This is a shot looking east down our street. Apparently I got pretty statically charged. Fun fact: Florida (specifically Orlando) is, according to John, the lightning capital of the world, so in a way we were taking our lives in our hands and tempting the fates.

Boy is it exciting out here in Florida.

Though the fry may have originated in Belgium and is certainly not exclusive to the US, it has become such a popular side to most every sandwich and burger in the country, that we should switch to the Yukon Gold Standard and trade in French fries.

Manatee potato!

I was raised to be a fry lover. At the annual state fair, my mom and I used to share blocks of fresh curly fries dowsed in vinegar. At McDonald’s, my dad had to create a rule stipulating that I must eat my burger before the fries, otherwise the burger would go uneaten and all that high-quality ‘beef’ would go to waste.

Sadly, the consensus that fries are bad for you is fairly uniform. Salted, deep fried tubers will do nothing for your waistline or arteries; group this harsh reality with gas prices, Hollywood remakes, and the strapless wedding gown trend, and we’ve just clicked one notch closer to There Is No God, And If There Is, Why Would He Make Us Suffer So.

Ergo, I have not eaten French fries but a handful of times in the past two or three years. Sometimes, I make exceptions, as everyone should do on occasion. But to satisfry my cravings, I came up with my own alternative. It’s not a silly non-food recipe, a processed product, a ‘low-calorie substitute,’ or a diet gimmick. It is, simply a whole food unencumbered by a lot of oil.

It’s also nothing earth-shaking: it is oven fries. I actually don’t know how prevalent home-made oven fries are, but if the frozen French fry section of the grocery store is any indication, my guess would be not very. However oven fries are fairly easy; once you’re done chopping, just throw them in the oven and make the rest of your meal.

The key to making oven fries is the ideal crispiness factor: baking them long enough to get out the soggy, but not so long that they char. Seasoning is the other key; I’ve found that salt, pepper, and Old Bay make for a zingy, finger-licking combination.

Otherwise, the process is simple: wash some potatoes, cut them up. I have found that cutting them slightly thicker helps with the crispiness; I used to cut my fries much thinner, but they would get too crispy in the oven. Cut a bit thicker, they are both soft and crispy.

Put the fries in a bowl. Add olive oil and ignore my dirty glass. The amount is up to you, but I use a tablespoon for every four or five potatoes I’ve cut up.

Mix it around to coat the potatoes. Sprinkle in some salt and pepper. Mix them around again. Slide them onto a baking sheet lined with foil (makes for easier clean up) then shake some Old Bay seasoning on top. Pop them in the oven at 450 degrees F for about 40 minutes or until their gold an crispy but not charred. Enjoy with liberal ketchup.

About 30 years ago Lisa and I went to Byromville, Georgia, where her mother lived, and where Lisa spent summers when she was growing up.

I remember the town being small and like a foreign country. It was the sleepy, mysterious small Southern town I’d seen in movies or read about in books where outsiders are rare. Small towns and foreign countries photograph better than new, large cities like Phoenix. Small towns in decline with visible marks of wear and tear are especially fertile ground for photographers.The years leave their mark on people, buildings and the landscape. Junkyards are fun too.

New cities just look too plain and sterile. The mundane shot of the Phoenix Airport economy parking lot where construction of a new Sky Train is in full swing, is banal, but man, when it starts to crumble, the paint flakes, rust streaks create graphic relief, it’ll be awesome…photographically.

The downtown of Byromville, whose better days have long gone looks more interesting, peaceful, and with a certain texture that new Phoenix will never have.

The large trees, the lonely row of stores, weathered everything. Nice.

The railroad tracks split the town in half between black and white.

Fortunately, the “black side” of town looks a lot nicer now than it did 30 years ago.

I do remember there was a dog sleeping on the sidewalk downtown. When we were there in February, there was still a dog sleeping on the sidewalk downtown.

I also remember Lisa’s “Granddaddy’s” house that still had the old furniture even though her grandparents had passed away some years before. Now though, the lot where the house was is completely overgrown as the house was razed some years ago. Lisa walked around, unhappy that the landmarks where she had spent summers were blotted out.

