I was so disappointed today when I went to purchase my usual
weekly box of Alpen and discovered the familiar, cheery red and white
box was now a badly-designed dull brown.  Such poor graphic design!  The
photographs of the grains and the color palette look like something from
the 70’s – and not in the happy, Scandinavian way that Alpen looked
before.  I’m not sure what possessed you guys to change the box so
drastically, but I’m sad to see it.

Sincerely,
Sunday

What am I going on about?  Oh, why, just this totally retarded box redesign from my favorite healthy cereal, Alpen:

Please tell me I’m going nuts, because where I’m standing from, this looks like a lovely, sort of retro but pretty delicious-looking cereal that has been transformed into a 1970’s-made-for-TV-movie cereal comprised of mulch, horse hay, compost and owl pellets.

Alpen had this to say in its defense:

Thank you for the email giving us your review of the new Alpen box
design.  We are very sorry you didn’t like the new graphics.

We appreciate receiving our customers’ suggestions and comments about
our products, and we have forwarded your comments about the packaging to
the appropriate department to take under consideration.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further comments.
We hope you will continue to enjoy our other products in excellent
health!

Regards,
Kathy Zorn
Technical Services Coordinator
Weetabix North America
Barbara’s Bakery Division

Kathy, I didn’t respond because I don’t want to be the lunatic who keeps emailing you about the Alpen box, but I just want to understand what is happening.  Do you want Alpen to fail?  Was this an act of vengeance?   A spurned lover down in the box design department, perhaps?  Some Republican scheme to torture eaters of hippie cereal?  The last part I’d understand, but in all seriousness, it’s working.  Each time I pour a bowl of Grim Alpen for myself, I think, here’s one bowl of muesli closer to my demise.

I needn’t have worried.  Everything I said about Beau Legs last August is still true, and more so.  The “Captain Platter,” a basket with battered halibut, cornmealed catfish and tilapia filets, clam strips and breaded shrimp were in danger of being outshone by the perfect french fries and really irritatingly excellent hushpuppies.

One order was enough for my dad and I to share, even if I did confirm to myself that nope, I still don’t like cornmeal fried fish anywhere near as much as I like it battered.  I’m sure that Beau Legs would let me substitute them, too, since each piece is hand-dressed and fried to order.  The clam strips weren’t quite as soft and sweet as last summer, but seafood, like all agricultural products, changes with the season.  Maybe by summer they’ll be dreamy again.

My dad and I agreed that next time we’re sticking with our respective favorites (battered halibut for him, clam or oysters for me) and an extra side of hushpuppies.

The proprietress was handling the front of the house solo as she was last time, and when the crowd had a lull she came over and asked me, “You like clam chowder?”  I love it, I told her.  She came back with a sample cup of it and would you be surprised if I told you it was excellent?  You shouldn’t be.  I’m just not sure how I’m going to fit in a bowl of it along with my oysters and hushpuppies on my next visit.

I genuinely thought “Smitane” was jibberjabber until I looked it up and discovered it was a real thing, but more on that in a minute.

Let’s discuss this Baked Yams Tahiti, shall we?

2 lbs. cooked peeled yams or 2 (1 lb.) cans of yams
1 C. crushed pineapple
2 ripe bananas
1/4 C. dry sherry
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
dots of butter
miniature marshmallows

• Drain yams and pineapple, mash together with bananas.

• Add sherry, salt and pepper and whip together until smooth and paste-like.

• Smear this caulk into a casserole dish.

• Cover top with butter and marshmallows.

• Bake uncovered at 350 for about 45 minutes or until golden.

First, an anecdote: I grew up living near my Grandpa “Warhero” Vern, an avid fisherman who used the multi-colored miniature marshmallows as trout bait.  I didn’t even understand until I was maybe 9 or 10 years old that it was actually intended that people ate those miniature marshmallows.

Anyway, the Baked Yams Tahiti doesn’t offend me, exactly, as much as make me wonder if there’s some way to salvage it.  I’m kind of into it, even though I don’t like the texture of smooth yams (or squash, for that matter).  If it weren’t “whipped smooth” would it really be bad?  Probably not.  Would I eat more than 3 ounces even if I fixed it?  No.  Still, it makes me want to have a vintage recipe potluck just so I can eat three spoonfuls of a bunch of these things.

Speaking of, how about String Beans Smitane?

