The Tea Obama Loves

Excerpts from an article written by Leslie Milk in Washingtonian magazine:

It was an entrepreneur’s dream: a call from Barack Obama’s people to say that the candidate was hooked on Honest Tea and needed help finding it on the campaign trail. That meant national visibility for the Bethesda beverage company.

. . . Company founder Seth Goldman couldn’t have asked for better publicity. For the Democratic National Convention, Honest Tea created a commemorative label for its Black Forest Berry flavor, changing its name temporarily to Barack Forest Berry. Now the White House refrigerators are stocked with Black Forest Berry and a new favorite, Green Dragon.

. . . In 1998, Honest Tea had sales of $250,000. A year later Giant and Harris Teeter were among its outlets, and sales had quadrupled. By 2002, Honest Tea was the best-selling bottled tea in the natural-foods industry. Sales topped $4.6 million.

. . . by 2004, all Honest Tea flavors were certified organic, and the company had gained a loyal following. One drinker had the logo tattooed on his body.

The company is successful enough that last year Coca-Cola bought a 40% stock in Honest Tea.

The Joys of Gingerbread

I have always loved good gingerbread. It's hearty and sweet, but not too sweet. This recipe for Dark Molasses Gingerbread looks enticing, especially because the final product is touted as having a "moist" interior.

This gingerbread recipe includes molasses, as well as honey and brown sugar. It also has instructions for those who want to make an icing for the gingerbread. But I think all you need to "finish" a good piece of gingerbread is a dollop of whipped cream.

The Opening of Potenza

Potenza is a new Italian restaurant located a few blocks east of the White House, on the S.E. corner of 15th and H Streets (in the stately Woodward Bldg., pictured at right). When I dined there with three friends late last week, Potenza had been open only a few days. Here are my initial thoughts.

The restaurant has a nice space, and the bar area (especially) is visually inviting -- it has a classy, but not stuffy look. Potenza has a semi-open kitchen, and the noise level will probably be moderate once (or if) the restaurant is filled up with diners.

Potenza's executive chef is Bryan Moscatello who previously cooked at Zola.

The food was generally very good, but a few things just didn't "wow" us. If you want a stellar charcuterie tray, go to Proof and don't order it at Potenza. But the pastas looked good, and my friends gave them a thumbs-up. Potenza also has a large pizza oven -- none of us ordered pizzas, but a nearby diner who did said his pizza was delicious.

The wine list is okay, but you're going to have to examine it closely to find good values.

Potenza has an adjacent bakery and wine shop, but I didn't get a chance to check out this area. These items (as well as cheese and salami) will be available for take-out purchase.

Potenza needs to update its website and get all of its starters and main courses listed. Potential diners deserve to know more than their "featured" dishes. That said, I have good hopes for Potenza. It didn't dazzle me, but it has a lot of potential. The menu seems to be priced very reasonably, and service was good.

I will be back.

The Woes of Beef Sales

The recession isn't the only thing putting a crimp in beef sales. As the Wall Street Journal's Lauren Etter writes in today's edition:

Making the situation even tougher, a new study this week by the National Cancer Institute concluded that eating too much red meat can shorten life spans.

So far, though, beef sales in the U.S. are suffering largely because consumers aren't eating as much at restaurants. Beef sales to food-service establishments were down nearly 5% last year, according to figures from food-consulting firm Technomic Inc. Sales to supermarkets and other retail outlets rose 2% as consumers started cooking more at home.

. . . Historically, half of all beef sales in the U.S. go to the food-service industry . . . But dining at casual chains is down, thanks in part to the recession, according to Knapp-Track, which follows sales at about 10,000 dining outlets.

The Turnip Problem

Over at Slate.com, Catherine Price writes about her experiences of participating in one of those community farm programs. She writes:

In August, we receive endless tomatoes. In June, we're invited to a farm event called "strawberry day." Every time we resubscribe, they send us a lavender sachet. But each year, toward the end of winter, I run into the Turnip Problem.

Ordinarily, I would never eat turnips. I managed to go 30 years without buying one. But now every winter I'm faced with a two-month supply, not to mention the kale, collards, and flat-leaf Italian parsley that sit in my refrigerator, slowly wilting, filling me with guilt every time I reach past them for the milk.

After three years of practice, I've figured out simple ways to deal with most of these problem vegetables: I braise the turnips in butter and white wine; I sauté the kale and collards with olive oil and sea salt; I wait until the parsley shrivels and then throw it out. The abundance of roughage is overwhelming.

I suppose that's why I'm happy to simply go to a local farmers' market or the Whole Foods and just buy what I want when I want it.

"If It Ain't Broke . . ."

