in the test kitchen: foolproof granola bars.

good granola bars are expensive. you know, the kind that actually fill you up for more than a nanosecond, and that contain ingredients not synthesized in a laboratory? i will pay upwards of $2 for a really good granola bar, and i’m not ashamed to admit it. although i probably should be…

a while back, chris over at part time vagabond gave me an assignment to make my own granola bars. i’m not much of a baker, and assumed that the experience would be terrifying and catastrophic. but as it turned out, it was actually  pretty easy and very delicious, with minimal emotional (or physical) scarring.

now, i’m OBSESSED with home made granola bars (sorry nature valley, we’re breaking up).  the recipe i used was obscenely easy, and pretty much impossible to fuck up (even if you cook them too long, they just become crunchy granola bars instead of chewy), but i finally feel ready to make something a little more complicated- does anyone have a granola bar recipe that they love?

i am also searching for interesting flavor combinations.  i’m looking for great innovation in the world of flavor combinations. can i put cheese popcorn in granola bars? skittles? nori?

get your local on- pop & lock.

well, december is here. and that means that jerks like me who didn’t celebrate xmas shopping in july (and certainly didn’t sign up for any sort of xmas club) are all like “OH SHIT, i didn’t do any xmas shopping, and now i have no money and no time!” it’s last minute time folks, and the solution is simple- BUY LOCAL. we talked a little bit about it on plaid friday, but along with supporting/growing the local economy, shopping local has some additional benefits worth considering:

1. no exorbitant shipping rates. how many times have i filled my online shopping cart full of amazing discount goodies, only to find out that shipping will cost more than the merchandise. so not worth it. BOO!

2. no stress about things shipping on time. i spent last xmas tussling with an amazon.com call center employee over a lost package that didn’t make it on time and RUINED XMAS. ok, not really ruined, but gifts lose a little bit of their potency when not given on the appropriate day. if you bought local, you wouldn’t have to worry about the shame of lost potency EVER AGAIN. plus, you can do all your shopping on xmas eve.

3. everyone buys the same crap at amazon.com, and frankly, you’re better than that. screw the big label mass market consumer goods this year, and get your friends and fams something that they can’t get anywhere else but here. state pride doesn’t have to come in the form of a black bears sweatshirt (although it certainly could if you’re into that sort of thing), and there are tons of great local shops, companies and artisans hovering all around you just waiting to sell you the perfect gift.

anyway, this month i’ll be spotlighting some of my favorite local businesses where one can purchase thoughtful, exciting, and original merchandise at the very last possible moment, and never have to pay for shipping. today’s focus is on my very favorite food of all time- POPCORN.  fabulous flavored popcorn is a great xmas hostess gift, inexpensive gift for co-workers, stocking stuffer, or treat to put out at your holiday shindig (i’m over you potato chips!). or, if i’m on your xmas list- a garbage bag sized sack will do just fine. coincidentally, maine is packed full of gourmet/boutique popcorn poppers- and they know their shit. here are my favorites:

get your cake on!

i don’t remember a single kid in my entire elementary school that had a peanut allergy. maybe bees (epi pens look so fucking cool when you’re 7), but not peanuts- and certainly not gluten. as a matter of fact, i lived the majority of my adult life not really even knowing what gluten is, or that people even could be allergic to it. but there it is. all of the sudden, everybody and their grandma has celiac disease or is gluten intolerant… where there were once no food allergies or sensitivities, now even walmart has a gluten free department. wacky.

i hate to conjecture as to why there has been this apparent spike in food allergies and conditions (pesticides? medications? evolutionary failure?), because it will just make me want to enclose myself in a plastic bubble (and not the sexy jake gyllenhaal kind, the creepy john travolta kind). but the fact is that gluten allergy/intolerance is a new reality that many have to deal with every day, and it totally sucks.

i fucking love gluten.  i can tear through a bread basket in the blink of an eye (no seriously, if you ever go out to dinner with me- DON’T BLINK if you have any interest in pre-show bread), so my heart goes out (way out) for anyone who can’t enjoy the glory that is starchy, glutenous goodness. that said, there are a growing number of products out on the market dedicated to our gluten repellent friends that are actually quite tasty. for example, i’m a big fan of the lucy’s brand cookies (specifically the sugar cookies). what i’m learning, is that gluten free baked goods can be totally kick ass, as long as they’re done well. unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen.

to add another layer of suck, gluten free shit is FUCKING EXPENSIVE. can you imagine having to spend $6 every time you wanted to buy hamburger buns? so basically, there’s not much you can eat, and what you can eat is ludicrously pricey. and then what about things like birthdays and holidays? maybe you can get some gluten free  mix or something from the whole foods, but it’s not hardly the same as having someone make you real cake or cookies from scratch.

therein lies the subject of our blog post/love letter today. cakeface contacted me about a week ago about doing a review of their startup gluten free bakery business.  now, i get contacted semi-regularly to review things on my blog, and i don’t always say yes.  what appealed to me about cakeface is the fact that they’re local, they’re vegan, and that i would get to eat cupcakes. sold! i headed on over to their website and ordered half a dozen peanut butter cupcakes, 3 blueberry scones, and 3 chocolate chip scones. the goods were delivered to my office promptly the next afternoon (they deliver to a good chunk of the southern maine area).