2 lbs. fresh string beans (3 lbs. frozen)
1 C. finely cut onion
1/2 cube butter
4 tbsp. flour
1 C. mayonnaise
3/4 C. sour cream
1/4 C. dry white wine
salt and pepper

• Cook beans in a small amount of salted, boiled water until just tender.  Drain.

• Saute the “finely cut onion” (not sure specifically what that means) in “1/2 cube” (which I assume was 2 oz. then as well as now) butter until limp, which sounds surprisingly more dramatic than softened.

• Stir in the flour.

• Add the mayonnaise, sour cream, wine and salt and pepper and stir through to blend, just until combined, and remove from heat.  Add beans and serve.

Okay.  So, to start with, even though “Smitane” is a real thing, this isn’t actually it.  Smitane is a light brown sauce with onions, wine and sour cream added to make it a lightly creamy, oniony sauce.  Sounds good, but I know what you’re thinking:  LET’S ADD A CUP OF HOT MAYONNAISE.

I’m gonna tell you right now: keep driving.

I was about to call the above photo Warning Sign #1, but then I remembered the part where we sat for 20 minutes while our sandwiches sat on a counter top while the guy working talked on a telephone and wouldn’t take our money.  So then Warning Sign #2 would be the above.  A cornmeal-rolled hoagie roll is not a baguette.   And can we all just give a collective indignant gasp at, is that motherfucking lettuce?!

Well at least it has cilantro — WHAT THE FUUUUUCK.  Where’s the cilantro? Where’s the pickled veg?  THE CUCUMBER?

Okay.  Deep breath.

Okay, no, screw that noise.  These guys robbed us for $8 and then kicked us in the necks and then stole our money and then gave us rabies and painted “ANGER BURGER SUCKS” on the moon.

1 lb. ground beef chuck
1 Tbsp. minced onion
3/4 C. packaged corn flake crumbs
salt & pepper
1 egg
2 C. undiluted evaporated milk
2 Tbsp. shortening
1 medium onion, sliced
2 Tbsp. flour
1 Tbsp. curry powder
1 140z. can chicken broth

8oz. medium egg noddles

• Combine beef, minced onion, corn flakes, salt and pepper, and 1/3 C. of the evaporated milk.  Form into 12 balls and brown in shortening over medium heat.  Brown sliced onion at the same time.  I assume you take the meatballs out now, though no one really knows.

• Add flour, curry powder and some salt and pepper at edge of pan and blend with the fat.  Gradually add the broth and the remaining 1 2/3 C. of evaporated milk, cooking over low heat until sauce thickens slightly.  Of course, with that little flour, the emphasis will be on “slightly”.  You’ll basically have curry broth.

• Serve meatballs and the liquid over cooked noodles.

I find myself doing this with modern recipes too, wondering why part of the dish seems appealing to me despite obvious flaws.  In the case of curried meatballs and noodles, we have essentially boring meatballs with a thin gruel of milky curried gravy — made from tinned milk,  no less, which has its own peculiar flavor — and served over noodles.  This is not good.  Instead the devil on my shoulder keeps whispering “But Japanese curry over noodles is good!”  I am here to tell you: the devil is correct, but the implication is not.  Stick with the Japanese version and do not stray.

And this is me:

photo by Sean Frego

Nature or nuture?

I mean, to be fair, there are several reasons why I prefer Oly Coffee above all else.  My favorite baristas work there.  I don’t feel like I’m queuing up at other Costcoesque oversized mega-cafes.  Also, the coffee is always perfect.  Perfect.  This is true.

I think much of this can be credited to the above fellow, Oly Coffee’s roaster and the man with the only surname I’ve ever jealously coveted: Oliver Stormshak.  I say this with genuine respect and love, but before Oliver was there the coffee was mostly great and occasionally just good.  After?  Well, like I said: there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

Of course, none of this would exist without Kelly Ziniewicz, who I’m fairly certain bleeds coffee when cut.  It might be the secret to their coffee, now that I think about it.  I’m a little sorry that I only have this water-logged photo of her, but not too sorry.  She’s at the grand opening of Oly Coffee’s second location on Olympia’s westside, and it wouldn’t be Olympia if there wasn’t a sudden downpour.  Rest assured that the queue of people lined up for espresso merely tightened their ranks and ordered larger drinks.

And then there’s this guy.  The less said about him the better.

There are many other people who make the coffee happen (somehow I didn’t get a single photo of Mike Elvin in focus) that I haven’t mentioned, but they’re no less vital.  They just escaped my camera today.

