, so I’ve been asked to be flexible. I was raised among cake snobs. [Personally I’m a tart, pie, and soft cookie person.]
I’ve got to cut that video. I’ll post it on this blog this year. I’m committing to that.
Yesterday I got Pat Willard’s America Eats! in the mail. It’s a colleciton of food writing from the 1930s WPA (Works Progress Administration). Writers like Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison were dispersed throughout the country to collect American culinary stories and history. The manuscript was never published, but Willard dove into the manuscript and America Eats! was published just last year.
I’m hoping this will jump start me to go back to the Church Ladies Cake project. I’ll read as if I’m eating sweet potato pie.
I love, love, love Asian cuisine. Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Chinese preferably Sichuan. The first Sichuan dish I ever had was Kung Pao chicken. I thought my mouth was on fire. I was in love.
I’m no expert or purist about Chinese food. I just like what I like. The tough part for me is cooking it at home. I don’t even own a wok. Shameful. I’ve got the rice thing down, though. But the entree part is still pretty sketchy that is until Annie Chun came along.
Using prepared sauces and box ingredients isn’t the way real cooks or foodies roll. I do keep staples that would resemble a respectable novice’s Asian cooking stash: short grain rice, basmati rice (sometimes jasmine), fresh ginger root, pad thai noodles, fresh garlic, industrial size bottles of soy sauce, corn starch, brown sugar, oyster sauce. Is this what fusion looks like?
Annie Chun is Korean. But taking on the task of Asian convenience cooking at home that tastes (sorta) like take out will probably lift her to the status of Betty Crocker or dare I say Aunt Jemima. The exception being that Annie Chun is a real live person. But so was Aunt Jemima – Nancy Green was the spokesmodel’s name introduced at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. And Nancy Green worked in an office, not a plantation kitchen. And, Yes, I do buy the pancake mix and the syrup, but I still make my cakes from scratch.
The Joy Luck Club exposed the myth about fortune cookies for non-Asians like myself. And guess what? I used to make my own fortune cookies at home. Is this exposing my obsession?
Thanks to a post on racialicious.com, the clip below of Jennifer 8. Lee, reporter and author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, gives nearly a complete rundown of Chinese food as real American food in this almost 17 minute presentation, i.e. how often do you have American apple pie vs. Chinese food.
There are times while I’m picking up my take out, I catch the restaurant owners on their break eating their own food. It never looks like the food in my black plastic covered plate. It even looks tastier. I’ve been told, if you really know how to order from a Chinese food menu, you can get the real Chef specials.
Unless things have changed, don’t order Chinese food in Harlem (NYC). I’ve done this twice, and on that second try at one of their more “upscale” restaurants even they hadn’t figured out the difference between sauce and gravy. The third time it’s “shame on me.”
All this to say, it’s already a Chinese New Year. The year of the Ox. Beijing has already launched the fireworks. We could use a little Ox-idizing right now – calm, hard work, resolve and tenacity…and of course, a dash of Kung Pao.
After the swearing-in ceremonies, Barack Obama and Joesph Biden will enjoy their first meal as President and Vice President of the United States in the U.S. Capitol’s Statutary Hall. This is the hall where various life-size statues of state political figures circle the great room. It’s the same room where I accompanied a group of DC high school for a leadership program for the purpose of stoking their understanding of who has the real power. They came away saying “why does Jefferson Davis get a full-lenghth statue in the Capitol and Martin Luther King only gets a bust.”
The Inaugural luncheon is a tradition. The official U.S. Senate Inauguration website has posted the luncheon details from the china (a replica of the china selected by Mary Todd Lincoln for her husband Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration), to the floral arrangments, and the menu with recipes! Try this at home (?)
The luncheon will be a 3-course meal starting with First Course: Seafood chowder served with a Duckhorn Vineyards 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley
Second Course: A Brace of American Birds (pheasant and duck) served with Sour Cherry Chutney and Molasses Sweet Potatoes, paried with Goldeneye, 2005 Pinot Noir, Anderson Valley
Third Course: Apple Cinnamon Sponge Cake and Sweet Glace paired with Korbel Natural “Special Inaugural Cuvee, California Champagne.
The menu reflects some of the 16th President’s favorite foods. Is Dick Cheney providing the main entree fresh from the wild?