reason #1 to love cakeface– the people who own it are some of the best people you will ever meet. jj does the baking, simon handles the business end, and they are both ridiculously nice, charming, and completely genuine. i kind of want them to be my new best friends.  basically, you can rest assured that your cupcakes will not be made by assholes.

i decided to share the scones with the people in my office, and hoard the cupcakes for myself (well, and possibly the boyfriend).  everybody snarfed theirs down in record time, and the only complaint by one of my coworkers was “not sweet enough”.

reason #2 to love cakeface- they make smart food. as far as i’m concerned, people who who like their food overly sweetened have stupid tongues. too much high fructose corn syrup and processed snack cakes have made them unable to appreciate any flavor above and beyond twinkie level sugar shock. it’s tragic. i thought they were the best scones that i’d ever eaten (they are so not paying me for this in cupcakes or otherwise, i just thought they were kick ass scones). moist but not soggy, not too sweet, and with just a tiny bit of salty in there to make things more interesting. similarly, the cupcakes had a nice flavor balance (mildly sweet and nutty), were the perfect moist but not oily texture, and had exactly the right amount of jj’s killer peanut butter frosting (just ask the boyfriend who shoved down 3 of them in a sitting).

cakeface simon and i actually had a funny conversation today about how too much frosting can destroy a perfect cupcake experience. too much frosting for me is a clear sign that the cake portion of a cupcake can’t stand on its own. it’s showboating. excess frosting is full of lies.

reason #3 to love cakeface- they’re unpretentious. food that tastes good doesn’t need 4 inches of buttercream and a fondant daisy to make it worth eating.  my cakeface treats came neatly packed in a brown bag, simply presented, without a ganache floret in sight. oh, and they also threw in a  totally adorable bumper sticker, just because.

ok, so we’ve covered their charmingness, their taste goodingness, and their lack of showboatingness… all excellent and necessary qualities in a bakery. but what’s the bottom line on all this deliciousness?

reason #4 to love cakeface- you can afford them. i’m a girl who has (and will again) paid upwards of $5 for a single cupcake, and you might expect a company like cakeface that uses pricey ingredients like hazelnut flour and vegan sugar to be in the upper ranges of the cupcake market. not so! starting at $1.50 a cupcake, $1 a scone, and $.50 a cookie (less if you order more), you’d be lucky to get some gas station hydrox for the same price.

ok, before this lovefest carries on for too long, let me just say one thing- i know hardcore product/ pimping is not my general modus operandi, but when really good people are doing something admirable and worthwhile (and delicious)… i think they deserve a little shout out.  along with throwing down an order of your own (what’s on their order page is just a starting point- give them a call for everything from birthday cakes to alternative scone flavors), if you want to help support cakeface’s future development (they’re working on a second set of dedicated cookware so that they can also offer nut-free treats), you can also donate to their kickstarter account to help assure that their venture gets started with a real chance. after all, it’s always the right time to get your cake on.

a tale of two dinners.

so restaurant week ends today, and i’m still on the fence about whether or not it’s really a good idea. i do love the concept of a 3 course fixed price menu. and who can argue with a reason to go and check out all sorts of the incredible restaurants that portland has to offer (did i mention that bon appetit called us america’s foodiest small town)? unfortunately, over the last 2 years my experiences have been so mixed that i’ve found myself turned off more restaurants than on. last year’s jaunt to the pepper club delivered a dry crumbling lentil loaf, and i haven’t been back since. this year, the farmer’s table disaster:

1. despite having a 7:30 reservation, arriving 5 minutes early, and seeing at least 2 empty tables in the dining room… we were told to wait at the bar for about 30 minutes before we were seated- at the corner of kitchen & bathroom. nice.

2. while seated at the bar, we were completely ignored for at least 15 minutes before someone came to take our drink orders, which then took another 15 minutes to prepare.

3. once seated at our really great table, our waitress took another 15 minutes to bring us bread and water. my bread had big chewy floury blobs in it. not good.

4. by the time our order was taken, they were already out of one of the appetizers, bummer. we ended  up getting the salad, but ordering the brie fritters off the regular menu as a supplement. theoretically these should have been amazing. too bad they were smothered in stone-cold overly sweet and weirdly bitter blueberry compote. oh, and our waitress neglected to give us plates (and then proceeded to ignore us until our salads arrived), so we both had to eat them out of the bowl in a way that was both awkward and messy (dear farmer’s table, i will not be apologizing for the blueberry stains on your tablecloth. you know what you’ve done.)

5. the salad was inedible. smothered in some sort of hydrochloric vinaigrette, there was so much acid that it burned our tongues and cheeks and we both gave up after about 2 bites.

6. the main courses were ludicrously unbalanced. the boyfriend got half a pig beautifully roasted and sitting on a bed of sexy looking red rice and root vegetables. i got a huge plate with a very small well (5″ in diamter?), half filled with some scraps of the worst hand made pasta i’d ever had (intermittently chewy and mushy). edible, but not good.

