Food UI

Guess who had pancakes for breakfast this morning….

I bought Batter Blaster this week, and the verdict is quite positive!

A few days ago, I tried it out for the first time. The first batch came out a little flat and uninspiring, but that may have been my tentative wariness projected into pancake format. The second batch was much better and really came out like real pancakes in size and shape.

I don’t know if the pancake taste was the finest I’ve ever tasted, but it definitely held its own in terms of standard pancake flavor. Of course the syrup is a critical piece to this (and who knows how long that syrup has been in my fridge…). Also, I think I had a small mental block with regards to the taste- thinking this is too good to be true. Food that is this easy to make shouldn’t taste good.

By the end of the second batch, my anti-sweet tooth got sugar fatigue, so I didn’t try anymore. But it was very promising. This morning, I whipped up another batch. They came out great again, and I even made a set with chocolate chips.

After having used Batter Blaster, I realized another reason why it is genius. Besides the effort and the cleanup required with making batter from scratch, there’s also the issue of portion size. However much batter you make is how many pancakes you’ll have. And generally no matter how many you make, you’ll have the same number of dirty dishes.

With Batter Blaster, you could make just ONE pancake if you wanted. Or twenty! I am often cooking for one, plus I have a low tolerance for pancakes and sweets, so the idea of easily cooking just 1-2 pancakes filled me with glee. I would never make pancakes from scratch if I knew I were only making two.  Now if they could only figure out how to put chicken cordon bleu in a pressurized can…

A friend of mine recently forwarded me a link to Batter Blaster, the solution for more convenient pancake and waffle making. I watched the video on their site (which is awesome) and realized that this is cooking UI for the extremely lazy.

I loved it.

The video really does explain it quite well. Instead of having to go through the time hassle, and mess of creating batter from scratch, you can just shoot it out of a can. No muss no fuss! I am so intrigued and would love to try it out, but there doesn’t appear to be a store within 25 miles of my ZIP code that sells it.

Of course the primary question that comes to mind is “How do they taste?” Presumably a pressurized can of batter is never going to compete with batter made with fresh ingredients. But hey, see the magic that Jelly Belly does with their flavors?

Next question: “What is it made of?” This must be a classic too-good-to-be-true scenario.  Or worse, is it comparable to another canned convenience: Easy Cheese* (blech!)?  The website lists an array of feel-good ingredients such as filtered water and organic wheat flour.  (It was also at that moment that I noticed the “USDA Organic” seal stamped all over the place.)  But wait!  There are some chemical-y sounding ingredients such as sodium lactate and dicalcium phosphate.   Hmm- apparently those are just lactic acid from beet sugar and a leavening agent.  Touché, Batter Blaster- you anticipated my skeptical ingredient-reading strategy.

Now I really DO want to try this. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to experience the convenience and sample the taste of this ingenuity. Can you imagine what camping trips could be like with this product??

* I just learned that cheese in a pressurized can is called Easy Cheese and not Cheez Whiz!  It’s kind of like that day when I learned that it’s not “Cup O’ Noodles.”  It’s “Cup Noodles.”  Yes- that sign in Times Square has said “Cup Noodles” this WHOLE TIME.

p.s. Ok- I just discovered that the website’s store finder ZIP code field is a little wonky.  There are indeed a plethora of stores near me that sell this.  I see pancakes for breakfast in my future…

Every morning, I eat breakfast and read the paper from end-to-end.  Yes, I still subscribe to an actual physical newspaper.  You know… big sheets of paper with smudgy ink?  With the words arranged in columns?  “Bad dog”?

Apparently I don’t earn the Silicon Valley merit badge because I don’t read the news online like everyone else.  Shrug.  I just like the linear and comprehensive process of going through the entire paper.  Plus, I insist on getting the most local paper possible so I can also be up-to-date on local goings-on.  I love my paper.  I think the content is well written and the design is thoughtful.  It’s clear that the folks who work there think a lot about their readers and listen to their feedback.  I’m such a paper nerd that I actually requested a “Save the Merc” bumper sticker when they were rallying for their lives during major paper ownership changes.