Trees and shrubs have completely overtaken the lot now. The only thing left is the steps leading up to the house.

When Ellis and I were in Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, in western China, it was a photographer’s paradise. More exotic than Byromville, but like Byromville, visitors feel their foreigness.

These old guys were arguing about something while the other guy laid out the day’s “Uighur Bagels” which they baked in a wood-burning oven behind them. The old city was literally falling apart and it looked exotic, more exotic than Byromville, in rural Georgia, but they both cling to the past. Kashgar is losing it’s battle as the Han Chinese demolish the crumbling old city and put up sterile new buildings while in Byromville, people just leave for opportunities elsewhere unless they happen to be cotton farmers.

Anyone interested in writing a guest post on Plate of Wander, please email ellis (at) plateofwander (dot) com. Conversely, if you are interested in having ellis or Dan write a guest post for your blog, please email the address above.

Since coming to Florida, I have had far more exposure to things made from mixes than I ever had previously (though I’m sure I unknowingly ate plenty of things made from mixes during my years eating in college dining halls). Brownies, cake, cornbread, all with that same one-dimensional texture and flavor (though the brownies had been doctored in such a way as to render them edible. The same can not be said for the other). Why are mixes so popular? Baked good made from mixes don’t have the texture or the flavor of those made from scratch, and mashed potato mixes will never have the comforting je ne sais quoi of butter and milk smashed into a whole tuber. Their popularity must be their perceived convenience, though to me, choosing a mix over a scratch is like choosing to go to the Luxor in Las Vegas instead of the Pyramids in Egypt.

It is not that I have a problem with convenience; rather, my mix petulance stems from sacrificed flavor and especially all the little extras food manufacturers throw in. I try in earnest to avoid foods with long ingredient lists, but it is impossible to find a loaf of bread with a short list of ingredients, all of which I recognize and can pronounce.

Most mix ingredient lists I’ve looked at contain, among numerous many-lettered ingredients, hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils or lard. I thought we’d all pretty much agreed that trans fat, found in hydrogenated oils, vegetable shortening, and margarine, are rather detrimental to one’s health.

This is where I get into it with mixes. Whipping up a batch of pancakes or cornbread or brownies really doesn’t take that long. Last weekend I made a spur-of-the-moment batch of pancakes to help John get an early start for an Easter gig.The lapsed time between my stepping out of bed and John lifting a fork to his mouth was no more than 30 minutes, and it was that long only because I re-used the pan to cook some eggs to put on top of the pancake stack.

I’m not saying this to try to prove I’m a kitchen wizard. Somehow, people have gotten it into their heads that cooking is difficult and time consuming. Sometimes, it is. If you’re making paella or a three layer cake with frosting, that requires a bit more commitment than a stir fry of a pan of cornbread.

If you are looking to put a batch of cornbread in the oven, it might be an issue of two minutes with a mix to ten minutes from scratch. Are you really that busy? An extra eight minutes of light measuring and stirring in exchange for a better taste and none of what has been proven to harm your heart and overall health seems, to me, a pretty fair trade. (Plus, the idea of croissants from a can, pancakes from a bottle, and mashed potatoes from a pouch kinda squicks me out.)

There’s still a lot of mystique surrounding things made from scratch. People ooh and aah over ‘scratch’ because it takes time, a willingness to follow directions and, not surprisingly, things made from scratch taste better. They have more depth of flavor, more than one texture, and because they show attention and intention, people appreciate ‘scratch’ far more.

So why don’t more people cook or bake from scratch? Laziness? Lack of cooking knowledge? Habit? Knowing what we do—and all that we don’t—about what goes into processed food, why do we refuse to change our habits?

I get that cooking is not for everyone, and not everyone has a lot of time on their hands to stand at the stove mashing potatoes for all of 5 minutes. But for a lot of people I know, getting closer to the cooking process brings more enjoyment of food and more appreciation for what’s on the fork.

People have grown to accept that things like a loaf of bread are smooshy shrink-wrapped pillows with dozens of indecipherable ingredients rather than a simple mixture of flour, water, and yeast that rises and bakes in the oven. We accept food that is not made from real food simply because it is easier to drive to the store and get it than to let some yeast rise in a bowl for a few hours while we do something else, because we’d rather dump a box into a bowl than measure a few ingredients and stir.

