Food- (And Publishing!-) Related Goodness

It's always awesome when you forget about something you were excited about, and rediscover both it and the excitement. This just happened, as I received a check for a piece I did for the New Orleans Bride winter edition about the process of creating the perfect wedding cake. It seems that I'm currently on a behind-the-scenes streak, since I interviewed the lead designer for award-winning Gambino's Bakery in Louisiana to find out the process of creating what I call "the star of the reception."

Anyway, check it out!

P.S. Geaux Saints! Super Beauxl-bound! And what's going to be really interesting is that when you think about it Peyton Manning will have to make himself defeat his own hometown and hometeam their first time making it to the Super Bowl, which should be difficult in many ways for a native New Orleanian.

I've already got six feet of heroes, four pounds of macaroni salad, two pounds each of coleslaw and potato salad, and two olive and pickle trays ready for pickup Sunday morning from my favorite local supermarket, Best Yet. Boar's Head for everyone! And bread from Modern Italian Bakery, supplier of Long Island delis and my favorite, Campus Heroes. Yum! After all, the only time in my entire life I've cared about the Super Bowl needs to be commemorated with some serious food. Got wings, anyone? I'm out of funds :)

Epicurean Adventures: Life Full of Sweet Suprises

Of all my time living in New Orleans -- scratch that, of all my time living -- the best was when I was a food editor there, my writing picking up steam and my acquaintances and friends in the culinary world expanding daily. It's these people that made my experience so magical, that lit up the fire of inspiration in my ever-grumbling belly, and whose names still bring a smile to my face. And after six months away, it gives me a warmth inside that the flurrying snow this morning can't quench to know that I, too, am remembered.

A wonderful Somebody named Andy from FSC Interactive contacted me last week to find out my address and inquiries like this usually mean one thing: presents! Whether they be food or just a simple card, there's an inexplicable thrill to knowing that somewhere, something special is on its way to you.

So it was with great excitement that I received a package today, addressed (I saw with a laugh and a thrill) to The Vicarious Food Whore. Yay! And the icing on this cake? The outside of the box was splashed with one of my favorite logos: Sucre.

After an absolutely abysmal week, this was pretty much the best thing that's happened to me in a while. I say happen to me because seeing that one single word, Sucre, on any kind of box addressed to me ellicits a visceral reaction not unlike that of Pavlov's dogs, where I immediately feel fuzzy and grin like an ape. What's not to smile about? The sweet packaging with neatly tied bows! The pastel colors that skip like sunshine! The PRESENTS!

One thing I love about Sucre, too, is that even though they've gotten huge, they still remember their little people, and still treat each and every customer personally. Chef Tariq Hanna (*love* - he's like the Anthony Bourdain of pastry, a sexy badass with mad skills) and Joel Dondis (such an absolute sweetheart! And a fascinating dinner companion, I must say) still personally sign every card that accompanies a box of goodies. In this day and age, who puts that much attention to their details? No one but Sucre.

Anyway, I'd been nosy and asked Andy if it were Mardi Gras macaroons that I'd be receiving, since I fiend for these incredible Parisian mmmacaroons and drool at any mention of them (damn you again, Pavlov!), and was tickled pink to find that there were in fact, two boxes within my big box of presents, and that one big one was in the signature pastel-striped packaging that means one of Oprah's favorite things was headed into my mouth.

Unfortunately, these delicate goodies don't travel too well, as carefully packaged as they were, and the frail shell of the outer "sandwich" levels of the treats got a bit crumbled.  However, they were still a sight for sore eyes, and it was only with great difficulty that I forced myself to open the other box before diving into my favorite sweet treat of all time.

Box #2 was definitely a delightful surprise -- 15 beautiful, beautiful heart-shaped, cabernet red dark chocolate, slightly bitter in a luxurious way, with the earthiness of pure cocoa. So pretty, nestled securely in puffy lining, they glistened and glowed with that distinctive golden sheen that everything in Sucre seems to be dusted with, giving all of the delectable, gorgeously crafted sweets a magical, unearthly feel.

These chocolates were insanely rich; deep and bold dark chocolate made a crunchy hard shell around a raspberry filling so pure and fresh tasting that it was as if it were plucked off the plant and somehow made to grow and ripen further inside a protective chocolate home. The best part of it was its lack of artificiality that heavy hands with sugar tend to lend fruit. Many a good pie has been ruined for me as sugar takes the lead over natural flavor, but Chef Tariq's hand is ever steady, and the balance is refreshing.