Anyway, I digress.  One morning, I was munching on my cereal and flipping through the articles when my eye was caught by a simple ad in the middle of one of the pages.  It was an ad for The Counter, which is a gourmet burger joint with locations in tony Palo Alto and the upscale Santana Row shopping center in San Jose. 

Their main schtick is that you can customize your own burger.  Their “menus” are these cute little clipboards with a golf pencil and a single sheet of paper divided into categories of checkboxes (bread, meat, toppings, sauce, etc).  You just check off what you want in your burger and hand it in. 

When I first ate there, I was delighted by the menu.  Then half an hour ticked by with each of us still trying to puzzle out a good combination of toppings and cheese and sauces.  By the end, I was kind of craving a normal menu where I could just choose from a set of pre-selected configurations. 

To be fair, the construction is easier if you don’t maximize your possible choices.  I think you get something like 5 topping/cheese/sauce choices (plus you can pay extra for more).  Usually at around 3 you can make a pretty decent burger.  But you think, “But I get FIVE, so by golly I’m choosing FIVE.”  That’s where you get in trouble because then your flavors don’t often match so well.

Back to the newspaper ad.  Like the style of the restaurant, the ad was sleek and minimalist.  The focal point of the ad was a photo of one of their burgers.  Ironically there was nothing sleek or minimalist about this burger.  It was the most ridiculous burger I’ve ever seen.  I think it was meant to be some sort of eye candy.  (Don’t get me started on Carls Jr commercials.)  But my first reaction to seeing this picture was, “How in god’s name are you supposed to eat that monstrosity??”  It honestly made me NOT want to go get a burger.

I find elaborately plated dishes for the sake of fancy pants presentation really annoying.  The plate of food is majestically placed in front of you.  Oohs and ahhs ensue.  And then you hover over the dish hesitantly with your knife and fork, not quite sure how to begin.  A dish can definitely be elegantly and beautifully plated but still be accessible to eating. 

It seems that most culprits are ones of massive portion sizes (thanks America).  I wonder if it’s simply a blindness that occurs when presented with a sea of choices.  If you have all the choices in front of you, you are compelled to take a little from each one.  Like at a buffet, where you keep piling your plate with food and halfway through you realize you didn’t plan your plate space strategy so well.  Or kids at a sundae-making station creating impractical sugar mountains by adding topping after topping.  Or at The Counter where you get to choose from a glittering array of checkboxes.  Or perhaps a chef getting a little carried away with sprinkling a little of this here and piling a little of that there.

There is something to be said about the beauty of simplicity.  A dish where you can dig in without thinking twice AND is presented beautifully would be a true gastronomic masterpiece.  

I enjoyed a bit of fresh air this weekend by going for a brisk hike with a friend.  Afterwards, we decided to treat ourselves to a hot beverage at Pete’s.  I opted for a hot chocolate, and we settled down to sip and chat. 

I must have been feeling all worked out by my hike, because I neglected my usual vigilance in stirring the hot chocolate throughout its lifespan.  I know this because when I drained the last of the drink, I sucked up a rude jolt of intense chocolate syrup that had settled at the bottom. 

This of course prompted a conversation about a new mug design.  It would be great if you could add a small paddle to the bottom of a mug that would slowly stir the contents of your drink.  Naturally you’d have to be able to remove the bottom somehow for easy cleanup.   I also noted that I would sell my mug through the Sur La Table catalog because these days it seems like that catalog is just full of single-purpose kitchen gadgets now.  We discussed our product specs in great detail and I returned home with yet another brilliant idea never to see the light of day. 

But then I thought, “SURELY someone else has thought of this.”  So I did a quick Yahoo search for “self-stirring mug” and got back a quarter-million results.  Oh.  Someone HAS thought of it.

When I checked out some of these products, I saw that most, if not all of the results, activate the stirring only when you press a button on the handle.  That probably works better- particularly if you don’t want lingering drops to be spun about when you get to the bottom of the mug.  Depending on the speed, you’d probably also just develop a vortex of doom with the continuous stirrer.  Unless of course you enabled dual-direction spinning. 

