Not my Aunt Maureen's bangers and mash

 

I seldom take pictures of my food, but I made an exception for a couple of reasons. First, the other students were so envious when they heard we were having lunch at the Eagle on our field trip—not because of the historic connections, but because we were going to skip the execrable bag lunches they give us on field trip days.

And second, because this was not what I was expecting when I pre-ordered the bangers and mash. Grilled sausages in a Merlot reduction with chive mashed potatoes? My aunt Maureen, who was an excellent plain English cook, would definitely have been rolling over in her grave.

And it was delicious, though I had to leave half of it in order to have room for the blackberry tart with clotted cream ice cream. I do have my priorities.

Just for fun

I took this picture at a rest stop somewhere in Minnesota: Doritos in mustard, ketchup, and pickle flavors. I've never seen these in New York—or the taco pizza, baby back ribs or fried pickle ranch potato chips in the next aisle—so I had not realized how much American ingenuity goes into coming up with new kinds of junk food.

The highway convenience stores in the Midwest are quite an experience. Some of the bigger ones have a hundred different kinds of prepared food, as well as the packaged stuff, but even the smaller ones have an amazing variety of different flavors of chips, cookies, beef jerky and candy, while those of us hoping for something slightly healthier are limited to a few shriveled salads dying of loneliness at the far end of an aisle that might as well be labeled Afterthoughts.

I have been to 7-11's in Tokyo that had candy offerings in some truly unexpected flavors—and colors—and in the UK you can buy crisps (potato chips) in roast chicken or steak, ale and caramelised onion flavors, but I think the United States remains the undisputed junk food capital of the world.

A few examples

Fruit p**n

Some more bananas, just because they are so photogenic. And a portrait of the pineapple that I bought at the market. It smelled so divine that I hesitated to cut into it, thinking it couldn't possibly taste as good as it smelled.

But it did.

Yes, they had no bananas

Some of the vendors. No, they weren't all selling bananas, but it was definitely the most common fruit for sale.

Farmers' market

The first weekend in San José we went to the Zapote market. It was hot and crowded and I am still dreaming of the beautiful, ridiculously inexpensive fruits and vegetables I bought there: pineapple and watermelon and avocados and mangos and carrots.

Tacos

The food has been very good here—I bought mangos and a pineapple at the farmers market on Sunday and they were heavenly—but these tacos from a uninspiring food court on Avenida Central are on an entirely different level of deliciousness. Eleven on a scale of ten.

I could eat them every day, and I may.

Life in the time of coronavirus

Spring came, whether we were there to notice it or not.

Another look at the tiny slice of world I can see from my windows. Although I'm mostly managing well enough staying home -- this is when being an introvert who's happiest with a book really pays off -- it's not always painless. Oddly enough, sunny days are easier to handle; maybe it's because I can throw the windows open and watch the sky and listen to the birds singing, and though I'd love to be outside I'm less conscious of being locked in. Monday it poured rain all day and by late afternoon I was climbing the walls.

Part of the problem was that I didn't feel like eating the chicken and vegetables I had planned for dinner and I didn't really have any alternative. Food has turned into another form of entertainment under lockdown -- I'm planning what I'm going to have for lunch while I'm eating breakfast, and I often have dinner before six o'clock just because it's something to do. I have to be careful not to buy too many treats because I don't want to test my willpower, but the pleasure of eating something delicious, like a ripe juicy orange sliced into my morning yogurt, is real consolation when I can't do so many other things I enjoy. (And of course thinking so much about food keeps me from dwelling on the fact that I'm sitting in the epicenter of a global pandemic.)

But I find myself craving things I don't usually eat -- Raisin Bran cereal, potato chips, vanilla ice cream -- that of course I don't have on hand and can't easily get. And I get annoyed because something healthy that I like -- chicken and vegetables, say -- and do have available isn't entertaining enough for my bored palate.

I ended up going out to the supermarket Monday though I wasn't planning to shop yet. I was exhausted by the time I'd carried the bags upstairs, cleaned and disinfected everything, and taken a shower, but at least I had vanilla ice cream. Which I ate in bed, in my pajamas, for dinner.

Fête de Noël

Our tour ended with Christmas dinner at the Château Frontenac.

It was four courses, not including an amuse bouche and dessert, and I was pretty much done halfway through the second course. I barely tasted the tenderloin, and ate exactly one bite of dessert. But I very much enjoyed the spectacle of it all -- getting dressed up and heading to the Château, mingling with the crowds in the lobby, then heading up the stairs to the ballroom for dinner.

I did love that they translated mousseline de courge as “squash muslin.” Muslin -- the fabric -- is mousseline in French, but an edible mousseline would never be called a muslin in English.

Tire d'érable

One more option for maple syrup lovers -- tire d'érable, a taffy made by cooking the syrup until thick, then pouring it over snow and twisting it around a popsicle stick.

I didn't try it; I have a sentimental attachment to my teeth and would prefer to hang on to them. 

Do take a good look at the hat the vendor is wearing. It looked like a coonskin cap from a distance, complete with furry tail, but it was actually a fox. It creeped me out.

Beurre d'érable

I'm a fan of good maple syrup, but only as an accompaniment to pancakes and waffles and the occasional slice of bacon.

