she craves

A Bit of Beauty: "How to Be Alone"

A bit of beauty for the week, especially for those feeling alone or unconnected. And for my fellow food-lovers, pay special attention to the bliss described between 0:55-1:26. We should all do this more often and be more than okay with it. [Many thanks to RhymesWithSpoon. You are strong and beautiful more than you know.]

FLASHBACK: Creme Fraiche

[NOTE: 07.23.10]  Periodically, I glean from past posts. Writing/blogging is much like cooking, especially from books, recipes, and flavors your like and remember - you always end up coming back to them. This one is particularly simple, useful, and quite nice with the Balsamic Strawberries in this post.]

There are some things on market shelves that confuse me. The other day, at an upscale cooking supply store, I noticed a bottle of "ready made" simple syrup. For about $10, you could buy something you could've made for pennies. Some sugar. The same amount of water. And a pot. You could even spruce it up with herbs and the like.

What confused me more was that people (who apparently have more money than they know what to do with) were actually buying it, totally stoked to see it there in a pretty bottle with cool font, ready to go for their cocktail party.

Creme fraiche is another one of these things. Literally, it means "fresh cream." My disclaimer is that I don't live down the street from a dairy, I live in a country that legally mandates pasteurized milk and cream and what I make at home probably doesn't have the same flavor Julia Child experienced whenever she went to her grocer's to buy it by the small bucketful.

What to Do with Shitty Produce: Strawberries

 
The weather seems to be a bit confused. In our neck of the woods, sunshine was delayed and a grey-green spring seemed eternal. In other parts of the world, the sun came out as fiercely as a scorned and wigged-out Whitney Houston battling with Bobby Brown.

Though you wouldn't know about all this climactic confusion on the grocery shelves. For the most part, the produce section ticked along like clockwork, to its own peculiar rhythm dictated by consumer training and expectation.

Slowly, you know things are starting to sink back into a skewed normality as the raspberries do start to appear, as does watermelon from some place far more searing with its sunshine and thirsty in water, and the inevitable display of blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries. The latter often comes displayed among a mountain of pre-made yellow sponge "shortcakes," brick worked like a pyramid, flanked by the ever faithful and seemingly ever-present strawberry. It's a sight to behold. Summer cookouts, barbecues, and casual neighborly get togethers. It's emblematic of summer.

Too bad then, that they don't often taste like summer. When put together in the suggested shortcake, these gorgeous gems turn out to be no more interesting than a dimwitted, but attractive woman. Bosomy, luscious-looking, but anemic in personality. They take on the personalities of the forces of whipped cream and sugar and industrial cake, losing any characteristic of its own. What happened to tasting sunshine? What happened to tasting an honest-to-god strawberry?

Herein, lies the trouble of much produce we come across today, no matter the season or product. They're just plain shitty. Coming up against these disappointments, in a moment of frustration, I've created a recurring section called "WHAT TO DO WITH ... [insert shitty produce item here]."