Cheerios

Today I had Cheerios for breakfast. Some of you may be worried that i did something horrible to the cheerios. My love of savory oatmeal dishes has taken some interesting turns through the years, but i assure you, the Cheerios were had with milk, and not with pesto, barbecue sauce, or pepperoni. It was basically what you expect with a breakfast of Cheerios: the crunchy, salty fibrousness of the oats interacting with the cool sweetness of the milk. Overall enjoyable but unremarkable. I myself have something of a weakness for Cheerios. I'm not going to get passionate about it, but sometimes you just want to eat certain things and sometimes that thing is Cheerios. Furthermore, in their dry form they make a pretty decent snack food, and are an acceptable if uninspiring replacement for popcorn. Heres the thing. It has been mentioned to me that some people have problems with Cheerios that go beyond the usual "corporations are gunna git us" thing that is so common in my circle.

As best as I can recall, it came up when I was still living in Worcester. I brought home a big thing of Cheerios from the store, and one of my roommate, I don't remember which, said something along the lines of "cheerios, yich (with a hard ch, like in Hebrew)." and made the type of face that one would expect when someone says a word like "yich (with a hard ch, like in Hebrew)."I was somewhat taken aback, as Cheerios has a taste that is about as offensive as vanilla. its not particularly good, but it really never occurred to me that it could arouse negative passions. I probed for a reason why. Is it the milk? The crunchiness? the fact that it tastes generically like bread? What about Cheerios could possibly be anything except mild disinterest?

I do not remember the answer specifically, my impression was that it was somewhat nebulous and non specific. This is often a problem when I ask someone why they do not like something, and it is even more common a response with food. This is a conundrum for me, as I am a person who likes cooking for people. If you can't tell me what they dislike, I cannot fix it. And yet, having been on the other end, I know people feel attacked. I would never want anyone to feel forced to eat/listen/watch something that they disliked merely out of politeness to me. I would like to be able to make it so such an unpleasantness doesn't occur again, but people often have very shaky understandings of why they like anything. That's not a criticism, I do it too. Academics in any specific profession spend years developing a specific vocabulary to allow them to describe exactly what is good or bad about a specific topic. People think they are being elitist, which may be part of it, but without knowing about music theory, who here can really, specifically tell me what they like or dislike about any given song? Even with music theory, many critiques, even written by classically trained professionals, come down to inexact words like "energy." There is a major part of me that is driven absolutely insane by the inexactitude of reality.

There is another side to why people cannot tell me what they dislike about food, and this, as it turns out, has more to do with Cheerios. After a few minutes of weedling, the person in question said something along the lines of "I dunno, its kid's food." The sentence brought to mind immediately an event from my childhood. One of the mothers in the Chavura, or study group, to which my family belongs had packed her child numerous baggies of Cheerios, baby carrots, and celery. I was very young, and this kid was younger than me. There were, at the time, probably 7 or 8 of us kids in this Chavura at the time, and we had been stuck in a play area of the house while the adults did adult things. I was somewhat bored. I didn't really see these kids outside of the Chavura, and most of them were either noticeably younger than me, or so much older than me that they wanted little to do with me. In these situations a pecking order rapidly develops where the younger kids want to play with the older kids, and the older kids want to go home. Being the second oldest kid there, I wanted out, or to play with the only kid older than me. As he was occupied with a computer game at the time, I was basically quite too busy moping to play with the kid with the cheerios. nonetheless, he tried to get me to play with him. Being excessively bored, and something of a sympathetic soul, I consented to watching him play with over-sized Leggos. So there I was, sitting, im a room full of toddlers and post-toddlers, and this kid offers me some Cheerios.

As I have mentioned, I like Cheerios. I took the baggy from him and opened it, and the smell of the Cheerios hit me. For some reason it sickened me. the smell of the oats and the wheat, which usually smells alluring or at least uninspiring, smelled sickeningly sweet. I was momentarily stunned, and not sure what to do. I knew i liked Cheerios. They didn't smell different than Cheerios normally do. But they smelled somehow appalling.

In later years I have associated the feeling with the smell that comes off of daycare centers and old age homes. It is probably some instinctive reaction to the germiness of those environments. I'm not sure how my body developed this reaction, and it is somewhat subjective, as I have the same reaction to applejuice, but it is intensely physical and makes me feel nauseated by the food in question.