7. dessert was again, edible, but not good. my pineapple upside down cake had clearly never actually been upside down… the cake was dry and the pineapple was chewy and still tart. certainly not soft, brown, and deliciously carmelized (as should be required). the boyfriend’s lava cake looked like sad naked deflated cupcake- and neither of us could detect any actual lava inside. lame!

anyway, for our $30.01  each + cocktails + an off-menu appetizer + 20% tip even though the waitress completely didn’t deserve it… we felt more like we’d been mugged than had just come from a fine dining experience.  no me gusta!

this is where the on the fence part comes in. restaurant week should be about providing amazing food and reasonable prices in order to seduce new clientele into your establishment. but in my experience, things have felt hastily thrown together with a distinct sacrifice of quality.  also, the restaurants seem overwhelmed by the volume of people, and the service suffers gravely.  STEP IT UP PEOPLE!

for those of you who have bothered to make it this far (as i did promise you a tale of 2 dinners), we can still end this fairy tale with a happily ever after.  my second restaurant week selection, the corner room,  was phenomenal. i had been there before and enjoyed it, but with my reservations on how restaurant week can ruin things, i was curious to see how it held up.  well, i will spare you the jizz covered exaltations about every morsel, but let me just stay that it held right the fuck up. with gusto. a few small highlights:

1. the corner room stiletto  is hands down my favorite cocktail on the peninsula.

2. my main course was practically the same dish as i had at the farmer’s table in conception (handmade pasta with mushrooms and cream sauce), except that it was appropriately portioned and lick your plate tasty.

3. despite the fact that our food was big and delicious, the corner room was only $20.01 (the lowest restaurant week price point). plus, they only charged me an extra $2 for ordering a non-restaurant week dessert. (their tiramisu is panty dropping good).

4. our table was solid, and the service was perfection. thank you corner room for making us feel like we were worthy of dining in your restaurant.

i suppose that the moral of this lengthy tale is that a good restaurant is a good restaurant. and a really good restaurant can take a challenge like restaurant week, and make it fit seamlessly into their menu. as opposed to making you feel like you’re getting a cheap knock-off of their real food, and that you are not worthy of decent service. whether it’s $20.01 or $100.01, research before you eat. if i had asked some friends and done some online research first- i could have easily saved myself $100 and 2 hours of feeling like a second class citizen.

cheap eats- micucci love.

apparently, the michelin man has high end tastes. i stumbled upon this video on cnn.com today, and it made me think about all the really great food out there that isn’t being appropriately appreciated because it isn’t expensive. higher cost does not necessarily always mean higher quality- especially when it comes to food.  now, i am a girl who will pay $50 or more for a really good meal and not bat an eyelash (food is one of the things that makes life worth living, and i won’t sacrifice!)- but there are also some amazing finds in this town that will knock you stupid with their deliciousness without robbing you completely blind.

for my first love fest, i would like to recognize not only the best pizza in town, but the best pizza i’ve ever had- EVER. and frankly, some of the very best food in general that Portland has to offer. of course, i am referring to the notorious “sicilian slab” at the micucci grocery store on india st.

micucci’s is a great place to visit if you’re in the neighborhood, with it’s incredible selection of italian foods from pickled eggplant to spumoni. they even have their own deli. they also make the only passable cannolis i’ve ever found in maine (anyone help me out here?). however, if you’re not in the mood for browsing the torrone- take a right at the meat slicer, and head on back to the bakery area. there you will find 2 very small tables, and one large metal rack full of deliciousness. or possibly not- shit sells out LIGHTNING FAST! be prepared to wait in line. be prepared for people pick a fight with anyone suspected of cutting in that line, or taking more pieces than they deserve. the sicilian slab is so amazing, that it makes people batshit crazy. some things you should know to avoid any potential fist fights or faux pas:

1. the sicilian slab comes in one flavor- plain cheese. you don’t need anything else.  under no circumstance should you complain about this- and for the love of god,  don’t ask for toppings!

2. do not ask the micucci staff to reheat the pizza if it is cold. it is almost as good cold as it is warm, but if you really want it hot- get your ass there early and wait in line (usually, the only cold ones happen at the very end of the day). or, get a cold one and reheat it yourself (you lazy jerk).

3.  if there is a line when you arrive, quietly go to the back. a paper plate on the pizza rack will tell you how much time you have to wait. under no circumstance should you ask the chef or kitchen staff when things will be ready.

4. if you are at the front of the line, take the first piece of pizza that comes out- no matter what. i’m sorry if the next piece looks better- they’re all delicious, suck it up and move along.

5. if you need more than 2 slices, make your friends come with you to get their own- or call ahead to order a whole pie. if you would like to try to grab more than 2 (especially around lunch time when the lines are the longest)- go ahead, get shanked, be my guest…

i don’t lie. words can not describe how supernaturally amazing this pizza tastes. it’s not a meal, it’s a fucking religious experience. actually, it’s also a meal- a big meal that will last you all day. and for the low low price of $4.50, i defy you to find a lunch on the peninsula that tastes better.

*go! go now!!*