Cooking has become haphazard and lazy. All the books and blogs and TV spots now about eating real food are good propoganda, but isn’t it a little sad that I and others like and better than I are even writing about the fact that our food has a lot of non-food in it?

Again, I’m not against convenience. I get that life takes time. Here is my solution: make your own mixes. When you have an extra half an hour sometime, assemble a few plastic bags or glass jars. Mix together the right measurements of the dry ingredients for the things you eat most often: pancakes, brownies, whatever. Put one batch’s worth of ingredients in one Ziploc bag or jar, label it accordingly, and then grab it and dump that into a bowl when you’re ready. If you’re in a humid place like Florida, stick the Ziploc bag in the freezer for freshness. You are now effectively your own Betty Crocker, minus all the hydrogenated ridiculousness.

ellis’ really super simple pancakes

2 C all purpose flour
2 ½ t baking powder
3 T sugar
2 large eggs
1 ½ C milk
2 T melted butter (although I forgot my melted butter in the microwave last time and the pancakes were as delicious without it)

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir them with a whisk. Easier and as effective as sifting.

Whisk together the eggs and milk in another bowl. Stir until smooth, then blend in melted butter.

Put some butter on the bottom of a frying pan or griddle and pour in some batter, about ¼ cup for smallish pancakes. When the batter bubbles, flip the pancakes. Wait up a minute, depending on how hot your pan is, then take out the pancake and put in more batter. If you have a lot of pancakes to make and want it to go faster, get two skillets going at once.

Things from scratch that are worth your time:

Homemade Apple Sauce Not that time consuming and really, really worth it.

Bourbon Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Streusel

Killer Ginger Pear Upside Down Cake

My Mom’s Christmas Cinnamon Rolls

In the first part of my Palm Beach series, join me an John on our little jaunt along the Palm Beach Trail, a walking path that snakes up the west coast of Palm Beach Island.

Being that the west coast of Palm Beach Island is the coast facing the Intracoastal and not the Atlantic ocean, the west coast of Palm Beach is really the beginning of the Palm Beach ghetto.

I mean, look at the size of this plot of land. One could only fit the broom closet here. Only poor people could afford its multi-million dollar price tag.

The rich Palm Beachers, those willing to pay in the hundreds of millions for the homes that are shuttered most of the year, prefer to reside on the east coast of the island, north, but not too north. But we shall investigate the east side later.

Another way you can tell that the west coast is the wild ghetto side is all the wildlife.

There were lizards on the west side. Lizards! The people on the west side are obviously lizard people. How uncivilized.

And to add to the barbarity of it all, there were mating lizards. Honestly reptiles, get one of the twenty bedrooms of an estate on the east side. You’re just degrading yourselves.

But even the west side plebes want their privacy. They do, after all, live on the island and their hard-earned status as Palm Beachers must be respected. Hence, hedges.

It seems silly to me to block one’s waterfront home with tall, thick hedges, given that it blocks ones home from said waterfront view. Isn’t that the point of waterfront property?

The properties come with docks across the trail from the houses, and gates that block off exactly the width of the dock.

Certainly don’t want anyone walking on your dock if they’re not wearing loafers and no socks.

Socks are for the lower classes. As are probably these apartments.

The whole island is groomed to the last blade of grass.

I may sound snobby about snobbery, but it’s so blatant. People can spend their money how they want, it’s not up to me to decide, but it’s so galling to see people hemorrhaging so much money and flashing it so ostentatiously. It reminds me of the lizard flashing his gizzard to attract a mate.

This community is so afraid of outsiders that it not only has a regular police force, but its own private police force. Should a crime occur, one of the police forces has only to raise all the drawbridges, and no one can get on or off the island. I’m surprised they let the drawbridges down at all.

And isn’t that what the American Dream is all about?

I’ve noticed the bananas many times before, but it got me thinking today about how community gardens and local produce have become trendy, and it’s a great trend, because America is really disconnected from where our food comes from.

