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Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts

An Open Letter to Bakeries Around the Globe

Friday, September 25, 2015 | 0 Comment(s)

Dear Bakeries,

Let me begin by buttering you up, it seems apropos. I love your work. Hell, I've loved your work right into a larger waistline.  I appreciate that you have to wake up before all those people who wake up super early in order to provide them warm, often crackling, golden doughy goodness. And the filo dough, I mean, shut the fuck up that is so tasty. And with the layering, and maybe some honey. Shit, this is already turning into an advertisement for bakeries worldwide. But that's not what this is. This is a plea.

Many of you provide a category of baked good that goes by many names: Cinnamon rolls, Coffee rolls, or Sticky buns. This is not the complete list.  Again, let me pause to commend you on your decision to concoct such delectables -- they are all excellent.  I realize that pastry chefs are appalled that I can't tell the difference between each independent sweet in this category, but the truth is I choose to see what makes things alike more than to dwell on their differences, because I'm morally superior.

*drool*
Among these coffee rolls (yup, that's what I'm calling all of em) we find more divisiveness.  The greatest division; Greater than the Crocs debate and perhaps even more enflamed than Uggs' controversy. The line in the sand is, of course, raisins versus no raisins.  While I reluctantly agree that coffee rolls may contain raisins, I'm not at all happy about it.  It is an abomination.  A perverse joke composed of desiccated grapes rubbing elbows with such kings and queens of taste the likes of brown sugar, cinnamon sugar, and melted sugar.  Raisins and cinnamon hardly mix (I'm looking at you cinnamon raisin bagels), but we can all agree that raisins are the odd man out of the coffee roll equation.  They're weird, and not in a positive sense.  At all.

When I look at a cinnamon roll with raisins, this is what I see.
Here comes the plea.  If you make coffee rolls, and you choose, despite my best efforts and your better judgements to add raisins, please please please make those raisins visible to the consumer. I'm specifically talking about putting at least a few raisins sprinkled on top.  As a warning.  Cause raisins are that bad in this situation.

I don't eat a lot of donuts and coffee rolls.  At least I try my best not to. I find these particularly glucose-filled delights are best left as occasional treats or rewards. So when I do purchase a swirl of sugary pastry, I begin salivating much like the streams of liquid that drip from my pitties mouth as he waits for the command to "eat."  It's a special moment.

For this reason, nothing gets me quite as ragefull as biting into the doughy outer arm of my swirl only to have my front teeth pop the wrinkled skin of dead fruit hiding inside the caked on brown sugar and cinnamon.  THERE SHOULD BE A LAW AGAINST THIS!!!!  While I admit to suffering the constant worry over the possibility that their may be fruit in my cinnamon roll, to hide those fuckers within the folds with no clear markings denoting their existence is simply immoral. It's immoral.  I'm saying it makes you a bad person. So knock that shit off.

Johnson & Johnson's Baby Onions

Friday, February 13, 2015 | 0 Comment(s)

I have strong opinions regarding onions and most other vegetables as well.  I just do.  While onions may be my favorite vegetable to dice, and delicious to eat, I'm not so into plant matter that defends itself. Except Venus flytraps, cause they obviously rule so fucking hard. But layers of cry-inducing skin? Pass. If I wanted that, I'd just chop a live chicken or something.  At least I'd end up with a main course instead of just one ingredient to compose a side dish. Hell, after onions reduce, they practically disappear altogether. Pussies.

With that established, you would think that this report in The Telegraph left me clicking me heals mid-air.

photo credit: softpedia.com
It did not.

That is way over the line Smokey. Mark it zero.

When you read the report, it doesn't mention the words "genetically modified organisms" anywhere because the very whisper of the GMO acronym sets off a debate that drowns out all other information trying to be conveyed. But these British farmers didn't one day go into their fields and lo and behold, "Hey we've got magic onions!"  No. It wasn't like that at all.

TBRARUMUD All-Stars: The $38.00 Buffet

Monday, January 12, 2015 | 0 Comment(s)

Originally published on February 2, 2010, what follows is one of the rare wonderful moments that took place during a psychology conference in Las Vegas, NV.  I chose this piece partially because the advise at the end of the piece is as applicable now as it was during its original publication.  Enjoy!  -MZ
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Now, there really are quite a few negatives about Vegas that I feel need to be shared. But, in the spirit of optimism, i'm going to go with one of the positives. And thus begins the story of the $38 buffet.


Saturday night, my final night on the strip, a few friends and I were looking for a relatively inexpensive, tasty (remember what I had eaten the night before) dinner option. Having already eaten at Burger Bar (YUM!--so good I suggested going again), we decided to hit up the Bellagio Buffet.

Now, I'm going to be honest, "buffet," to me, does not have a good connotation. When I think of a buffet I think of a line of food laid out on a table or set of hotplates, that sits, touched or untouched, for a block of time not unlike the block of time you are supposed to reserve for the cable guys arrival ("just be at home anywhere from 10am - 4pm, we'll get to you"). So the chance of getting food that has been sitting out is generally pretty high. I, for reasons I can only think must be tied to my experiences, also think of Chinese food and multiple forms of fried noodles and rice. There have been exceptions to the rule. I once went to a glorious Indian wedding in NYC whose endless Indian delicacies rocked my sari off (figuratively). But this, sadly, was the exception, and most buffet dinners I have had have led to extended visits to Sergeant Porcelain's infirmary. It's conservation of mass folks--what goes in, must come out.