It's on Twitter - It Has to Be True

I came across this great map.  Researchers at the University of Arizona compiled Twitter hashtags and made a map of the most talked about foods by state.  I am not sure how researchers sorted through the hashtags, separating food from non-food.  In fact, I have a million questions about the methodology of this study.  (Nevermind the usefulness of it - don't these scientists have better things to study than food mentions on Twitter?)

Sure it is clever, a little parlor trick of social media research.  Does it tell us anything about our eating habits?  Or our conversations about food?  Well, a lot of people are tweeting about grits.  I am also fascinated by the pairs - Kansas and New York are talking about prunes, and Nevada and Wisconsin tweet a lot about sauerkraut.  What does it mean?  It doesn't mean anything!

I think I'll head to North Dakota; I could use a good flan.

University of Arizona food tweets

If It's Not Scottish...

It has been a big week in Scotland.  I have no dog in the independence fight, but I do have some very found memories of Scotland.  Over 25 years ago, my sister and I took a trip through the U.K. with a stop in Edinburgh.  I loved the energy of the city, my sister hated the place.  We did agree that it was tough to find a place to eat.

This was in the days before Yelp or TripAdvisor and at the time, Edinburgh was hardly a hot bed of progressive dining.  Mostly, you could get dinner at a bar.  For two little American girls, bars with signs like "No Football Colors Allowed" and "All Brawlers Will Be Arrested" did not whet our appetites.  We stumbled across a health food cafeteria (remember when it "health food?") and for three nights, went back to same place.  I ate macaroni and cheese every night because it was the only thing on the menu I recognized.  Dessert involved tea and Walker's shortbread.  Not exactly a true taste of Scotland.

I hope to go back.  Armed with more information and a more daring spirit, I think I could get a better idea of what Scottish food and culture is all about.  Take a look at this.  Makes you hungry, right?

Mainely Drizzle

Photo courtesy of Maine-ly Drizzle

I have yet to turn on the heat in the house, and it is not officially autumn yet, so I am still going to write about the summer.  Well, not the summer exactly, but things I did this summer.  Or more precisely, places I went this summer.  Well, place.  Oh you get the point.

While we were in Kennebunkport, Maine, we stumbled across the most amazing store - Mainely Drizzle.  Not only is it a shop for specialty olive oils and balsamic vinegars, it is a tasting room as well.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  It is even better than it sounds.  The rooms is filled with olive oils and vinegars flavored with fruits and herbs.  There are little cups next to each urn and you are free to sip as many as you want.

Photo courtesy of Maine-ly Drizzle

Of course, if you are like me, you choke on the first sample and spend the rest of the visit coughing while the rest of the family enjoys taste after taste of these delicious treats.

Nick, the owner, cannot wait to show off his prizes.  He is from Somerville, Massachusetts, and clearly loves food, so he and Matt bonded immediately.  Nick asked my husband what kinds of flavors he liked and what his favorite foods are and then started bringing him all different mixtures of the vinegars and oils.  We did not need lunch after that stop.

We could not possibly bring home all the items we wanted, but not to worry!  We can order off the website.  (Seriously, check it out here.)  I'm waiting for my order of lime olive oil.  What am I going to use it for?  I don't know - everything!  Except sipping.  I learned my lesson about the sipping thing.

I Have a Nose for These Things

Yesterday, my refrigerator looked like this:

In other words, pretty sad.  No fruit, old wilty vegetables and a few eggs.  (And my pink pickles; can you see the jar on the bottom shelf?).  I needed to go grocery shopping.  I compiled some recipes, made a list, checked the circular for sale items, and then trudged off with my reusable grocery bags.  I was prepared for an ordinary, boring, like-always shopping trip.  

But I needed an eggplant.  Oh the magic of eggplant.  I found this:

The eggplant has a nose!  It is perfectly positioned below the stem so it looks like it is wearing a green hat above its giant nose.  It is so darn cute.  So cute in fact that now I can't bear to cook it.  I can't cut off my eggplant's nose!  What kind of cruel monster do you think I am?  I guess I am going to have to wait until the thing rots in m refrigerator and its nose falls off.  But then again, who wants to eat a rotten eggplant?  And why should this eggplant just waste away?  It was brought into this world to make my roasted vegetables into a delicious, satisfying meal.

But I don't think I can't cut off its nose, now that I started referring to it as a nose.

I'll make Matt cut the eggplant.  He has no mercy toward vegetable noses.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Back to school time, which means back to packing lunch.  What is it about putting the lunch into the lunch box that makes it so much harder?  Sarah does not have a hard time picking what she wants when she eats at home.  But somehow having to put the food into containers complicates matters.

She is not a fan if the hot lunch options at her school (I can't blame her).  She also is not a fan of sandwiches.  According to Sarah, sandwiches require too much chewing.  Chewing is a problem when you can't stop talking, but that is another story.  Okay, no sandwiches.  The good news is that she is a big fan of leftovers in a thermos - soups, stews, pasta.  I like cooking those things so it worked out pretty well last year.  It is much easier to just reheat last night's dinner than remember to buy sandwich things every week, so in the end it is better for both of us.  So far this school year, I have sent in a few of days of pasta, a few of soups and only one sandwich.

Sarah tells me her friends are jealous of her lunches.  Why does that make me feel good?

Sarah is getting older and before long I will not be packing lunches for her anymore.  I will have no control over what she eats when she is away from home.  I hope I have helped her develop some good habits about what she chooses to eat at lunch.  I think I have, as long as it does not involve a lot of chewing.

There's a Word for That

German is a great language.  It has given us such wonderful words as kindergarten, schadenfreude, and, my new favorite kummerspeck.  What does it mean?  Well, according to the book Lost in Translation by Ella Frances Sanders, it "refers to the excess weight we gain from emotional overeating."  The literal translation is even better: "grief-bacon."

I certainly have my own share of kummerspeck, even if there has never been any bacon involved.  Even before I stopped eating meat, I never cared much for bacon.  But grief bacon?  That sounds rather tasty.

Pink Pickles

When we were in Maine, I ate the most amazing lobster taco topped with pickled red onion.  After we got home, I thought this was something I could make.  How hard could it be?  A little vinegar, a little seasoning and some red onion, right?  I started doing a little research.

And fell down the rabbit hole of pickling.

People are passionate about pickles.  I have never been fond of pickles so I never paid much attention.  Types of vegetables, types of vinegar, even types of salt are compared and debated.  How dare you use white vinegar with carrots?  What kind of fool would use red wine vinegar with cucumber?  Only a heathen would mix radishes with anything but rice wine vinegar!  These pickle people scare me.

Though not as much, it seems, as my pickles scare Sarah.

"Mom!  What is that pink thing in the refrigerator?" she asked breathlessly.
"I am trying to pickle red onions, like we had in the restaurant."
"Do I have to eat it?"

I mixed white vinegar, sea salt, white grape juice and pepper for my brine.  They have been sitting a couple days and the flavor so far is good, but it needs more time to develop.  I will let you know how it turns out, and if I can convince Sarah to give it a go.