If you're a fan of the classic poulet roti, you should have read this recent article by Andreas Viestad that was in the Washington Post:

Thomas Keller [chef at New York City's Per Se restaurant] knows exactly how to make the perfect roast chicken. But he chooses not to.

. . . The logical approach would be to use sous vide when roasting chicken, too: to cook the bird for an hour and a half, until it had the perfect interior temperature, and then finish it off in the oven. "It would be perfectly juicy and tender," Keller says.

. . . Keller's reasons for not subjecting chicken to a more precise way of cooking are mainly personal. For him, as for so many others, roast chicken is a dish that, like Proust's madeleine, has personal and cultural importance more than objective culinary value.

To some, hearing Keller admit that he prefers his chicken roasted the old-fashioned way might be equal to catching a sushi chef searing his fish on both sides. It can be viewed as heresy, or as a reminder that one of the world's leading chefs is a human being, too, and that he will sometimes let his guard down and allow food to just be food.

Calmed by Candy

It seems that many of us are. According to this article from Monday's N.Y. Times:

Since he was laid off in December, [Raymond] Schneider, a 33-year-old interior designer, says he has become a “gummy junkie,” stocking up on sweets every time he shops for groceries. “Sugar is comforting,” he said as he scooped Red Licorice Scottie Dogs into a plastic bag.

The recession seems to have a sweet tooth. As unemployment has risen and 401(k)’s have shrunk, Americans, particularly adults, have been consuming growing volumes of candy, from Mary Janes and Tootsie Rolls to Gummy Bears and cheap chocolates, say candy makers, store owners and industry experts.

For many, sugar lifts spirits dragged low by the languishing economy. For others, candy also provides a nostalgic reminder of better times. And not insignificantly, it is relatively cheap.

At Candyality, a store in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, business has jumped by nearly 80 percent compared with this time last year, and the owner, Terese McDonald, said she was struggling to keep up with the demand for Bit-O-Honeys, Swedish Fish and Sour Balls.

So Where Is the Sage?

And, no, I'm not searching for Gandalf the wizard. I am referring to this kind of sage.

That was my question when I went looking for a recipe to make chicken saltimbocca, and I came across this recipe on the Food Network's website.

The recipe from Giada De Laurentiis calls for no sage. No sage. Has she lost her mind?

Does she think that spinach is a legitimate substitute for sage, a wonderfully aromatic herb?

Mario Batali's chicken saltimbocca recipe properly calls for sage. So does the recipe of Lidia Bastianich. Although I ended up using De Laurentiis' recipe as a foundation for the chicken saltimbocca that I made this past weekend, I corrected her mistake. I not only used sage, but I picked up some fresh sage leaves from the grocery on Saturday.

I washed and then finely chopped the sage leaves and used them basically as De Laurentiis had used the spinach. I used a total of about 3 tablespoons of chopped sage. I placed 2 of the tablespoons atop the chicken cutlets, and the other tablespoon I added to the skillet sauce.

I also increased the lemon juice for this recipe to 3 tablespoons. And do make sure it's fresh lemon juice.

Two other changes that I made: 1) Immediately after removing the cooked chicken from the skillet, I deglazed the skillet with roughly 2 tablespoons of white wine; and 2) I didn't bother rolling the chicken cutlets as De Laurentiis did. To me, this is extra work that doesn't add any flavor.

Finally, if you're making chicken saltimbocca, don't cut corners by purchasing bargain-basement chicken breasts. This is one situation in which you truly do get what you pay for. Spend a little more and buy good organic, free-range chicken from a place like Whole Foods. It'll be worth it.

Lotta Ways to Make PB & J's

In this recent post, I shared one way not to make a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich. In yesterday's Washington Post, columnist John Kelly revealed that there are a lot of different ways to make PB & J's. He writes:

Smooth versus chunky. Skippy versus Jif. Grape versus strawberry versus raspberry versus peach. (Peach!) White versus wheat versus pita. (Pita!) Crust on versus crust off. And let's not get started on diagonal slicing versus horizontal.

You might not have known this, but walking among us are people who eat what might be called a PBB&J: The first thing they spread on their bread is a layer of butter. Some of these people claim to have grown up on dairy farms, where, apparently, you put butter on everything, just to keep from being suffocated by the stuff.

Of course, these are all but variations on the original holy trinity: bread, peanut butter, jelly. My question was whether to plunge the knife into the peanut butter first or the jelly.

"I spread the jelly first, lavishly (because I like the jelly more); rinse the knife, then dip into the peanut butter," wrote Ann Van Aken of Gaithersburg.

Some people think a little too hard about PB & J. But I'm with Kelly -- PB & J on pita bread? You gotta be kidding me. And peach jam? I'd love it on toast, but not with PB. I'm just too much of a traditionalist.

