Chicago Foodies

Eating Gluten Free is Hard! Or is it?

I was tested years ago for food allergies and the blood tests proved to be inconclusive so I never pursued it further. On a recent trip to my doctor she was reviewing some of the old lab results as reference for our conversation and noted that although I tested negative for Celiac Disease my scores were on the higher end of the range. She recommended eliminating gluten from my diet for a couple of weeks to see if it made a difference. She said, “Really, how hard could it be?” How hard could it be? My initial thought was extremely hard. I had been eating wheat at every meal every day of my life. It took me several weeks just to mentally prepare myself for the task. I decided to start the diet on a day that I went to The Loving Hut in Edgewater for lunch and noticed gluten free symbols next to several dishes. I was encouraged to see that I could go gluten free and still enjoy going out to eat.

Zombie Calamari – Reanimating Headless Squid... You Know, For Dinner.

A headless squid will move when stimulated with the sodium in soy. It's very strange to see. This is definitely a "Weird Food" post.

Music Video Made of Food... Jesse & Joy "Chocolate"

Here's BOTH the video and the making-of video.

Jesse & Joy- "Chocolate" from Carlos Lopez Estrada on Vimeo.

Behind the Scenes of "Chocolate" from Carlos Lopez Estrada on Vimeo.

Eat The Food Tina.

Another food-related movie clip. From Napolean Dynamite:

Never-Rotting ForeverBurgers – (Not Just McDonald's)

Hat tip to Chicagoist.

** Amended! – A Tuscan Foodie in America posted a comment below. Here's the quote from his site:

Now the Burgerlab has SCIENTIFICALLY proven that ALL burgers of a certain weight - even homemade, with prime cut beef and homemade patties - do not rot. Exactly like McDonald's.

That doesn't explain the bread or fries but in any case, great comment. ChicagoFoodies has wonderful readers!

Where Milk Comes From... You know, for kids!

Gourmet Dining & Mushroom Hunting: One Sister

Chef Iliana Regan's company, One Sister is responsible for a fantastic underground dining experience as well as Chicago Magazine's 'Best' Pierogies, she farms and forages for her ingredients and in addition to a gourmet breakfast and lunch, she's sharing her location for Maitaki mushrooms!

Breakfast, lunch and mushrooms. Saturday October 9th and the next week, the 16th, Chef Regan is leading a mushroom expedition the fancy way. 7:30am gourmet breakfast then onto a bus and hit the woods where last year she found a 16 pound hen of the woods maitake mushroom. Quick 16 pounds of maitaki mushroom retails for... $288 ($18 a pound at Oregon mushrooms). Not sure how to hunt for shrooms? You get a gift basket with a field guide and recipe book as well as a bottle of wine, cheese a map of the woods and more.

After scoring your fungus, lunch in the garden consists of:

One Sister Smoked Duck breast, sliced thin with cherry aioli, arugula on rye bread and adult fruit roll-ups and beet chips. Vegetarian option: Smoked eggplant and mushroom wrap with red pepper aioli, homemade pickled artichokes, arugula, adult fruit roll-ups and beet chips. Adult fruit-roll ups are made with raspberries and Chambord. Drinks for lunch will include 3 Floyd's beer, Hard Apple Cider-cause it might be chilly, Bottled water, Mocktails-something local and more coffee.

Cooking with Christopher Walken

Vegetable Soup 70's PBS Show...

Baconfest 2010 = SWINETACULAR

I’ll tell you what was wrong with Baconfest…not a damn thing! The crispy, salty Bacon was festival worthy. Yes, I am in full Bacon detoxification mode, but the $45 ticket fee, spike in sodium levels, and increased cholesterol was so worth it.
 
The creators of Baconfest went hog wild in planning.  Located at the Stan Mansion on Kedzie in Logan Square, Baconfest was perfectly arranged with vendors of all things bacon on the bottom floor, alcohol (including Bakon Vodka) on the second floor, and 12 of Chicago’s best chef’s in the grand ballroom.

The Passion of the KFC – 1,380mg of Salt in a Single Sandwich!

This is the KFC Double Down. Sandwiches like this help make it easier to fool my wife.  I told her that Kentucky Fried Chicken legally had to change their name to KFC because they didn't use 'chicken'. She believed me for about 2 minutes (another one was that the Long John Silver's logo used to be white but with all the discoloration because of all the grease they just gave in and switched to yellow).

Anyway. KFC is even more about the chicken with this 'This is Why You're Fat' offering. No bun... but not Atkins as the chicken is breaded so it's bun enough. Two fried chicken fillets (no more meat spec than fillet) with cheese, mayo-spread and bacon in between. It's something so crazy, you'd think Hardee's would have done it. Needless to say I'm passing. From USA Today:

The sandwich, which comes complete with 1,380 milligrams of salt (about 60% of what the federal government recommends for an entire day's consumption) and 10 grams of saturated fat (about 50% of a day's supply), would seem to be a slap in the face to nutritionists — and nutrition advocates such as Michelle Obama— calling for more restraint from the nation's foodmakers.