Well, I can sleep at night now knowing that some people are out there developing zany product ideas.  So when will I see it in Sur La Table?

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving.  I’m actually celebrating Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night – I know!  Shocking!  The funny thing is that I still enjoyed thanksgiving-like leftovers because my roommate brought back cranberry sauce and green bean casserole from her dinner.  Plus I had a rotisserie chicken and yams in the fridge.  Yes- I randomly bought and cooked yams.  Tasty little suckers….

Anyway, as I was gnawing at my fake thanksgiving leftovers, I was thinking about the progression of my relationship with drumsticks.  As a kid, I enjoyed the riches of the KFC.  We’d get a bucket of fried chicken and an assortment of Styrofoam-flavored sides.  There was absolutely no question that I would be eating a drumstick from the bucket.  Why in the world would I want to eat one of the other pieces when a drumstick came with its own handle?  You didn’t need utensils or extra napkins to get the grease off your nose as you tried to bite into the other awkwardly shaped pieces.  You didn’t have to navigate around a coral reef of bones.  Why didn’t they just make buckets of just drumsticks?  Why did people even buy the other pieces?

This is the exact same situation with buffalo wings.  Buffalo wings are annoying enough to eat with the sticky sauce getting all over your fingers and face.  Why aren’t they called buffalo drumsticks?  How did the mini-WING beat out the mini-DRUMSTICK?

Fast forward to me grown up and cooking for myself.  I’ve reached a point in my eating habits to simply avoid meat on the bone altogether.  Yes it’s more tender and flavorful, blah blah blah, but it is simply a pain.  The only such scenario I enjoy is the one where the meat just falls off the bone.  If I have to excavate, forget it.  As for cooking, I’m one of those boneless-skinless-chicken-breast buyers. 

As for eating in general, I do feel very compelled to eat healthy.  In fact, it sometimes becomes a kind of mindgame for me.  I call it “Catholic Eating.”  Basically, I feel guilty if I eat too much bad food.  Given the choice between say fries and a salad, I will often tragically choose salad because of the guilt… whilst woefully gazing at the fries.  I share this food therapy session because I also learned that white meat is good and dark meat is bad.  Sure- no problem, simple enough, thanks for the info.

And then one day… I don’t remember when or how… I learned that DRUMSTICKS ARE DARK MEAT.  Noooooooooooooooooooooo!  That is so unfair!  I had no idea what to make of this quandary.  I do recall subjecting myself to trying to eat other pieces from the bucket… and woefully gazing at the drumsticks. 

I’ve since tried taking a more balanced view of eating.  I know that I will succumb to Catholic Eating, so go ahead and eat that drumstick.  I’ll be eating the rest of the rotisserie chicken anyway.  Besides, I know a redeeming salad isn’t far off.

I just got back from a lovely trip to New York City.  I love that town!  I briefly lived there many years ago and have visited on multiple occasions throughout my entire life.  It’s always a fun time, particularly since my friend network there constantly grows.  Armed with a wallet and a metrocard, there are unlimited opportunities for things to do, see, and eat. 

This time around, I visited the illustrious Magnolia Bakery, as made famous by SNL’s “Lazy Sunday” digital short.  It was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, so naturally there was an enormous line wrapped around the block.  Seeing as I had nothing better to do than bask in the afternoon waiting for cupcakes, my friend and I queued up.

As we got closer to the door, we peered in the window to assess the setup.  The bakery does sell other baked goods, but the main attraction (particularly for a touristy newbie) is the cupcakes.  There is a front window nook of the store where they lay out 4 trays of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes.  The system is quite simple: take a box, use a piece of wax paper, pick your cupcakes to your heart’s delight, then get in line to pay. 

Let me rephrase: the system is deceptively simple. 

I grabbed my box, took a piece of wax paper, beamed with glittery eyes over the selection, then decided to go for a chocolate cupcake first. 