I am totally for the gardening trend—heck, I didn’t know that pineapples grew in the ground until I was sixteen—but in my opinion, all the local food movements and gardens are missing a key component of food education: meat.

I know—I’ve already railed against the prevalence of meat in the American diet. I would be happy eating meat once a week or less. But the fact remains that Americans eat a lot of meat; most people eat meat every day. Here’s the meat problem I’m addressing today: our meat in no way resembles the animal it came from.

Boneless skinless chicken breasts, fish fillets, ground beef, pork loins. The shrink-wrapped, Styrofoam-padded eerily neon-colored flesh that’s sitting in the back of our supermarkets does not look like animal. How about those floppy pallid discs of sandwich ‘meat?’ What animal is bologna? Does this look like a chicken??

Maybe if it were a Hoth chicken.

These are things I never noticed until living in China. Each semester I taught college in Huzhou, I did a unit on food. My students were shocked to hear that people could be deathly allergic to peanuts, but they were astonished that Americans don’t like to eat bones. Bones are part of the reason that KFC is so successful in China: chicken with bones! Hamburgers don’t have bones; perhaps this is McDonalds’ next big idea.

My students were astounded that we eat boneless fish fillets—the whole fish is so much tastier! Fish heads are their own sub-cuisine. Have you ever tried a fish cheek? Best part of the whole thing, but Americans would never know that because if we based our idea of a fish off of what we get in a restaurant, we would think fish are essentially giant worm blobs.

Bones taste better in beef, chicken, duck, snake, dog, and every other vertebrate. So many foreigners I know have refused to eat the most wonderful things because they don’t like dealing with the bones. I acknowledge the cumbersome nature and potential danger of small bones (I myself nearly choked on a duck bone my first week in Huzhou. TJ’s arms were at my sternum ready to Heimlich that sucker out of me when it dislodged itself and scraped nastily down my esophagus. Should this ever happen to you, swallow gobs of un-chewed rice.), but despite choking, bones slow you down and allow you to relish the flavors and suck the marrow. Plus, if you’re in China, you get the distinct pleasure of spitting the bones directly onto the table. I urge you to make this your practice even if you are not in China.

This is one reason I get irritated when people look at me aghast when I tell them I’ve eaten dog. I get that you have a pet that you love—I love my puppies like family members too. But where do you think meat comes from? Do you think it’s ok because chickens or pigs or cows aren’t as cute? Did your steak come from any less of an animal? Please.

For such a food-obsessed culture (or really, non-food. South Beach Diet meal bars, Weight Watchers anything, and pretty much every major brand of packaged food is not real food. Just try to find sliced bread with less than seven ingredients.), we don’t know anything about what food is or where it comes from. We just like to toss around abbreviations like BMI, GI, and HFCS while we eat 100 calorie packs of hydrogenated oils in Oreo form.

What does this have to do with the bananas I have painstakingly photographed and that have oozed sticky ooze all over my fingers, light box, and camera? It’s a reminder that food comes from the earth, that it grows on trees, and that when we eat delicious a hamburger, the meat is from a cow that was as alive as the dog I ate in Beijing.

So let’s make meat part of the local food movement. Let’s raise chickens in our back yards or buy them fresh from the markets instead of freshly harvested from the freezer. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done–I can’t even follow my own advice. Where could I possibly get fresh chicken around here? If I could find it, how could I afford it? It’s a vicious cycle that America needs to break.

About a year later, a somewhat skuzzy local businessman who spoke English and had made friends with my predecessors insisted on taking me out to dinner at the same restaurant mentioned above. We ordered the same soup, I made the same comment about its resemblance to matzoh ball soup, and he was suddenly absolutely giddy to learn that he had met himself a real live Jew. He does business frequently in Ethiopia, and called me a few days later to ask if he could bring me any “Jewish things” from Ethiopia.

Needless to say, Passover was a lonely time. I’m not highly observant, but I would have loved to curl up with a few matzoh balls and a cup or two of Manishewitz with a few like-minded individuals. Strangely, not many Chinese seem to have heard of Jewish people. The subject would occasionally come up in conversation, and when I told them in Chinese that I am Jewish, they would shake their heads ignorantly.

