Some Like it Hot

           This week on the Food Blog, the meal I’ve been perfecting for the last four years of my college career: the TOP Top Ramen Dish.

            I currently reside with three of my fraternity brothers in a quaint little duplex atop a hill, and if there is one thing we have plenty of in our humble home, it’s Top Ramen.  We have crates upon crates.  It’s the meal that happens a hell of a lot towards the end of the month, when money is scarce and a random assortment of leftovers offer themselves into the mixing pot that is the Top Ramen Meal. For this particular creation, I made very few pickups from the store.  I knew I wanted my noodles to have a Thai peanut vibe so I got a bottle of the sauce from the store along with some chow mien hard noodles (those things that look like little sticks).  The sauce just about busted my budget at five dollars and change, but remember that I live in a household of four dudes and two full sized refrigerators.  I’m going to be just fine. 

            I call my usual lovely assistant and tell her to hustle over, because this kitchen is about to blow up.  First, let’s get some meat.  I have a bag of frozen chicken breasts in the freezer that I nearly forgot existed and then, because this is America, I’ll grab some of my roommate’s bacon and get to fryin’.  As the chicken and bacon sizzle in their respective pans, I’ll scour the fridge and pantry. 

            We need some vegetables.  When it comes to my grocery shopping, there are three veggies I always have fully stocked: fresh baby spinach, bell pepper, and jale-f*#@in-peño.  What else does the body really need? 

            I chop everything up and get it in the big salad bowl, and I even throw some diced almonds in there (class it up a little).  It looks like a nice salad doesn’t it?  Well this ain't no salad recipe.  We’re moving forward.  It needs some meat and noodles.  I throw the main ingredients on top and now we just need the sauce.  I never added the artificial powder flavoring that ramen comes with; this dish was better than that. 

            The peanut sauce is one of my favorites when going for more of an Asian noodle dish, and with the jalapeños, I would get most of my fix for spiciness.

            No.  I don’t think it’s going to make me sweat yet.  It needs something else.  The one sauce that should always be used heavily with any ramen dish (or any dish in a fraternity house): Sriracha.  Yes!  The cock sauce!  Now let’s mix it all up!

            The dish is complete…and yes it makes us both sweat.  That’s when you know you’ve done something right.  With our sinuses clear and our stomachs full, we bask in the glory that was the finest Top Ramen creation I have ever made. 

The leftovers will be awesome.

A Peach is a Peach is a Peach?

          I have never been one to scour the farmer’s market in search of the finest produce, the ripest fruit, or the freshest cider.  In fact I have rarely looked into any of the groceries I buy from my usual big supermarkets like Safeway and WalMart, but its time to see—no—to taste what’s really going into my mouth and body.  One would have to expect that produce from a local organic farm that is sold at the farmer’s market would have to be superior to one of the billions of pieces of produce shipped to WalMarts all over the US.  Well it was time to test the theory.

            My item of choice would be the peach.  Few fruits could match the sweet succulent explosion of flavor that came with every bite.  I wanted that perfect peach: that peach that felt like there was a circus going on in my mouth!  I wanted to find a peach just like Kramer’s famous Mackinaw peaches on Seinfeld.  You know, the kind that only come around once, and with flavor that is unparalleled.

            Well we don’t have Mackinaw peaches, so something locally grown and organic would have to do.  I set off to the Moscow Farmer’s Market down on Main St. with the girlfriend and we decided to check out one of the bigger fruit stands.  This place had crates upon crates of peaches and apples and peppers, and any thing else one could need.  It was an organic farm from Royal City, Washington. The peaches looked just splendid, I doubted anything from WalMart could match. 

            When we got to Walmart, Jamie (the previously stated lady friend) took one look and one squeeze of the peaches in the produce section, and knew they didn’t have a chance.  Nonetheless, we picked out the best one we could find, hoping to make it a somewhat fair fight in our taste contest to come.

            After a weekend of drinking and barbeques in the park, we had almost neglected to have our little showdown of peach purity, but finally it was time.  Jamie kept me out of the kitchen as she did her best to make the chunks of peach as even and similarly shaped as possible.  I would be the first to go blindly into that good peach. 

            With my hood pulled over my eyes, I took the first bight.  It was a circus! The sweet juice erupted in that explosion of flavor I had been hoping for.  It was almost perfect, except for a tad of sourness that would surely have dissipated in a day or two of ripening.  It seemed a solid choice, but something told me this was no farmer’s market peach.  I don’t know what it was, a hunch, something in my gut.  It just didn’t feel right.

            Then it was time for the next bite.  After thoroughly washing my taste buds off with the delicacy that is Moscow tap water, I sunk my teeth into bite two.  For a second I felt as though another flavor fit was about to occur, but it quickly subsided. The bite was gone as quickly as it had come.  My choice felt obvious, but it was Jamie’s turn.