The association of food and environment is pretty common in my life. We all have certain assumptions about an environment when a certain kind of food comes our way, and we all know how events in our lives can affect the way we view other things. For instance, we can never be sure whether we dislike a certain pop artists because we dislike their music, or because we have defined our selfs against liking them. What is wonderfully bazaar is when we take on expectations and physical reactions to food. I could probably write chapters analyzing the different facets of this, and discussing where evolutionary survival strategies end and human psychosis begins. What is clear to me is that I have the makings of an interesting hypothesis: some people don't like Cheerios because their moms gave it to them as a "healthy" snack food, and as such they associate it with unhealthy conditions.

Some psychology student could probably write an interesting thesis on the power of association and its relation to the enjoyment or rejection of childhood foods. Why do we like mac and cheese and hate baby food and cheerios? its all obviously subjective. I like Cheerios, some normal people, and a lot of bums, think it is perfectly ok to eat baby food. Why do i get physically ill at the thought of the texture of slimy, slippery baby food, but am sexually excited by the thought of eating mac and cheese, that deliciously gooey and oozy food? there are texture and temperature differences, but are they that big? If I heated baby food, would you eat it?

I wouldn't.

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Seville diner

Growing up in suburban New Jersey to a Jewish family, the town had two poles: the Seville and the Colonial diners. I was dragged to both numerous times, and people would discuss which was better. i found both abhorrent, crystallizing around the time when i was served tortellini Alfredo with Alfredo sauce that separated.

In high school I got over my loathing of diners based on a realization that, at any given establishment, you should order what they are good at and not what they think they are good at. this epiphany was aided by my increasingly nocturnal habits, and the fact that at 2am on a Tuesday the only place to go was Dunkin Doughnuts or a diner. In this process the above diners had little part. they were not open 24 hours, and as such remained the home of the elderly and the perpetual trucker. At some point they were remodeled as part of an area-wide arms race that sought to take advantage of the golden place diners hold in New Jersey cuisine. essentially, the diners were gentrified.

The full gentrification of diners is a topic for another day: as with all gentrification discussions it is complex and this story has more than enough to discuss on its own. What is important to note is that gentrification takes capital and capital in the restaurant business, especially in New Jersey, has only a few sources. apparently the owner of the Seville ended up somewhat entangled in debt to these sources, some of whom owed favors to the owner of the Colonial. the exact nature of the transaction is unclear, though it is rumored that the owner of Seville owed money directly to the owner of the Colonial. What is known definitely is that, in broad daylight, the owned of the Seville was gunned down in his business' parking lot in a crime that produced no witnesses.

In the wake of the above Seville has emerged as a very nice diner, as has the Colonial. they none the less remain diners. i have not had anything bad in either place since the remodeling, and yet i remain wary, the lesson of the congealed Alfredo sauce still haunting me to this day. So when, this evening, my eye alighted on something in the house specialty section entitled "Chinese Pork Sandwich" i knew full well that i would never order it. I read the description anyway.

"Chinese Pork Sandwich: Chinese Pork on Garlic Bread with lettuce and tomato, served with fires."

I was incredulous. Who said this was ok? who let the chef out of his cage? this had to be the nastiest sounding thing ever. I imagined the typical diner garlic bread, soaked with enough butter to make Paula Dean oink with delight, stuffed with some kind of greasy asian pork stir fry disaster, finished with veggies wilted by the heat of the grease. I imagined myself trying to choke this down, the grease dribbling down my throat, the flavors praying for death in my mouth. it sounded awful, but it sounded so awful i had to try it. I was very hungry, and was really in the mood for a burger, but as soon as i pictured the horror that this sandwich was sure to be, i knew i had to try it. It was too insane. There had to be an angle on this i was missing. As a man who makes insane sounding dished with a regularity that drives friends away and makes relatives bow their heads with shame i knew that it was my sacred duty to try this, if for no other reason than as a warning to others. my image would go down in the annals of greasy spoon lore. "Dude! look at this! it looks terrible!" "oh yeah, it is. This guy I know from work tried it, said it was like being orally raped by a 400 lb Texan."

The first thing you need to know about this sandwich is that the pork is that pink pork stuff you get in lo mein or in bowls of ramen. This was immediately better than what I had been expecting. It also came with duck sauce. This was...unexpected as well. Being game, i went for it. I put the duck sauce on the pork slices (3 large ones) and then arranged the veggies, before placing the bread on the top and pressing down. I raised the sandwich to my mouth, and took a good bite. The following few minutes can best be described as carnage, as i destroyed that sandwich with prejudice. The bread was crunch on the outside, the pork was sweet and faintly salty. the veggies were fresh. I did not notice the grease of the garlic bread, which was a great relief.