Let me describe the tray setup a little more.  There is space in this window nook for 4 trays of cupcakes in a 2×2 configuration.  Each tray holds about 15 cupcakes each.  Each of the trays comes with a clear plastic cover placed on top.  These covers are about 5-6 inches tall and are hinged lengthwise across the center of the cover.  That means you can swing open the front of the cover and rest it on top of the back half providing a little half shelter. 

Back to me reaching for my chocolate cupcake.  When you’re presented with a delightful display of baked goods, you scan the selection to find the perfect specimen oblivious of environmental factors.  I reached for my perfect cupcake only to be thwarted by this plastic cover.  You tend to pick up cupcakes by the bottom half, with your hand angled as if going for a handshake.  But the combination of this hand angle, maneuvering into a plastic shelter (yes the perfect chocolate cupcake was located in the back half of the tray), and wielding wax paper proved a recipe for frosting mayhem.  The wax paper was such an imprecise means for contamination prevention.  Like a drunken frat boy, it staggered rudely into neighboring cupcakes then latched onto the selected cupcake in a bear hug only to walk away smeared with frosting and sprinkling carnage.

I considered changing my hand angle and coming in from the top like one of those crane grabber games, but that wouldn’t have worked for the cupcakes in the shelter.  Worse, my frat boy would have gotten dangerous license to come in for a sloppy smooch, thus marring the perfect, sprinkled frosting top of the innocent cupcake.

In the end I just plowed forward, grabbed more wax paper when the one in my hand was too disgraced, and offered sheepish apologetic glances to the folks surely staring at my nonexistent adroitness and severe lack of respect for the cupcakes left in the wake. 

This setup has an all too simple solution.  TONGS.  Why not just get rid of these insidious boxes of wax paper and replace them with tongs?  The tongs would simply act as a sterile extension of your own dexterity.  You could maneuver in, around, and over the cupcakes with grace and ease.  It would probably also help the line move faster.  Nevertheless, the story ended happily enough with a box full of cupcakes and a story for my blog.

Several years ago, I was introduced to dutch crunch bread.  I thought this bread was great- tasty with a pleasing texture.  However, the more I had it, the more I realized the bread was flawed and I couldn’t bear to order it anymore.  The texture that was initially so appealing had a nasty consequence.  It would tear up the roof of my mouth.  That is a most unpleasant feeling. 

The problem is in the location of the “crunch” and the mechanics of eating a sandwich.  The “crunch” is the crackly top portion of the loaf.  The loaf itself is decently sized and often contains a healthy stuffing of fixin’s.

Now to the eating.  First, you bring the sandwich to your mouth.  Then open wide in order to measure out a good chomp.  Once you’ve anchored your teeth into the desired portion size, you bite.  As you bite down, the space in your mouth in which the sandwich is sitting gets smaller.  During the bite, the sandwich first slides straight up against the inside of your top teeth and then curves into a trajectory against the roof of your mouth.  Upon completing the bite, you merrily chew, enjoy, swallow, and repeat. 

Except when you constantly repeat this with dutch crunch bread, each bite makes a gravelly scrape across the roof of your mouth.  If you’re not paying attention, you end up with a pulpy roof at the end of lunch.  If you are paying attention, you modify as follows.

You squeeze the sandwich to flatten it as much as possible without squirting out the contents from the sides.  You eye a controllable portion size and anchor your teeth accordingly.  Then you bite down as vertically as possible.  It’s less like biting and more like you’re mechanically trying to pinch off a piece of the sandwich with a precise chop using your front teeth.  When the bite has been successfully detached from the mother ship, you perform a little oral gymnastics to transfer it carefully to the back teeth, where you can merrily chew, enjoy, and swallow. 

What a pain.  Well, I suppose either way you end up in pain.  

You could turn the sandwich upside down.  That would alleviate this path of destruction.   But then you risk looking like a tool for eating your sandwich upside down.  What if they could embed the crunch within a layer of the bread?  So that the top is still soft, but the texture is available inside – you know, like a bonus treat!

