Some New Food Rules

In my latest issue of Bon Appetit there’s a blurb on ice cream vs. gelato. It talks about the differences, and then lists a few places to get good versions of either. One of these places (in LA, perhaps not surprisingly) offers such choices as “bacon-caramel,” “Pabst Blue Ribbon-avocado,” and “dill-mascarpone.”

I feel it’s time to put my foot down about this, and a few other related trends.

For starters, bacon- or beer-flavored ice cream is simply an abomination and the making of such vile concoctions should be prohibited by the US Constitution. There’s just no excuse for these retch-inducing combinations. No, I haven’t tried them, but I haven’t tried crickets or guano either. There are some things you just don’t have to try. You just know they’re nasty, and instinctively avoid them. I suppose one could argue that were it not for similar attempts, we might not have flavors like chocolate chip cookie dough, or even coffee ice cream. But then we would also have avoided mistakes like licorice flavored ice cream, so there.

New Food Rule #1: Stop making ice cream out of ingredients that simply don’t belong in ice cream. And if you’re not sure what ingredients simply don’t belong in ice cream, then you need to play it safe and not make ice cream at all. Enough with the chai flavored ice cream, already.

On a related note, I’ve read of a lot of restaurants lately that are serving “bite sized” dessert plates. These are combinations of several different one- or two-bite desserts, which would be fine, except that the pastry chefs are getting a little too cute with this idea and producing things like itty bitty lollipops, and teeny little puffs of cotton candy, and other junk food-inspired offerings. I think the straw that broke my back was the miniature peanut butter and jelly ice cream sundae I read about at a restaurant in Alexandria, VA. Peanut butter ice cream, guava jelly (or something similarly yucky), and the usual sundae fixings, but I think it also had some kind of croissant bread crumbs or something on it as well, to represent the bread of a normal PB&J sandwich. The whole thing was a stomach-turning combination of ick and affected.

New Food Rule #2: No more overprecious teeny tiny desserts that are some kind of riff on childhood junk food favorites. Just make a chocolate cake and let it go at that. If these pastry chefs spent half as much time making really good chocolate cake as they do coming up with darling little nibbles, the world would be a far, far better place. Good chocolate cake is hard to come by.

A take on this teeny dessert concept is the idea of teeny appetizers that look like desserts, but are actually savory. A restaurant in Seattle serves a cracker “waffle cone” filled with a scoop of mashed potato “ice cream” (in this case not actual mashed potato-flavored ice cream, thank God, since that would clearly violate rule #1, but a scoop of mashed potatoes that are intended to look somewhat like ice cream). Making appetizers that are intended to resemble desserts is just as bad as making tiny desserts that are takes on junk food.

New Food Rule #3: Just serve appetizers. Never mind trying to make them look cute. And especially never mind trying to make them look like dessert so that I am oh-so-surprised when I bite into it and discover that it’s not actually sweet, it’s savory! How very whimsical and droll!

I am also of the opinion that the people who run fair concessions should stop deep frying things. Deep fried candy bars, Twinkies, Oreos. At the root of this trend is evidently the Mullen brothers, Clint and Rocky, who came up with the idea of abusing Snickers bars in this fashion, and run fair concessions. Hostess (or to be perfectly accurate, Interstate Bakeries, their parent company) approached the Mullens about the idea of deep frying Twinkies, because Twinkies aren’t revolting enough on their own. They need to be breaded and saturated with fryer oil, too. Fairgoers responded enthusiastically (proving once again that the collective IQ of the American people is just shy of “functional”) and deep frying just about anything became not just acceptable, but trendy. I’m going to sell my idea for deep fried ice cubes. I’m sure they’ll be a runaway hit.

The only weird deep fried item that I will speak up for is deep fried dill pickle rounds. These are actually very yummy, and shouldn’t be scorned in the same breath with other freakish deep fried selections.

New Food Rule #4: Stop deep frying anything and everything. Let’s just stick to the traditional potatoes and chicken, and leave candy bars and cookies out of it.