Part of this may be that i was very hungry going into this meal. But this was, i think, a surprisingly good sandwich, and definitely original. Most diner food is unsubtle. The best diner food is a well made combination of simple experiences. This sandwich was surprisingly subtle, with interplay of the honey notes of the duck sauce and the salty notes of the pork was remarkably restrained, while the garlic bread gave the dish a remarkable sandwichey-ness. the bread was crunchy at the crust, and soft in the middle. It may have been because this sandwich lacked cheese, but somehow the oilyness i usually associate with commercial garlic bread was only presently in a charmingly moist sandwich.

I'm still not sure i forgive diners for that Alfredo, and diner gentrification is a topic that remains unresolved, but i was happy with my meal and i will say it was definitely pretty good.

before i sign off for the night, I should like to point out i will never be giving any food a number of stars. I only just decided, but i have decided that that is lame. take that, America. You will have to make your decisions based on my arguments and descriptions, and not based on an artificial rating system! booyah!

Ok, gnight losers.

Evil Tom

First entry, busy night

Y hulo there internet. In the off chance someone who is not a friend of mine stumbles upon this, an introduction.

I have been blogging since before it was cool. I got started on Open Diary back in the day, and have been on Open Diary, Dead Diary, Livejournal, and Myspace. I even had a Geocities account I used to blog for a short while. By far my longest stretch was on Open Diary. It was pretty awesome for a long time. The thing about blogging is, if you are doing it for the audience the only way to build one is to be a complete hooker, and go around chatting people up. They call it networking in other professions. On the inter-webs it’s basically just being nice and saying hello to the neighbors. I reached a point where it just stopped making sense to spend a lot of time on internet drama with people I would never meet, and then half ass the average entry. I would sit down and rattle off the things that had happened to me that day and then look for something more to say. Invariably, I would do a survey. I don't want to knock those years. I had a lot of fun and met some awesome people. But things change and I got bored.

These days I no longer write much poetry, or write many stories. What I do a lot is cook and eat out. I've wanted a way to talk about food to my friends and relatives, but we always seem to miss each other, and when we do get to talk, I want to talk about my life, and not bore them with “that roast I made.” So this is going to be a food blog. Saying so brings up alarming associations for me. Defining this as such means I have to define myself in relation to the "foodies." Its not that I don't like food, get somewhat obsessive about describing it, and spend altogether too much money on it. It’s that I hate labels and groups. I'm going to be talking about both high end cuisine and at the same time be telling you all how amazing the grease trucks are, but the immediate associations such an angle conjures, say, Diners Drive-ins and Dives, fills me with loathing.

So I'm going to try to avoid the whole issue. I love good food, but I try not to be snobby about it. The food network is way too white bread for my tastes, but I end up watching it a lot. Moving on.

The last few days have been pretty big; I may have to split them into two entries as I am already tired. The first interesting development is that my girl and I found a great Vietnamese place in our area. To do this topic justice we need to go back to college.

My first and still favorite Vietnamese food was from a place called Saigon in Worcester, Massachusetts. I went to school at Clark University, and every year the school has a day called "Spree Day." Most schools have something similar. Everyone gets the day off. In years past it was an excuse for legitimized underage drinking; now it is an excuse for de-legitimized underage drinking. On my first spree day I was still ill-advisedly straight edge, and somewhat bored, though I was enjoying watching everyone have a good time. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up there, but I think it was a girl I was pining after who invited me to join a bunch of her friends and go to this place off campus.

The restaurant was wonderfully shabby. The family clearly lived upstairs, and there were always kids either running around, or studying in the corner. The wait-staff was obviously the relatives, but the older relatives only took orders sometimes. Most of the duties were preformed by a pair of very... metro-sexual young men who couldn't have been beyond their early twenties, if that. The menus had items on it that my friends and I were never able to order, since that had not been carried in the previous five years. They never, in the five years I went to Saigon, reprinted the menu. The decor was blue, with a firm coating of golden budda heads, and there was a TV playing Vietnamese language television on top of the coke case. I have seen similar TVs in almost every hole in the wall Asian restraint I enter, and often kill time wondering about the distribution routs of such material.