I find this interesting especially because there is (or, was) a Jewish Quarter in Shanghai, where refugees fleeing Europe settled. But with the ban on speaking at all of Western religions, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since Christmas is as secular as Valentine’s Day.

After a few years of wandering through the Jewish desert of China, I’ve made it to Florida, where there is certainly no dearth of Jews. In honor of finally being able to find some Manischewitz wine again, I made my second favorite (after matzoh ball soup) Passover dish, Charoset.

I know everyone jokes about how Manischewitz isn’t really wine, but as a sweet-wine loving oeno-rube, I relish the four cups of wine routine.

My charoset is a jewel-colored mix of the best of the dried fruit world. Figs:

Yes, there’s a piece of paper towel under the fig so it doesn’t leave a smudge on my new light box.

Apricots:

And dates:

Whirred together in the traditional Cuisinart:

Then mixed with some chopped, roasted walnuts:

Cinnamon:

Ginger:

And cayenne:

And then of course, a conservative glass of Manischewitz wine, plus a little extra to drink out of the glass before you pour it into the mixing bowl.

Heap onto matzoh:

And enjoy.

And just to make it sound extra trendy and healthy, it’s vegetarian, vegan, and Kosher! May health foodies everywhere rejoice. And to those who partake, merry Passover. Can I come to your seder?

Fig Apricot Date Charoseth

2/3 C dried Mission Figs
2/3 C dried apricots
1/3 C pitted dates
1 C chopped roasted walnuts
1/4 C Manischewitz wine
1/4 t each cinnamon and ground ginger
1/8 t cayenne pepper

Whir the dried fruit together in a food processor. To roast the walnuts, heat oven to 350 degrees, dump the walnut pieces on the tray, and bake 5-7 minutes, stirring once or twice.

Mix the dried fruit with the walnuts, wine, and spices, then drink 4 cups of wine and say L’Chaim!

For more on being a Jew in China see:
The Huzhou Food Jew is a Lonely Eater

Hebrewed to Perfection

******mas

For more about being a Food Jew: Jew Eat Yet?

Needless to say, six months of going nowhere geographically, gastronomically, and career-wise has made for a tough time. When I was living in Huzhou, I never thought I’d miss it so.

And now the biggest change of scenery and most exotic place I’ve gone has been: the zoo.

Zoos always make me sad because those poor animals are in such small cages; they can’t go out and run around like they’re meant too.

Zoos also make me get the Simon and Garfunkel song about how “it’s all happening at the zoo” stuck in my head for hours on end. If they can make a song out of it, I can make a post out of it.

Perhaps the most exciting things at the zoo were the uncaged peacocks roving about, and then retreating to the bushes when people tried to take their picture.

It took me quite a long time of standing still and making silly noises to just get them to look pretty and not run away into the foliage.

Models. Geez.

I’ve been trying to plug on without getting discouraged, but even simple things like writing blog posts turn into huge tasks that, let’s face it, seem pointless. *

However, I’ve heard from sources that I’m too negative, so I shall try to maintain a positive outlook no matter how silly optimism sounds to me. I will make things better.

Thankfully Gerald, who has his own site at zhangschmidt.com, stepped in at a low-point and gave me a tough-love butt-kicking. He suggested that I expand upon my cooking, all the weird (I prefer ‘creative’) things I concoct. So I did. This weekend I built myself a lightbox (using a step-by-step from here and here) so that I could photograph food better. I’m still in the experimenting process, but the first batch of pictures has come out acceptably.

I first sic-ed my light box on the beloved John and ellis tradition of pasta night. We really don’t deviate from this formula at all, except when we put in shrimp or ground turkey instead of ground beef. We’re both red sauce lovers, so that doesn’t change either. Ever.

I don’t remember how the cauliflower started—I think just because John loves cauliflower and we roasted some in conjunction with pasta—but roasted cauliflower has become a necessity. It adds extra bulk and a serving (or two or three) of vegetables to a meal that can quickly get a little heavy on the carbs.

We slice up a red onion and throw in some mushrooms, a more recent addition to the pasta night tradition. I always welcome fungi!