I read recently about a couple of new restaurants that have a sort of similar philosophy to one another, although they’re executing it in different ways. One actually serves you completely in the dark. The servers are all blind or visually impaired, and the idea is, of course, that if you’re unable to actually see what you’re eating, your other senses (including taste and smell) are thus heightened. The other establishment offers accompaniments to the meal (which it calls “courses”) that are things like burning rosemary branches. That’s not a course; it’s a fire hazard. The concept in this case is that these added scents contribute to what’s being eaten without actually being a part of the dish itself. Tres gimmicky.

New Food Rule #5: Restaurants need to serve food, and not try to come up with ways to make it more dramatic and impactful. People will always need to eat. They will always come back to a restaurant that serves reliably good food, and they’ll tell their friends about it as well. If restaurants serve a high quality product in a pleasant setting with competent service, they won’t need to think up tricky ways of making the food more interesting.

In general, anything that could be described by restaurant critics as “amusing,” “whimsical,” or “fanciful” is not anything I want to eat. I don’t want fanciful food. I don’t want amusing food. I want food that tastes good. When I read any of those adjectives in a restaurant review, I am immediately on my guard. I guess I just have a no-nonsense attitude about food. I’m prepared to try something that sounds unusual, but not something that sounds disgusting or pretentious or both. Thus my contribution of a few new food rules, all of which I can pretty much guarantee will be soundly ignored by chefs around the world, until they themselves come to the conclusion that these things were just silly to begin with, and abandon them all. It’s the story of my life.

Food Rules

Having just finished a somewhat disappointing takeout meal, I wish to share a few thoughts on what the rules of engagement for food and eating should be. This is not, of course, what they are, but the way they would be in my ideal world. Those of you who may have seen the Diet Rules that made the rounds maybe ten or fifteen years ago will recognize some of them—they were good then, they’re good now. Here we go.

If it wasn’t good, it doesn’t count
The lunch I just ate was from my favorite Japanese restaurant, but I think the regular chef was on vacation, because it was not up to their usual standard. I got the seaweed salad instead of the pickled cucumbers that usually come with my lunch (I think they may have run out of the cucumbers, because there was a guy in the bar eating a bento box, and he had the cucumbers, the bastard), and I hate the seaweed salad. It’s too fishy, or something. Then, the grilled beef short ribs I usually get that are supposed to come basted with a kind of sticky sweet soy-based sauce tasted as though they’d been grilled with no sauce at all. In short, the whole thing was a disappointment. But it still had the same number of calories, the same number of fat grams, the same degree of fillingness (if you will) that it would have had if it had been their best. The problem was, it wasn’t emotionally satisfying. Therefore, I propose that if a meal wasn’t good, and didn’t provide a significant emotional satisfaction in addition to filling me up, the calories, fat, etc do not count. I can go eat something that does satisfy and not have to be concerned that I’m eating twice as much.

If I wish I hadn’t eaten it after I finish, it doesn’t count
This is kind of related to the rule above, except that it also includes things that were fulfilling and satisfying, but that I just wish for some other reason I hadn’t eaten. If, for instance, I eat a big plate of amazing something-in-cream-sauce, or an incredible dessert, but later feel remorse over all the bad things that might have been in there and are now in me, doing their damage, I get to not count it. Any ill effects of what I ate are automatically negated.

If I split it with someone, it doesn’t count
If my husband and I split a huge dessert, neither of us has to count the calories, fat, etc. The same diet rule went around years ago as “If you split it with someone, the calories cancel.” Right on.

If no one knows I ate it, it doesn’t count
Again, and oldie but a goodie. This also carries over to Weight Watchers and other weight loss techniques that require a food journal. If you don’t write it down, it didn’t actually count.

Things that are really delicious are automatically good for you
And I’m not saying “I think Stouffer’s Macaroni and Cheese is really delicious, therefore it should be good for me.” It’s that something that is truly wonderful, a really high quality food, is good for you, no matter how bad it actually is for you. Things that fall into this category are really outstanding homemade mayonnaise (and by extension, anything made with it), homemade (or excellent quality bakery-made) cinnamon rolls, a fantastic blue cheese, homemade fruit cobblers or tarts. In fact, anything homemade should automatically be good for you, no matter what’s in it. If I undertake to make French fries at home, and go to the trouble of cutting them, soaking them, and deep frying them on my stove, then by God, they should be good for me. Things in really expensive restaurants, no matter how much cream they contain, should be good for you, too.