Cheese-Rolling Cancelled, Brits Cheesed

In other sad news, Gloucestershire's annual cheese-rolling has been cancelled, due to concerns about crowd size. If you are unfamiliar with this springtime tradition, basically it involves a bunch of intrepid locals chasing after a large round of cheese while tumbling down a steep hill. Perhaps this would be better explained in their own words:

What is the Cheese Rolling event?

It's an annual event in Gloucestershire where brave/nutty locals chase a large round cheese down a near-vertical grass slope. It's a combination of "this is common land: we assert our rights to run all over it, so don't fence it off Evil Landowner!" and "Let's have a few beers and go and see who breaks their leg first". There are also uphill races (!) for those who are too fit and keen to drink beer.

Alas, like the Southside St. Patrick's Day parade, the event has been cancelled this year because organizers fear the crowd has become unmanageably large. Tourists and local cheese-rollers wept accordingly. Said one Mike Smith, "Dreadfully disappointed with the news. As a cheese-roller of many years, I look forward to the chance to really injure myself each year. I have no idea how I'll hurt myself this year now."

Mother's Milk or Rather Mother's Cheese

Chef Daniel Angerer posted a recipe for cheese that is fairly different. He posts cheese recipes using mother's milk. I'm not sure what the conventional wisdom is out there or why I have such an easy time accepting goat's milk or sheep's or cow's for that matter.  (image from his blog as well)

I came about mother’s milk when our daughter celebrated her 4th week birthday -- my spouse is feeding our baby with breast milk. We are fortunate to have plenty of pumped mommy’s milk on hand and we even freeze a good amount of it – my spouse actually thinks of donating some to an infant milk bank which could help little babies in Haiti and such but for the meantime (the milk bank requires check-ups which takes a little while) our small freezer ran out of space.  To throw it out would be like wasting gold.

I guess I wonder what it would taste like... I was raised on formula.
Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan

Cat Stew – The Horror of Tradition in the Kitchen!

Donnie Yen Cooks in Iron Monkey

Alton Brown's Pan Fried Chicken

Ice Sphere Mold... The Perfect Ice Sphere. Just What You Need in the Midst of Winter

A walk through the MOMA Design Store turned over the hard-to-find Japanese ice sphere molds. It's maybe the last thing you need to hear about with the temp actually becoming 'annoying-to-walk-the-dog cold'. In any case since a good cocktail mitigates temperature issues and if you've been enjoying the cocktail renaissance of the past couple of years, you know the wonderful principles behind the ice sphere. It's really all about surface area. The more ice chunks and chips you have, the faster the ice melts. The faster the ice melts, the faster your drink dilutes and the faster it warms up. Now the Japanese who are known scotch-mavens, have designed machines that press out perfect ice spheres. It's drawback for home use is that you need giant chunks of ice to create the spheres.

Chocri: Create My Chocolate

In a world of freeze-your-own ice cream and top-your-own hamburgers, it was only a matter of time until someone swept in to fill the need for customizable chocolate. Enter Chocri, a German-based company that has just launched operations in the U.S. The concept is simple: you choose your chocolate base (milk, dark or white), add up to five additional toppings, and your designer chocolate bars are shipped to you faster than you can say "Meine Schokolade!"

The most exciting part is undoubtedly choosing your toppings. M&M's and rice crispies in a candy bar? Yawn. With Chocri, your options range from apricot bits to spicy volcano cashews. Though you could stick to classic chocolate add-ins, like nougat and coconut, haven't you ever wondered what it would be like to add coriander to your chocolate? No? Well, here's your chance anyway. For chocolate bars intended as gifts, you can also add in decorations and labels, such as "Thank you!" or "Happy Birthday!"

With a purported 10 billion+ possible combinations, I had to put some serious thought into concocting winning chocolate combinations. After much agonizing (marshmallow or muesli? Do I need gold flakes in my chocolate??), I ended up with the following bars:

Achatz Tableside Dessert Preparation at Alinea

The $165.99 Bottle of Sam Adams: Utopias

Is it beer? It tastes like a cognac. It's 'shelf-stable'  It's not carbonated. Could you even fermented to 27%?

I guess the answer is yes. Utopias is a whopping 27% that's right, 54 proof... that would be a mean game of quarters. But since it's $165 bucks you might be a bit more stingy with it. Sam Adams made a triple bock in the late nineties that came close at 18% and at $6 was a bit cheaper. That I do remember drinking in college but I also remember being surprised by it. Frankly it might have simply been the bottle or the oddity of it. This time around I had the opportunity to try it again and I can only wish that they'd relaunch it. But the Utopias was the focus of the evening. I do enjoy sherry and found the flavor to be in the same vein but what Utopias brings to the table as far as I can tell is that fermented undertone of malt. It has a very robust finish full of chocolate and nuts which points out the more myopic finish of grape, honey and raisin you get from sherry.
Whether the finish is worth the price tag is up to you.