Driving Palette

What about driving excuses your palette?

My usual road trip food is Combos. Nacho Cheese. Pretzel shell. I have never purchased Combos anywhere other than small town, highway exit gas stations. And I have never eaten Combos outside of my drivers seat. Call it vehicular comfort food.

I'm certain we all have them.

I deviated on my route to Milwaukee Thursday, strayed, but not far... from the norm of my poor driving palette.

I stuck with the cheese (maybe it's a Wisconsin soil thing? No... I've done Combos beyond our dairy borders...) and added coffee. Yeah, I added a Starbucks Vanilla Frappuchino to my Bucky Badger Triple Mix Popcorn.

Gross.

At the time it was perfect though. Comfort as I cruised through Fort Douglas.

Can I tell you something else? Wisconsin knows how to do cheese popcorn like no other. There's a "Chicago Mix" at the best Candyland store in Minneapolis, old fashion, been doing it right for years, but their cheese can't stand up to Bucky. Not a chance.

This cheese made the kernels almost feel wet with flavor. This cheese still sits in the beds of my fingernails, thumb and pointer on my left hand, still suggesting the blazing orange glory that was. The kind of cheese, that I actually considering what I would do with my mess of a hand if I were to get in an accident while driving.... I knew the cheese would be my last image before impact.

I could go on and on about this cheese.... but this is on TV:

And I'm finding it hard to concentrate. Too Cute! Animal Planet... dammit, you got me....

Peanuts on a Plane

It was a holiday. The kind of holiday that family congregates and reminisces. I realize that could be any holiday and I suppose that’s why I can’t tell you which one and won’t attempt. Memory serves no indication of location or season, so I’m sticking with “It was a holiday”.

As all familial conversations do, the topics circled and circled and finally landed on travel. I’m sure an aunt was nervous about how her stomach would handle her upcoming cruise, which might have led to the conversation about various methods of vacationing. To this day, I have never vacationed on the water. Cruise ship travel is foreign to me. I might have said that aloud. It’s all together possible that my confession caused another aunt to admit to never having boarded a plane.

But here, here is where I remember. I remember that whatever holiday with whichever aunts (there are many!) in whatever roundabout way of conversation led me to telling them all about the first time I was ever on a plane.

My first flight was MKE to Jamaica with a friend’s family when I was a freshman in high school, in a thunderstorm no less, but that was not the story I told them. I told them the story of the first time I was on a plane. A different story all together.

I remembered being at a very young age, I’m talking pre-school young. I remember walking onto the plane and being greeted by friendly flight attendants. I remember fastening my buckle and how big it felt in my tiny child hands. We had peanuts, I definitely remember that. But this is where my memory ends.

Probably at the sound of my voice and the shape of my story, my mother’s ears perked up and she yelled out across the room to call my bluff. You see, my mom knows that we weren’t the kind of family to travel by plane. Ever. To anywhere. We were always a family of five driving a minivan with a pop-up camper in tow. The thing is... I know this fact too, which is why it came out of my own mouth as uncertain memory. It didn’t make sense. I’ll admit that and my mother thought she caught me. I could tell by the gloating excitement nestled under her tone. The words she yelled out, the words I could hear excitement poking through, were “Mary, you were never on a plane when you were little.”

I shook my head, maybe even slapped my knee and insisted that I had. I described again and again how much I remembered but that I didn’t remember going anywhere. It’s not that it was because we went somewhere and I have a failed memory (though this story may not disprove THAT theory), it’s because we really didn’t go anywhere. I remember we boarded, ate our peanuts and left.

I may have been red in the face at this point, persisting with my mother in front of my 900 aunts as they watched in disbelief. After all, mothers would know whether or not their 3 year old was boarding a plane alone. Minutes (feeling like hours) into my insistence, my mother’s face finally went soft. Her eyes sparkled the sparkle of recognition. She then told me about a daycare teacher that used to take us all on really cool field trips. She realized my memory was one of them.

I think about that memory now and it saddens me a bit. How travel has changed in 20 years, there’s no way a three year old today would be able to sit and eat peanuts on a plane to nowhere. More importantly, that a three year old would never have the opportunity twenty years later to disprove their upbringing to their very own mother.

 Today, I also can’t help to think ….. Which old family friend arrived at the airport that day that my daycare provider just had to pick up mid-shift, kids in tow? “Field trip” Right….