At the time I was not impressed by the food, probably because I was a bit moody that the girl had not ended up sitting near me, and I didn't know anyone else. Ironically, I may have been hanging put at that point with several of my future good friends, given the social circle, but in freshman year you do not know these things. I also didn't really know what to order. Figuring it similar to Thai, I ordered something along the lines of a curry. It was alright, but heavy on the peppers and very greasy. Still, it was good enough and different enough that when, over the years, people asked to go back, I would generally say yes.

I spent 5 years in Worcester, four in school and one bumming around, and every time I went to Saigon I liked it more. I eventually figured Vietnamese food out when a friend of mine told me to order the bbq pork on vermicelli. The pork comes in basically identical strips, covered in hosin sauce that is seared on over a grill. or at least, you hope it is a grill and not from a package. it could go either way, given the uniformity of the product, but honestly, I don't care. it is tender, salty, sweat and spicy. each piece is bite size, and it is served with a fresh salad, a cup of sauce, and a pile of the titular vermicelli. Vermicelli is a very thin noodle, kind of like angel hair, but made with semolina wheat instead of durum. the Italians make their vermicelli with durum, but they are wrong. I have spoken.

The affect is a dish with clarity of flavors. The Indians and the Thai have their curries with their blend of greens and spices and savor. That is fine and good, but as often as not the result is a muddle on the tongue. The Vietnamese, at their best, produce dishes that are just plain interesting. My favorite way to eat the above dish is to dump the sauce, a kind of citrus-y salad dressing, on top of the noodles, dump in everything else, and mix it all up. The noodles have their calm, subtle sweetness, the pork has its salty, smoky spiciness, and the salad imbues the whole with refreshing crunch. I do not always feel full after this meal, but I fell nourished, the same way I do after reading a telling bit of theory. This is food that makes sense, to the brain and the heart.

When I moved back to the Jersey I missed Saigon sorely, but soon I found a substitute. Working in New Brunswick, as I do, my coworkers and I often partake of the numerous lunch deals offered in that town. We eventually stumbled upon Mekong, a very clean hole in the wall style restaurant that served a wonderful selection of Vietnamese food, from Pho to spring rolls, though these last were a bit pricey. I was overjoyed, however, to discover that the bbq pork was on the lunch special. My coworkers were less pleased, as I proceeded to drag them there for months straight till they began to refuse to go there. I was of course crushed when Mekong closed. it wasn't perfect, but it was close, and their #31 with pork and fried spring rolls was amazing. The Korean place that replaced it has not really been a consolation.

So it was that my gal and i ended up in Edison at Pho Anh Do in Edison, NJ. as the name implies they specialize in Pho, which is a good sign. you know how Chinese places that specialize in dim sum are guaranteed to be good because they are catering to actual Chinese patrons? With Vietnamese food that is Pho. I'll tell you all more about pho at a later time, as I grantee you i will be getting more Vietnamese food in the future, but as it happened I was not in a Pho mood that day, nor was I in a mood for my usual bbq pork with vermicelli. I was in the mood for beef, so on the recommendation of the proprietress, I tried the beef cubes with rice.

With most dishes the goal is balancing all the elements into a harmony. This is not the case in a beef dish. a beef dish must balance the beef in harmony. Beef is such a strong, powerful culinary force that if that is achieved, all else will follow. I am quite happy to say that Pho Anh Do's beef cubes with rice achieved that balance. The beef was sauted with onions in a somewhat salty, pepper laden sauce, but the affect was more like a rub. The sauce was barely there, and that is how it should be with beef. The timing manifest in the beef was superb. the meat was insanely tender. it tasted perfectly rare, but i didn't actually check as it was too good to pause the eating. The dish was so good I even enjoyed the onions, often a necessary but annoying encumbrance in the eating of a dish. The rice provided a wholesome rest from the beef, and a coolant when the spice became too much. the small salad that came with the dish served basically like a post coitus cigarette, calming the diner while still allowing him to savor the flavor of the dish.

Obviously, I was trilled with the restaurant. My girl Friday also enjoyed her dish greatly, and we found the spring rolls to be delicious and reasonably priced. We had three orders between us and didn't begrudge a penny.

In the hope that my friend Alex reads this, i should mention one further detail. After dinner i indulged myself in an avocado shake. Alex spent many hours assuring us that Saigon's offering of this concoction wasn't as bad as it sounds. when i eventually ordered one myself, i found that they were, on the contrary, delicious. I know it sounds weird, but the drink is really pretty good.

For dinner tonight i had adventures as well, but they will have to wait, as it is four am and i am exhausted.

Evil Tom