Back to the macaroons, though -- one of my most expensive obsessions. I of course grabbed at the most puffy one in pursuit of that flaky, puffy, airy feeling, and was a little bit let down, as my ecstatic fantasizing about the moment of consumption left my expectations quite high. Because of the unreliability of stable transport, the loss of the fragile shell pieces left it more dense than I've had them before, resulting in a bit of a chewiness that isn't often encountered in a Sucre macaroon. I can only assume it's because it was left out in the cold outdoors, since I can attest that they stay fresh for quite sometime, and that Joel and Chef Tariq would never let a product out the door that they didn't 100% stand behind. To make sure of this, I called my baby sis, who I'd sent Christmas macaroons to for her birthday, among other Sucre goodies, who commented that this must indeed be a fluke, since hers were light and totally amazing.

The flavor was of course fantastic, perfectly capturing the sugary sweet frosting of king cake, the glittering Mardi Gras colors adorably represented in puffy pastry. Chewiness aside, it still made me indescribably happy.

The only problem now is making these last ...

All in all, a rather spectacular end to an altogether horrendous week. Thank you, thank you, and thanks ever so much, guys. Y'all are my sunshine.

P.S. Want 'em? Get your own, and hands and eyes off my loot. Check it:

• Dark chocolate hearts with raspberry
• Mardi Gras macaroons
• White chocolate and raspberry Sweetheart macaroons

P.P.S. These, the white chocolate and toasted almond wedding cake chocolates, are my other favorites in the entire world, which I used as part of my wedding favor package to our guests ... too bad the staff stole/threw out half of them and I never got to eat my own wedding truffles, but these are the best damn pieces of candy I've ever eaten in my entire life!

Sucre - Wedding Cake from Sucre - Founder - Joel Dondis on Vimeo.

All Roads Lead Back to Home

Well, you guys have read enough about my parents' restaurant on this blog enough that it became an inevitability that it eventually made it into print. It's with great pride (and honestly, a pretty significant amount of trepidation due to anti-Asian sentiment on Long Island and my awareness of potential backlash) that I present to you my first New York/Long Island print article!

This article was a really ambitious piece, and honestly, one of the toughest ones I've ever had to write. First off, it's a little controversial, which as a soft news writer, I haven't yet dabbled in. Normally, I'm not too scared of controversy, being a rather opinionated individual, but race and my personal roots have always been a sensitive topic for me, and a hard one to write about since it forces so many years of stifled anxiety and insecurity to bubble back up to the surface. I've grown a lot since I was a teen who was made ashamed by her classmates of her family's stereotypical, blue-collar living, and have grown to be very proud of the background such an upbringing has given me. Unlike some, I know the value of a dollar and hard work; I know what I stand to gain by consistently reaching for ambitious goals; and I know what I know about food because I grew up immersed in that world.

It wasn't until I became a food writer in New Orleans where I realized that being in the culinary industry, no matter how humble or lofty the establishment, was a positive thing, and for that, I cannot be more grateful. Going to Tulane and getting to know world-renowned chefs and award-winning professionals like Tory McPhail, Tariq Hanna (congrats, Tariq, for getting on TLC for the Ultimate Cake-Off!), Mike Stoltzfus, and the countless other names and faces that have given me pride in having a heritage based around cooking.

However, it's always hard to come back "home," to return to a place where attitudes about food aren't the same. In New Orleans, chefs were celebrated and elite; on Long Island, real ones are few and far between in the suburbs I grew up in, and franchise restaurant line-cooks were looked down upon with the same disdain as Chinese takeouts, Italian pizza parlors, and et cetera. Kids took jobs making sauce at pizza places -- Boy was one of them in his day -- and this occupation wasn't considered something that needed extensive training when you could just do it after school.

It's with this perception that I began writing this article, "Scenes From a Chinese Restaurant: Behind the Counter of a L.I. Accidental Icon." I wanted to show the people of Long Island that those people that man your local takeout are people, too, people with families, dreams, and far more intelligence and skills than the average customer assumes. All my life, helping out at the restaurant, not only was I discriminated against and disrespected, but I had to watch my parents be treated like worthless scum because negative misperception still exists in the suburbs of Long Island -- all while the whole family worked tirelessly through injury, personal grief, exhaustion, and severe weather just to scrape by year after year.

This article's purpose was to give outsiders an inside view of a life spent in a takeout, not from the point of view of the kids there, but the adults that make it so that the kids don't have to spend their adulthoods at the the takeout as well. I wanted to make people on Long Island think twice about how they treat the people at their local takeout, to spur them to perhaps even ask them, "What's your name? How are you?" Often, these questions are never asked, and the Chinese-Americans are treated as "help" and never as humans.