Corn Flakes = Boys? Not So Fast

The following excerpts are from a recent column in the Washington Post by David Shaywitz, a former endocrinologist at Harvard:

When a group of British academic researchers reported last spring that women fond of eating breakfast cereal were more likely to give birth to boys, the story was lapped up by journalists the world over. "Skip breakfast for a daughter, eat up your cereals for a son," advised the Economist, just one of many publications to seize on the report.

The problem with this fascinating study? It appears to be wrong. An analysis led by Stan Young of the National Institute for Statistical Sciences found that the original conclusion was based on poor statistics and is probably the result of chance.

That [Young's rebuttal] is ignored by many of the media outlets that lavished attention on the original report isn't surprising; in fact, the most remarkable thing is how ordinary that lack of attention may be. A lot of science, it turns out, can't withstand serious scrutiny.

Thoughtful analysis by John Ioannidis suggests that more than half of published scientific research findings can't be replicated by other researchers.

The Diverse and Delightful World of Ice Cream

The temperatures this time of year in Washington, D.C., are still relatively cool, which makes it difficult to think about sorbet. But I thought this blood orange sorbet at the blog A Spoonful of Sugar looked absolutely fantastic.

It got me thinking — are sorbets, sherbets and ice creams any more delectable when they are served during the warm-weather months? My spouse and I disagree on this point.

Maybe that's because I grew up in Arkansas. Sure, we ate ice cream throughout the year — a scoop or two always adorned apple or pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving — but my memories of ice cream are closely associated with the summer months, which could be sweltering.

At those times of the year, ice cream and sherbets were not just tasty; they were particularly refreshing. Whether it's the climate or not, ice cream seems to become much more enticing to Southerners in the summer.

Still, I respect the fact that New Englanders enjoy their ice cream throughout the year. If they only thought about ice creams and the like during the warm weather months, that would restrict their obsession to roughly three months of the year.

And I know from experience that there are some small dairies and creameries in New England that are serving amazing ice cream.

If I ever make it to Tokyo, I will have to visit "Ice Cream City." Here is a description of it on the blog Cooking With Amy. The "soft creams" sound wonderful.

But if there's a first-on-my-list ice cream I'd like to try making at home, it would be this one — courtesy of the blogger Brooke at Bear Necessities. It's cinnamon-mascarpone ice cream (see the photo above). Now does that look yummy or what?

The Unthinkable "Uncrustables"

Just the other day, I saw this package in the freezer case at a grocery store. It was so bizarre that I almost did a double-take. It's a product that proves that American food marketing trends are getting scarier each year.

Smucker's makes them, and they are called Uncrustables. They are frozen peanut butter "soft bread" sandwiches (PB & J and peanut butter-and-honey are among the varieties). You're supposed to buy them, throw them in the freezer, take them out and let them thaw, and then eat 'em. Quick question: How can a frozen sandwich be described (as this label does) as having "soft bread"?

First of all, I wouldn't want my peanut butter frozen . . . for any reason. I realize that the Uncrustables target demographic is the parents of petulant children, but I still don't get it.

Since when is it considered child abuse to serve a kid a PB & J on normal sandwich bread?

And what makes the Uncrustables a time-saver? By the time you could thaw it (or defrost it in a microwave), you could have made a PB & J sandwich and simply cut off the edges of the bread.

American food manufacturers, the fine people who brought us frozen pizza (ick!), are now trying to sell us frozen PB & J sandwiches. Has the world gone positively mad? Who would buy this?

Phony Fiber

Kudos to Slate's Jacob Gershman for writing this post:

Who knew that I could get as many grams of fiber from Cocoa Pebbles as I could from a bowl of Cheerios or a slice of whole wheat bread?

After a little research, I learned that higher doses of fiber are showing up in all sorts of bizarre places, like yogurts, cookies, brownies, ice creams, and diet drinks.

. . . The fiber in Cocoa Pebbles comes from a little-known ingredient called polydextrose, which is synthesized from glucose and sorbitol, a low-calorie carbohydrate.

And, according to Gershman, we can thank the FDA for this nonsense.

Recent FDA approvals have given manufacturers a green light to add polydextrose to a much broader range of products than previously permitted . . .

The problem with this is that nobody knows if these fiber additives possess the same health benefits as natural fiber found in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Fiber, which consists of nondigestible carbohydrates, was already one of the least understood nutrients even before the introduction of ingredients like polydextrose.

. . . Polydextrose shares with dietary fiber one fundamental property: It seems to rev up your GI tract. It does so, however, at a fraction of the level of wheat bran. And while diets heavy in oat bran have been shown to lower cholesterol levels and whole grains have been linked to lower risks of heart disease, there's no evidence that polydextrose protects cardiovascular health.

Our government continues to allow major food producers to chemically alter our food supply and then spin it as a "healthy" change.