And of course, pasta.

I will admit that there was a long time when I lived in fear of pasta, and while that quirk has receded, my quirk is now that I will only eat whole wheat pasta, mostly because I feel vindicated by the fiber and whole grains. But I suppose if pasta is good enough for Sophia Loren, it’s good enough for me to eat once a week too.

So these are the first shots from the light box. Critiques and suggestions welcome as I perfect working with it.

*Dear readers: please leave me some comments about what you want to read about on Plate of Wander. I’ll admit I’ve been bitten by writer’s block, and then I get looped into an inferiority complex. So please let me know what makes you read Plate of Wander, and what you want to see more of.

Tar! (I put in the bottle cap for size reference. This was a small to medium sized tar pool.)

It’s such a good exfoliation method that it doesn’t even come off your feet. It just clings stubbornly to the skin, giving you a whole new shiny epidermal layer. Apparently the best way to get it off is baby oil (that’s what she said), which John finds ironic because it was the oil companies who were likely responsible for the snotty black tar puddles that washed ashore, and now they get the dollars from people trying to get their tar boogers off their feet.

The beach was awash in tarballs large and small, from pea-sized to mini-tar pit sized. It made feel like Littlefoot in The Land Before Time.

Apparently most Floridians are used to it, though the beaches over here haven’t had tarballs in quite a few years.

According to a news article, authorities said it probably wasn’t dangerous, but not to get it on your skin. Getting it on one’s skin was all but unavoidable. And who’s going to tell all the animals? I had a heck of a time getting that crap of my feet; I can only imagine what a handicap and nuisance it is for all the poor animals getting it caught in their feathers, scales, or orifices. Not to mention I bet most pharmacies won’t sell them baby oil.

The outdoor produce markets are, in America, a luxury, a sort of hip, once-a-week-half-the-year social event, not the place you buy your food every day. The green markets and/or farmers markets are revered for their ‘green-ness,’ which we associate with ‘eco-friendiness,’ which nowadays translates into ‘coolness factor.’

I don’t know about the situation at most green/farmers markets around the country, so I’m using my experience with Santa Monica and Phoenix farmers markets, focusing on the West Palm Beach Green Market. The WPB version runs every Saturday in the not-so-ungodly-hot months. It has its share of culinary yummies, and higher quality products, but it also seems like a bit of a show.

Outdoor markets play a different role in America. This market is a sort of social event for those who can afford it, and while it is tons of fun, it seems to have a hint of smug. “Look how green and local we are. Look at how natural we all are, selling our local produce in natural organic yoga clothes.”

Imagine how interested I was to learn that a fair percentage of the local produce stands were not, in fact, local.

Outdoor markets in the US have a novelty factor, as though we’re getting back in touch with nature by skipping Costco and buying our strawberries on a lawn instead of a giant refrigerator. You can save me the sanitation argument because somehow, despite all the fresh produce and meats sitting in the outdoor market for who knows how long in China, they somehow have more than maintained their population numbers.

There are so many dogs at the WPB Green Market (I don’t know about other outdoor markets) that an alien observer might think it was a gathering for canines who bring their masters out. Dogs are everywhere (you want to talk sanitation now?), even by the grill, which might be a bit more of a precarious spot in China.

Green markets here are quite luxurious. The local one here is filled with pastries and artisan cheeses and fresh breads, as well as cakes, handmade fresh pastas, specialty teas, and orchids.

And black lava sea salt?

Despite my slightly curmudgeon attitude to the smugness of the green market, it is a lot of fun, and definitely better than the supermarket. It’s the shopping version of dining al fresco. And we get to talk to produce people who say things like “Check out the ass on this tomato!”

People who know their produce will do funny things, like play with their malformed tomatoes.

And show them off.

And then let you take them for free.

I love that people are out there and interacting a bit more with their food, and that they’re buying the fresher, sometimes more local food. But why isn’t this the norm like it is in so many other countries? I never see produce this beautiful in the supermarket. I don’t quite understand why this isn’t a daily, or at the very least bi-weekly, thing. Why don’t we want to buy our food outside on a regular basis when it’s fresher, more sustainable, and fun?