The blame doesn't lie wholly with the outside community, though, and I hope that my article (although it might piss off some Chinese-Americans) can also serve as a call to action to this, the most invisible of minorities in America, to speak up and stop trying to stay under the radar and out of trouble. After all, it's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, right?

Now I'm not trying to get all Reverend Al Sharpton up in here at all -- that's not my style. But maybe, just maybe, if people realize that these "immigrants" behind the counter are more than that, but brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and beloved family members just trying to make a living, individuals with hopes, dreams, and potential, the world can be a little bit of a better place.

Eater's Remorse: Chemical Ingestion is Gross

I've been regaling those around me with tales of what I've come to the conclusion is an incurable disease. Online health forums all yield no results, only similar pleas for help, and hundreds of dollars worth of co-pays later, doctors laugh and tell me it's an unusual problem they've never encountered before.

Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot cease burping.

Right?! How silly is that? All my life, I've lamented my total inability to do so without trying really, really, really hard and eating something exceptionally fizzy, and now, ever since I was on meds for my TMJ (yes, I am aware I have an obvious underbite from a side view; no, I do NOT want cosmetic surgery to "fix" the appearance of my face -- I've known this face all my life, and it's served me fairly well), I can't seem to stop. They're weird ... hiccup-y burps coming from where heartburn usually stems from, popping and gurgling to my great annoyance every few minutes. In short, I am the equivalent of a hiccuping small child who just can't seem to stop.

Now, this wouldn't be more than a minor embarrassment if not for the fact that this burping were uncomfortable if stifled, and at times painful; and that the air going to my head literally makes me air-headed, and therefore dizzy. (See? Two punnies in one! Now it's three!) This light-headedness then makes me feel vaguely motion-sick, which leads to nausea. All this equates suckiness.

This makes it hard to eat stuff. Maybe it's my long-anticipated punishment for a life of gluttony, my normally friendly stomach finally rebelling and shouting, "Enough! I can't stretch any further!" However, eating is the only time I ever stop burping, and so the vicious cycle continues as I expand evermore.

So anyway, that's the backstory of why this week, I had to ingest chemicals of a ghastly nature.

As an ex-food writer and a current foodie (still, since I hope to be friends with my stomach once again), the idea of doing what they call a Barium Swallow to check out my innards really grossed me out. The concept of voluntarily drinking a cupful of chemicals is revolting to me, since I don't even like taking pills due to my lack of trust in said chemicals. (Which could more or less be perfectly founded, given that I didn't have this burping issue until I started on muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories for my aching jaw.)

The concept behind a Barium Swallow is this: it goes in your mouth, down your throat, into your stomach, then your small intestine, covering everything in a thick coat so that the x-rays will reveal any kind of abnormality. I did an "esophageal" one, which I can only assume that the focus was to look at my throat and its functions.

Well, it all sounds very simple until it's go time.

I was put in a cloth hospital gown and asked to take a shot of something extremely fizzy. Then, I was given a big paper Dixie cup full of what looked like some of Elmer's best white stuff, more commonly found in kindergarten classrooms around the nation than your local doctor's office. Being who I am, I of course smelled it first.

It didn't smell like much. The best way to describe it was that it smelled like vaguely sweet ... goo. Really, that rubbery, odorless sensation that has no distinction of its own other than to emote its texture through what can only narrowly be classified as scent.

Downing it was a horror. This shit was foul. Now, I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to medication, being that I'd drink pink Amoxicillin shakes if they existed (Boy hates that stuff) and, in trying to control my burping, pop Maalox chewables like candy (it didn't work, in case you were wondering), but this was a whole other kind of just FOUL experience.

It didn't taste terrible, but it felt foreign and invasive. So thick, its consistency was more dense than the glue it so closely resembled. In fact, it's so wildly dense that it's hard just to get it past your lips, since it almost feels like attempting to swallow a very large, cup-shaped blob whole. It sticks to your lips and the skin all around it, forming a layer of residue that clings desperately to your face, adding self-consciousness to the negative feelings you're already feeling. A chalky aftertaste that smells vaguely of Play-Doh accompanied each sip, and I had to literally force myself to allow the substance to slide its globby self down my throat. What made it even worse than that was that it wasn't a smooth slide -- the Barium required serious gulping as glob after glob was pushed down into my stomach. The idea of letting this nasty feeling repeat repelled me, but I had no choice, since the absolute worst part of it all is that you're asked to basically chug it down.