A Culinary Rebellion

I just got back from Saint Joseph, MN.
Aloud, that sentence is always followed by "where's that?"
I spent the last 10 days there and I'm not sure even I know how to answer that.
I mean... geographically, I'd answer "Near St. Cloud".
Then I'd hear, "that's like.... west, right?"
"Yeah, northwest. 75 miles up I-94"
"Oh.... what's in St. Joesph?"
That's where I don't know how to answer.
The College of St. Benedict I suppose.
There's a Taco John's and a Montessori.

I've never lived on campus.
Ever.
Not even during college.
I just did.
I made the right decision to not do that.

For 10 days,  I gained weight on campus dining service food. For a vegetarian that means salad mostly. A ton of salad to gain weight off of. The weight gain, I'm sure, had little to do with the content and more to do with the culinary context. 3 square, scheduled meals a day. Like clockwork... we'd wake, we'd eat, we'd work, we'd eat, we'd work, we'd eat, we'd work, we'd sleep. Meals were at 8am, 12pm, and 5pm on the minute stroke.

I got home and I longed to feel hunger.
I longed for culinary liberties.
To satisfy a craving.
To eat against the norm.

So this morning, waking up in my own bed that smelled only of me.... and then laying in that smell until 11... then showering for 30 minutes in my own bathroom among my own lotions and potions.... I decided today I was going to break all the meal conventions placed upon me the last 10 days. Today, I rebel.

I let myself starve until 1pm.
My 1:10 breakfast was chex mix.
There may have been some chocolate in there.
Who am I kidding?
There was chocolate in there.
And by two o'clock I wanted the ultimate rebellion to all I have eaten since June 8.
I needed the most ridiculous vegetarian meal that St. Joe's has never seen.
Could never even dream.

I wanted marinated tofu.
AND PROTEIN!
Protein of every kind.
Give me BBQ mock duck.
Give me Thai.
Give me Japanese noodles shop.
Give me stinky Greek.

I knew I needed to go big, go extreme. Even extreme for me. To prove to myself why I can never be a small town girl. That simple life can't always satisfy. So I set out.... to confuse my taste buds.


I ended up at Birchwood Cafe.

Looks unassuming. You think you have me pegged... oh veggie burger w/ ketchup.

Nah... I'm way more hardcore than that.

Black Bean Quinoa Burger.
Strawberry-Rhubarb compote.
Bib Lettuce.
Red Onion.
Provolone.
Parsley-Fennel aoili.
On a multi-grain bun.

Compote, you mean - stewed fruit.... on a burger? Yep, this is the weirdo shit I was craving.

The order of ingredients were important. The roof of your mouth hit the compote first. Sweet and tangy, feels like the kind of fruit laden drizzle you'd find on a summer salad. Perhaps with candied nuts and twice baked brie. Your brain stays there as your teeth ripped the bib lettuce. Hmmm... refreshing. Ok, I'll buy it. What hits next is the red onion, with the piercing bite that only raw red onion knows how to deliver. Then you reach patty. Rather smokey in flavor, and the provolone is really just adding the warm gooey texture while letting the smoke of the patty do it's thing. Any other cheese would over power. The bottom of the bun spread lightly with the crisp parsley-fennel aoili, almost acting like a citrus kicker at the end.

A well rounded experience I'd have to say. And satisfying no less. My only critique is the substantial bun in combo with the hearty patty, left a bit of a dry finish at the end. I might even goes as far as suggesting it open faced. Thank goodness for the dill and vinegared cucumber, glad I saved that as my juicy last bite.

In homage of today.... my dad would say.... "And you actually liked that weirdo shit?"

Cupcake Ache

Hostess Cupcake at 5:00am = morning belly ache.

I blame my mom for the motivation.

And

I blame my dad for facilitating.



Hostess Cupcake will always remind me of the house I grew up in. The nostalgia outweighs the actual taste experience. Every so often a box would show up from my dad's truck. That house on 58th Street has stopped stocking the treats. But every so often, a weakness takes hold and I hear of the rare cupcake indulgence. In fact, I clearly remember an occasion where the urge was so strong that when the cupcake arrived, my mother cut my telephone conversation short. Mid sentence she interrupted me with a "Well, I'm going to have a hostess". That night I lost the attention battle to a cupcake.

I stopped at a gas station during my last long drive and headed indoors for some sugar to get me through. Craving a soft, chocolaty parcel ... I thought of Mom and knew what I was looking for. Nonexistent. Disappointed. I somehow lost to a cupcake again. I admitted my hostess failure to my mom later.

My dad comes up last night bearing a scanner and a printer that I won't have the luck of compatibility with, I'm sure... and .... a box of hostess cupcakes. Not sleeping on my tiny couch left me up and wondering at various points of the night. At 5:00am that box seemed like a good idea. How do I keep losing to deserts?