Lemme break that down for you.

1 C. mayonnaise
1/4 C. jam (you know, strawberry or pineapple)

• Melt jam.
• Mix warm jam into mayonnaise.
• Serve with fruit salads, by which we mean Jello molds.

Of course, I haven’t tried it, and I like mayonnaise on things that would gag others (rice, burritos, etc.), but I just can’t convince myself that blending it with jam makes it a dessert topping.

It happens that way sometimes.  Your friends suggest that you go a restaurant because it is amazing and will change your life forever, and instead you fly back to Los Angeles.  Just, make sure when you finally make it back to Seattle, they drive you, otherwise you’ll never find it.  Unless you can read Chinese.

Just for informational purposes, NW Tofu Inc. is open Moday-Sataday7:am-5:30pm.  With Wensday off.

It depends on what kind of risk-taker you are, but if I have one piece of advice to offer, it’s to disregard what the menu says and just order stuff.  If my friends Sean and Junko hadn’t made it clear that the “salty soy milk” was where the party is at, I can assure you I not only wouldn’t have ordered it, but I would also have erased the words from my memory in order to preserve my sanity.  But more on that in a minute.

The vital part of the story is here: salt and pepper tofu.  Somehow, NW Tofu has managed to coat their silky, pudding-smooth made-fresh-daily tofu with a paper-thin crust, not unlike a perfectly ethereal potato chip that just happens to have tofu inside.  It doesn’t look or taste like any other fried tofu I’ve ever had, but nevertheless steals the show out from under the rest.  It’s like you’re sitting there, watching the ice-skating on the Olympics and thinking, “You know, I’m not ashamed to say I like this,” and then all of a sudden someone comes out on the ice on stilts with fire shooting out of the top of their head and you jump up and shout “I FUCKING LOVE THIS SPORT.”

Below here we get back to the salty soy milk.  It’s a little like saying that a big pot of Irish beef stew is “cow juice”.  The “salty soy milk” is a pot of a kind of soft tofu porridge, seasoned with green onions, pork, pickled Chinese vegetables and topped with pieces of what is commonly referred to as “Chinese donut,” but isn’t sweet.  The fried, chewy bread soaks up the hot milk and transforms into a rather astounding dumpling-like blob, both tender and rich.

In an attempt at risk-taking, we also ordered what was listed on the menu as I believe “tofu sheet hot pot,” and even though we asked our charming server what was in it, we were still startled to find it had not just tofu sheet (which turned out to be similar to Japanese yuba, or tofu skin, but was fresh and creamy-white instead of yellowish and chewy), but every single kind of specialty tofu that NW tofu makes: fried, tofu studded with fresh and pickled vegetable and the incomparable “spice tofu,” a chewy, dryer tofu strongly impregnated with five spice seasoning.

As we were leaving, our server suggested we go back and see the tofu being made.

It took me a while to understand that those buckets held the whole last batch of fresh tofu, and if you ordered a pound of it to go ($.80) (that’s EIGHTY CENTS if you didn’t catch that), they just walked over to the bucket, dug out a cube and tossed it into a plastic sack for you.  I imagine it makes its way into the cooler eventually, but at 10:30 in the morning it was fresh from the bucket and still warm from being made.

This tofu below was a different kind, pressed thin and textured.  I don’t know what it was used for.

They line the wooden boxes with cloth:

Drain the steaming hot soymilk from the cooking tank:

And then ladle it into the boxes where the liquid starts to drain out:

The cloth gets carefully folded over the top and the whole round starts again:

I’m leaving out some parts, but that’s pretty much how it rolls.  Hot, fresh tofu made daily.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t take home one of their half-gallons of fresh soy milk since I wasn’t going straight home and then had a long drive ahead of me.   Of course, I was clutching my soy bean bloated belly while I lamented this loss of yet more soy bean product, but still.  This is Anger Burger.  It wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t at some point think I was going to die of a burst stomach.

I love this woman — even having never met — and not just because she spelled macaroni “maccaroni’s” (and meant pasta) and salad “sallade”.  To be fair, she was Scottish.

A caveat: most of the recipes in her book are perfectly normal.  But then there are the ones that aren’t.  Friends, I’d like to share with you New Wedding Ring Sallade Salad:

HAPPILY COMBINES GOLDEN CLING PEACHES AND REAL MAYONNAISE.

It’s worth noting that the recipe sounds really tasty, right up into the last sentence.