Everyone should get one day a month when nothing counts
We should all be allowed to choose one day in a month when we can eat any damned thing we want and nothing will contribute to weight gain, or health deterioration. Wish you could eat three large orders of McDonald’s fries? Wish you could drink five Appletinis and not get drunk (or wake up hung over)? Wish you could eat four fried chickens (bonus points to anyone who recognizes the movie reference)? There should be a day each month when we can do that. We could use it for a holiday—this month, for instance, I might choose one of the days of Memorial Day weekend as my “nothing counts” day, so I can eat everything. Or the month of my birthday, I might choose my birthday (difficult, since I have a November birthday, but I’d have to pick between that and Thanksgiving).

Foods from childhood should not count
Maybe that’s a little much, on reflection, but ok, how about this: We all get to pick three favorite foods from childhood that don’t count. I could pick potato chips, McDonald’s cheeseburgers, and…Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Then I could eat as much of those things as I wanted, whenever I wanted, and they would be completely neutral. The only catch to this one is, you can’t switch to a different childhood food when you get bored with one (or all) of the three. You must pick them and stick with them forever.

If it’s a beverage, it doesn’t count
Beer, wine, soda, shakes—they’re liquid, for pete’s sake. They shouldn’t contribute to weight gain. They shouldn’t be bad for you. They go with food. They’re necessary. They shouldn’t count. I remember in high school I truly did not believe that Coke could cause weight gain. How could it? You drink it, you don’t eat it. Ah, youth [takes sip from can of Diet Coke next to computer].

If I don’t realize I finished it, it doesn’t count
Despite the countless warnings and cluckings from diet gurus, I insist on reading while I eat. Sorry, I just do. Reading contributes to the pleasure of eating, and eating contributes to the pleasure of reading. The majority of the time it’s not a problem. While I might not be “eating mindfully,” I do derive sufficient satisfaction to feel full when I’m done with my meal. However, every now and then I take the last bite of something, and realize that, hey, that was the last bite and I didn’t get that “last bite” feeling after taking it. When that happens, the whole thing I just ate gets zeroed out. This is kind of a companion to the rule about things not counting when they’re not good, or when I change my mind about having eaten something, but it applies even when the thing was good.

If the jury is out on the detrimental effects of a food, it doesn’t hurt us
There have been so many swings of the pendulum as regards what foods are good for us, bad for us, totally neutral, that I feel like if they haven’t determined with an absolute certainty that something is bad for us, it shouldn’t have a negative effect on health or weight. Butter, for instance. We started out with butter being good for us; I remember the old “four food groups” and butter counted as a dairy product. Then butter was horrible, horrible, horrible for us. You might as well eat rat poison as eat butter. In fact, rat poison was probably better for you, because it didn’t have any cholesterol or saturated fat. Then someone started poking around in the margarine formula (which I’ve read is one molecule removed from plastic, but that could be an urban legend), and realized that margarine had trans fats, and that those trans fats were way worse than anything in butter. So the word went out that maybe butter wasn’t the Antichrist after all. I say, if the experts can’t decide, it just doesn’t hurt, period. And naturally, as far as I’m concerned, “they” haven’t actually proven that any one thing is bad for us. So guess what?

If I eat one “bad” thing along with a specified number of “good” things, the good things cancel the bad one
This is kind of the “good behavior” rule of food consumption. If I eat a big salad, loaded with vegetables and low fat protein, but eat it with regular Ranch dressing, the positive aspects of the vegetables and low fat protein cancel the negative ones of the dressing. This rule could apply to elements within a meal, or to the overall meal. If I eat a small, lightly dressed salad as my appetizer, then have grilled fish over sautéed spinach, and then finish off with a buttery slice of lemon tart, the first two “good” components negate the “badness” of the dessert.

I think that’s a pretty good start. I might add on to this in the future, but I think this set of rules, if adopted by…pretty much everyone, would serve to make my life much happier and easier. So, let’s eat!