French Canadians LOVE their sirop d'érable. It's served with fruit, it's cooked with vegetables, it's baked into pies. Some of these options are delicious -- maple works well with baked beans, for example. Others are highly dubious -- we had one dessert that combined maple with cheddar cheese, and I don't think those two flavors should even be in the same room together.

But I had never had maple butter before. It's light maple syrup, cooked until thick then whipped until creamy, and it's perfectly delicious in a buckwheat crepe or spread on toast. We had it on mini crepes during our food tasting walk a few days ago, and when I happened to walk by the cafe during one of our free afternoons I couldn't resist having another crepe.

It was enormous. It was delicious. Reader, I devoured it.

Cookout on the beach

I passed on the grilled capelin, small fish similar to herring; I was still full from one of the big lunches we ate almost every day. Somehow I managed to find room for one of the tarts made from partridgeberry jam cooked over the fire when the fish was done.

Lovely cod! Wonderful cod!

Cod au gratin and salad for lunch in St. Anthony.

I ate cod pan-fried, on Caesar salad, in chowder, in fishcakes, deep-fried with chips, boiled with hardtack in the unexpectedly delicious fish and brewis, and, yes, au gratin.

Cod fishing still goes on in international waters, and there's a small fishery off Newfoundland's southern coast, so the moratorium doesn't mean you can't still eat cod in Newfoundland; on the contrary, it's hard not to.

There are a lot of high-end restaurants in St. John's that are creating new versions of traditional dishes and coming up with new ways to use ingredients like salt beef and partridgeberries. The food I ate wasn't fancy, but it was all delicious -- fish, and root vegetables, and berry crumbles. The big surprise was how tasty the dishes made with dried salt cod were -- as good as, if not better, than the fresh fish.

In which I explore the culinary side of Savannah

This is the line waiting to get into a restaurant called Mrs. Wilkes.

Some things -- not many, in my opinion -- are worth standing in long lines for, and I wouldn't put most restaurants on that list. But multiple people told me I had to eat at Mrs. Wilkes, and because it's only open Monday through Friday (and only between 11 am and 2 pm) yesterday was my only chance to go. I got there at 10, and there were probably about twenty people in line already. I was seated shortly after the restaurant opened, and by noon I'd stumbled back out into the Savannah heat, lighter by $25.00 and heavier by approximately 25,000 calories.

This is Southern cooking, served family style, and though technically it's all you can eat, the concept is meaningless here. There were two main dishes -- fried chicken and barbecued pork -- and what is reported to be 22 side dishes. I didn't count; they were already occupying every square inch of space on the table when we sat down, and though dishes got passed around, it was impossible to try everything. I did try collard greens and creamed corn and mashed potatoes and rice and gravy and cornbread dressing and sweet potatoes and biscuits, and possibly a few other dishes I'm forgetting. I did not try the lima beans or the okra or the coleslaw or the cornbread muffins. What was in the other dozen or so dishes I never sampled or even saw, I couldn't tell you.

It was all good, some of it very good, but I realized early on that every bite of collard greens, however delicious, was taking up room in my stomach that should be assigned to fried chicken or biscuits, which were both pure heaven. The chicken managed to be both crispy and juicy, and the biscuits were light and crumbly and buttery and salty and the fact that I only managed to eat two of them is something I expect to regret for the rest of my life.

Yes, there was dessert -- peach cobbler with a tiny scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yes, I somehow managed to finish it.

So was it worth standing in line for an hour? Absolutely! Great food, and a fun experience. Would I do it again? Well....maybe.

The problem with this authentic Southern cuisine is that you're eating it in the South. And walking through heat and humidity that were both in the 90's with a stomach full of fried chicken and peach cobbler almost erased my enjoyment of the experience. The twenty minute walk back to my hotel ended up taking more than two hours because I kept having to duck into stores and museums to cool off.

Sausage fest

I happen to find all giant reproductions of food vaguely (and sometimes not so vaguely) creepy and unappetizing.

But this one just made me laugh. Seriously, who thought an enormous bratwurst was a good idea? (And I assure you it looked far more obscene in person.)

It's no surprise that Frankfurt was full of bratwurst and all of its relatives -- this is the city that gave its name to the hot dog after all. I walked through the park along the river yesterday afternoon and almost every food cart was some variation on sausage and french fries, plus lots of bier, bier, bier.

I was too tired to find the idea appealing, and the smell made me a little nauseous. Which may be why I ended up having a truly terrible vegan wrap from Starbucks for my dinner.

The main market

And for comic relief

Here I am trying not to drop an unexpectedly heavy watermelon in the market.

Bounty

The corn looks lovely in the previous entry, but you can't tell how enormous the ears are, so here's a photo of my lovely guide, Vanessa, hoisting one of the ears. Plus some gorgeous banana peppers.

Mercado

Today was the first day I could go outside without a jacket, which means that it in a week or two everyone will be complaining about the heat.

But it makes that warm summer day in Valparaiso seem less long ago and far away, so here, as long promised, are pictures from the markets.

Food. Sort of.

In case you weren't already full of admiration and sympathy for the men who stuck it out for months at a time here, the pantries seemed to consist mostly of oatmeal and mayonnaise (and that 60 year old mayonnaise must be practically a biological weapon by now.)

These two shelves are like the Greatest Hits of British mid-century cuisine -- coffee, tea, brown sauce, Horlicks (the English version of Ovaltine), custard powder, and piccalilli. Plus canned cheese, which I never saw before and hope never to see again.