I've never been much of a chugger. I drink a margarita every hour, and it takes me eons to get through a glass of wine. I'm a savorer, and I like to eat things and thing about them and roll the feeling and flavor around in my mouth a little bit. So being asked to slam down a cup of glue was not only insanely vile, but against my nature.

Ironically, at first glance, the technicians said my pictures looked pretty normal ... same as the ultrasound doctor had said about my stomach scan, which he had (hilariously, to me ... not so much to other doctors) proclaimed "grossly normal," as if it were a disappointment.

Anyhow, all I can do at this point is to hope that they figure out wtf is wrong with me. A clean bill of health is normally a good thing, but when you know something's wrong and no one knows what that "something" is, and you keep spending $40 at a time to be told, "Yes, that's very strange -- I've never seen such a thing," being proclaimed healthy gets old.

Until then, I'm on my fourth week of being off coffee, wine, alcohol, too much sugar, too much vinegar, tomatoes, onions, broccoli, and other things that used to make my life awesome. *Sigh.*

Man v. Food

*Update: As of Thursday, Food Network is back!

Sad story for y'all:

Once upon a time, in a pretty house on Long Island's South Shore, there lived a foodie couple who loved food and home renovations. Their TVs were 95% of the time tuned to channels devoted to those two things, as their daily lives were accompanied by Iron Chefs and House Hunters.

Then one day, after a New Year's out in Brooklyn, they returned to their cozy home, turned on the TV, and were greeted with dead air and a catty message from their big, bad cable company, stating that their good friends HGTV and Food Network were pulled from the lineup, due to Scripps Network's demands for higher pay.

It has now been nearly a month now, as the messages spewed by both Cablevision and Scripps become cattier and cattier, all while Cablevision customers throughout Long Island continue to pay high cable rates to not watch channels everyone else has access to (i.e. DirecTV and Dish subscribers). Cablevision claims that Scripps is being unreasonable since they've requested a rate increase of $20 million. Put in perspective, that's chump change per viewer, and still within a reasonable payment range as other companies pay it. Also, in light of a last year's revelation that the CEO of Cablevision received a $15.9 million pay package in 2008, it seems awfully unreasonable for Long Islanders to have to suffer without their buddies, Chef Morimoto, Bobby Flay, Alton Brown, Mario Batali, Guy Fieri, and others.

However, I've recently found my way back to the channels that, although less focused on the fun factor of cuisine, talk about travels and food that comes from such travels. I speak, of course, of the Travel Channel!

I'd watched Anthony Bourdain's show, No Reservations, often enough in my life to know that I like it. Boy doesn't so much, mostly because Bourdain approaches his travels as the Everyman, and expresses enthusiasm for simple meals and home-cooked entrees, leaving no sign that he's the accomplished badass chef he is.

I like it. Rustic food is good, rich, and hearty. You can't eat teeny tiny zucchinis all day long, after all.

Anyway, the Travel Channel also has another show that I've gotten very enthusiastic, and has introduced me to basically a man of my heart: Adam Richman.

The premise of his show, Man v. Food, is a simple one: man (Richman) must conquer exorbitant quantities or unrealistically spiced food. Not a trained competitive eater, this endearing gentleman proceeds to devour rich, greasy, fantastic types and amounts of food as he travels about the country in search of plate sizes that would fell lesser men by simple appearance at the table.

Adam Richman is adorable, in my book. The reasons to love this native Brooklynite are many:

1. His logo is awesome. Seriously, a man in a helmet punching a drumstick in a boxing ring. It really doesn't get better than this.
2. He can eat more than me. I respect that.
3. He doesn't edit out his tears when spiciness proceeds to kick his ass, and makes no bones about the consequences of such conquests. Respect.
4. He doesn't give a rat's ass about being a messy eater. This makes me feel good inside, like my perpetual spilling and staining is acceptable, provided I can eat copious amounts in minimal time. I can handle this stipulation.
5. He doesn't care about getting food all up in his face. Eyebrows, hair, chin, cheeks, ears ... it's all gravy. Again, respect.
6. He has these huge sad brown eyes. I like Bambi eyes.
7. He has floppy hair that flops a lot in his enthusiasm to consume. Aww.
8. He's really funny. No, seriously. Cracks me up. Silly in an endearing way, that you just want to pinch his barbeque-sauced cheeks and high-five his greasy ham-hands when he pumps his fist in triumph.
   

And so, at least one thing has emerged from this debacle with Cablevision: a love affair with a man after my own heart. I want to eat stuff with him, all day long.