            Covering her eyes in a beanie, before the anxious looks of her dogs Cirque and Kade, Jamie waited to test what she already felt sure of.  I gave her the farmer’s market peach first.  She kept silent, but I had come to know what she knew.  One look at those wedges and it was obvious that my newly found hunch was wrong. A sip of water, and then next bite.  Soon it was over and she ripped the hat off her head. 

            “I know exactly which was which,” she said.

Pretty obvious yeah?

      There was truly no comparison.  The Farmer’s market peach shined red and gold while the WalMart peach looked sad and already browning.  I guess I was wrong to ever even dream that the WalMart peach had a chance.  It was from Conrad & Adams Fruit Farm which was recently bought out by L&M Companies, a giant in the fruit and vegetable world.  They couldn’t match a small northwest organic farm.  I hate stories to end just how you expect them to, but you just cant argue with the truth.

The case was closed.

And the inspirational scene for any
who don't know it. Classic Kramer:

Life Without Corn

      Being of simple tastes and a small wallet, I have rarely ventured beyond my usual staples of collegiate cuisine.  I mostly stick to quesadillas (only requiring cheese and tortillas), turkey burgers (add bun and ketchup= awesome), and ramen (do I really need to explain this one?).  And I usually bought these nifty ingredients at the local Safeway, where I am a member of their nifty Card Club.  When faced with the task of taking corn out of my diet, I knew I had to rethink my whole approach to mealtime.  First, I did a little research and found this great list of foods to look for if one has a corn allergy.

          Jackpot.

     The list, found at http://corn-freefoods.blogspot.com/,  was full of any sort of food one might need to look for, all the while avoiding that ever present pest: corn.  I noticed much of the items on the list had certain words in common.  "Organic"was huge.  But then again, organic can mean all sorts of things depending on the product.  More or less, it carries the notion that the food was not processed or made with hormones etc.  I started to think, where could one find lots of organics and other more “natural foods” that do not come from ginormous factories of cow slaughter and the like.  Of course! The Moscow Co-Op.  Can’t go wrong there.

So, now I was tasked with scouring the shelves looking for ways to make balanced (yeah right) meals for a whole week.  I condensed it down into a formula.  I had to come up with something to eat for lunch and dinner for seven days (I don’t eat breakfast, nor do I need a lecture on all the reasons I should).  So, what for lunch?

Keep it simple. 

I could still do some quesadillas.  I just had to make sure the tortillas were in fact made with wheat or flour and no corn.  Ah-ha.  Ezekial brand tortillas use strictly wheat.  Not as tasty as a processed tortilla, but for the sake of science, it shall do.  Make it two packs (that way I can maybe use this for some dinners as well) and some organically grown cheese (I’m not sure that this guarantees that the cows were not fed corn at all, but my thought process was that if this producer took so much pride in their organic process, surely they would feed the cows grass; perhaps I am too trusting).  In order to get a little variety in my mid day meal, lets get some Ezekial bread as well.  Add some nice organic peanut butter and Jelly and we are good to go.  Just make sure there are no unnatural sugars in there.  Peanut Butter is nothing but peanuts and a dash of sea salt and the jam has natural Cane sugar!  Well, I’m convinced.

Now, for dinners.  I’ve got those tortillas, so what if I made some tacos.  Throw in some ground elk meat.  I’ve got seasoning at home.  It’s McCormick and it looks like it has no corn byproducts in there (except maybe processed salt; damn), so I’m keeping this one pretty close to the belt.  So that’ll take care of dinner for half the nights, mixing in quesadillas as well.  For the last couple nights, I’m thinking pasta.  I found some noodles containing only organic wheat, then some tomato sauce with no corn to speak of, just vegetables and organic ones at that.  Let’s put some meat in that sauce.  I found some great looking lamb sausages, and I love lamb sausage.  Wonderfully enough, the lambs are guaranteed pasture fed, as they are free-range lambs.  And I think that about covers the week.  So I’ve fed myself well enough (perhaps better than usual), but can I afford this?   

Ezekial Tortillas x2	$6.18
Ezekial Bread	$5.39
Organic Valley Mexican Mix Cheese x2	$9.18
MaraNatha Peanut Butter	$5.49
Europe Superfruit Jam	$2.99
Lucini Spicy Tuscan Tomato Sauce	$3.84
Western Buffalo CO. Ground Elk	$8.31
Anderson Range Lamb Sausage	$6.15

Total:                     $47.53

Tax                            x1.06

Grand Total           $50.38

        In my old ways, I spent around one hundred fifty to two hundred dollars a month on food, so around forty dollars a week.  Not too much less than this diet.  For one thing, my old pattern took little prep time, which is valuable in the fast-paced college lifestyle.  Will I be truly attempting to remove corn from my diet anytime soon?  Doubtful.  What about you?  Did this experiment change your opinions at all?  the main worry with corn being everywhere is simply our reliance on it.  With the summer droughts this year, our greatest ingredient was threatened.  So what will happen if corn were to stop or drastically slow down in production?  Would you just book it to the Co-Op?  You might just find me there.