The Lunch Encounter

Moo has been the theme around here all week in odd, serendipitous tidbits. We must be picking up meat velocity as Easter approaches. Baaaaa would be more accurate, but moo will do. The string of mental jumps plays like this:

This place has cute little biz cards in sweet little felt cases. Mine are en route.
Moo →

Got an alert from alacritous Chicago correspondent Bottle Rocket(s) fan Linda that I must holster my fork and visit this spot while in the windy city in May.
Moo and Oink →

Had to have some new red shoes for the equinox yesterday!
Miz Mooz →

Browsing a tottering (borrowed this word from Cormac McCarthy) pile of clippings I came upon this bit of etymology from Nick Malgieri, Carnival, the name in English of that rich, pre-Lenten feasting season, derives from “carnevale”, Latin for “farewell to meat”.
Carnevale →

Diligently reading… next item walking the plank to the recycling bin, a French Dip in the Washington Post.

Slow Goes It →

What did I swear off for Lent? Noooo, not meat…. agnosticism!

The Original State Fair Spiedie Sauce

I found this stuff at the big box grocery, in Virginia, far from the Spiedie trail. Wasn’t looking for it, particularly due to product overload blindness. You know, the sea of bottles begins to spin and you stumble back, overwhelmed and exhausted. Condiments, dressings, marinades, goo. Just before the lights dimmed my fingers wrapped the Spiedie Sauce bottle. Then blackness.

I think I got snookered. The sauce is your basic vinaigrette. Olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, oregano, basil. This sauce was already in my kitchen, just needed wrangling.

I’ll Have What They’re Having is my source for spiedie history. A friend in Wisconsin, a friend who will drive quite a distance for one odd food, insisted that my library include this book, whose largest chapter is devoted to sandwiches. Spiedies, bierocks, beef on weck. It’s a celebrity round up.

Although I have yet to eat an actual spiedie, I have smelled the sauce and am hot on the trail. Expect to tree it before the week is up.

This is what you do, according to the State Fair Spiedie Sauce website: Make up one inch cubes of your favorite meat, marinate overnight, then roast on an open fire with skewers (included in our Spiedie Survival Kit), serve on a slice of Italian bread or small sub roll…and there you have a Spiedie Sandwich.

The website may sell other stuff, but a hunch tells me their kingdom was founded on Spiedie sauce. Domain name: spiedie.com

Spiedie Survival Kit? Anything to do with treeing a spiedie? Does a spiedie fight back? Perhaps with skewers? I’m going in camo. Camo in the hues of meat and bread.

Spiedie Fest in Binghamton, NY., August 1, 2, 3, 2008. And balloon rally!

What were they thinking? Has the agency been canned yet?

Occasionally I see an ad that makes me think, “How did this get approved???” So grateful I was not called upon to be the food styling flunky for this gig. Cause I would have said yes. It looks a bit, um, salacious to me, and not in a way that propels me to the bacon case.

The copy writer played along. Not quite Makin Bacon, but close enough. For the love of god, Oscar!

Prized possession

Fill ‘er up!

Drinking pickle juice will make you giddy. Licking a stick of frozen pickle juice? Simply slows the effect. Wanna try it? Pickle Sickle is moving 20,000 a month, largely via internet sales.

From jar-swigging to pickle juice cubes-on-a-stick, read it all here. I think they should go for a clean sweep with Koolickles . Take over the world.

Heading to the kitchen now to churn a batch of Applewood Smoked Ham Ice Cream with Virgin Pine Cheddar Blue Bits.

Photo by Renee Comet

Styling by Lisa Cherkasky

This is an almond butter sandwich, a recipe I created for the Almond Board when I was doing a little spokesperson stuff for them. The recipe had a sexier name, but that slips my mind at the moment. I forget to eat almond butter, but prefer it to peanut butter sometimes, especially if you add something green and crunchy. Versatile stuff, it is.

Gee Whiz, Cheesesteak Isn’t Philly’s Best Sub

Two times round on the Milwaukee frozen custard today. Bookending Klement’s bratwurst. It was a perfect afternoon for ice cream – warm enough to want it, cold enough to let you lick lackadaisically. No need to sweep the skirt for drips.

“What’s that warm, sauer, smells-of-home vapor floating up the street?”, we were thinking on our approach to the Dairy Godmother in Del Ray. Well, whaddya know, Brat Night’s been moved to Sunday this month. Well, dang. Custard now? Custard later? Spin the logic dial and you get… both!

The Dairy Godmother is charming and Liz, who owns it, is clever. Brat nights, sheepshead nights, accordions, polka on the juke box, superlative custard, homemade marshmallows and dog ice cream…. We’ve been there in our pajamas, lured by the promise of free hot chocolate with raspberry marshmallows.

Riffing on the enchantment of dairy godmothers, the juke box is loaded with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put a Spell on You, Santana’s Black Magic Woman and other evocative and alluring selections. The keys worn most pale are, naturally, those that spin Richie Gomulken, Eddie Blazonczyk and other godfathers of polka.

Folks poured out onto the street on our return visit. The wait for a brat, I kid you knat, was over an hour.

Amusing wait.

Avec Sprecker. Current selection includes impulse purchase rootbeer flavored lipbalm. I bought two. They are small.

Here is Liz pausing in the midst of chaos atop her million dollar custard maker.

Liz knows her way around a potato, turning piles of sweet spuds into green onion-laced potato salad. Thank your lucky stars, it is neither sweet nor gloopy. Meat or no meat. Very nice. The sauerkraut is caramelly-brown, velvety-tender and elevates cabbage to a height previously unthinkable.

Brats don’t float.

It was wild. Waves and waves of bratwursted crowds, shortage of tables. Run for your lives!!!

Racing sausages? Yes, racing sausages.

I love this site for their choice of numbers: Plan 59/ The Museum of Midcentury Illustration

The nine is so relaxed and curvy, the five still getting there. She needs a little drink and a few soothing words.

I grew up behind 59 in the era of this ad. Our house number – as you see it, it is – was house specific. Our house. The number(s) are beautiful and clean. Gorgeous as the Hunt’s labels. Simply “Hunts”. You can read it without taxing your eyes or your brain. It is all you need. This house goes up in smoke I’m gonna grab my kid, my dog and 59.

The “Refrigeraider” doesn’t know that midnight snacks have been outlawed in these times. Not good for you, they say. Just another nail in the coffin of pleasure. In that I am an outlaw. Food tastes so good surrounded by the cloak of darkness, when time is still and each tick of the clock is followed by a pause. A pause to chew and ponder. I do my best thinking midnight snack in hand.

If my memory serves, there was a man, a small-town, midwestern man, a husband and family man, whose wife – he was a neighbor and I heard this when I was a kid – found him sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, stick of butter in one hand, quart of whipping cream in the other. Taking a bite and a swig, a bite and a swig. Always thought this would be the way I would go off the deep end in the dairy state too, had I stayed. She had him committed.

Stream of consciousness flows free around midnight in the light of a 25 watt bulb. Plans come to mind. Wild plans.