This roof-mauling problem is true of any bread whose exterior gets hard and scrapy in some way, such as overzealous toasting or simply getting a little stale.   It is also exacerbated by very tall sandwiches which force the aforementioned trajectory. 

In the end, I decided that I don’t like dutch crunch bread enough to deal with the nuisance.  My true love has always been fresh, white French bread.  There’s nothing more irresistible to me than its combination of sweet, unadulterated flavor and fine, pillowy softness.  Wouldn’t you rather sleep on a pillow-top mattress with a goose-down comforter than a bed of nails with a burlap sack?  Sorry dutch crunch, it’s been nice knowing you.

I just had way too much fun coming up with the title for this entry.  I could have written the entire entry giggling over all the potential titles alone.  But I would risk having it just be awkward as you, the reader, impatiently tolerated my cracking myself up.  Maybe I’ll just have to eat more pho so I can use the other titles in the future.

And now for the pho at hand.  I love noodle soups: pho, ramen, etc.  They can be tricky to eat, but for the most part, they are just so darn delicious- and excellent comfort food.  Here’s my beef (brisket) with pho.  Or at least all the pho places I’ve visited recently.  They all provide a supply of napkins, condiments, and eating utensils at the table.  This includes a supply of cheap, thick, plastic chopsticks.

These chopsticks are simply not ideal for consuming noodle soups.  There’s no sense of precision or traction, which is pretty much the point of using chopsticks (granted, for those who have become proficient in using them). You grab a bunch of noodles and immediately some or all of the noodles start their slippery retreat back into the broth. 

Now to be fair, it had been a while since I’d had pho, so I dutifully went out to do some research to confirm my stance.  At first, I actually had a fairly decent time consuming the noodles.  I started re-thinking this entry… until, that is, a renegade noodle bee-lined it out of my chopsticks and swan-dived back into the broth.  This then resulted in a spectacular splash which proceeded rather cartoonishly to squirt me squarely in the right eye.   My eating partner laughed hysterically at me.  When I had recovered from the assault, I harrumphed and exclaimed, “See! That’s what I’m talking about!!!”

I realized afterwards that this problem is actually worse when eating udon noodles.  Udon noodles are thicker, heavier, and more slippery than pho noodles.  That combination is a serious risk for renegade noodles. 

I have actually asked for takeout chopsticks before so that I could use a pair of utensils with a higher coefficient of friction on them.  I’m sure there must be various chopstick designs that include a variety of grips for both the hand end and the food end.  In fact, I own a set of wooden chopsticks with etched ridges in the tips.  If I served noodle soups to someone, I would certainly consider offering them a set of chopsticks with some grip to them.  Now if only a restaurant could do the same - that would be a place I’d consider visiting often!

I was chatting with a friend about my Fault Lines entry.  It reminded me of another food item with a similar predicament: hard shell tacos.

I stopped eating hard shell tacos a really long time ago.  It’s too bad because I actually like the crunchy texture of the hard shell.  However, it just became too risky to eat.  Upon first bite, an ominous crack shoots down along the bottom of the shell.  Now that the stability of the taco has been compromised, the second bite is the kiss of death.  Prepare for mass taco destruction. 

You end up tilting the taco on its side so all the contents don’t fall out.  I like to add salsa to my taco.  So this is the point where the salsa juice gleefully makes its escape in a direct downward stream as quickly as possibly.  Either that or you’re gripping the taco now as an improvised sandwich.  Of course this means the next bite simply flattens your new sandwich and squeezes all the contents out the sides.

These days, I prefer getting soft shell tacos which I can retrofit into a secure burrito-like package. 

When I was growing up, it was a known fact amongst kids that the menu of Taco Bell actually represented the same ingredients packaged in a different way.  Meat, beans, lettuce, tomato, and cheese in a hard shell.  Meat, beans, lettuce, tomato, and cheese in a soft shell.  Meat, beans, lettuce, tomato, and cheese on top of a flat round shell.  Meat, beans, lettuce, tomato, and cheese layered between hard and soft shells.  As kids, we thought we were so clever to make this astute observation. 

I used to marvel at how frequently Taco Bell came out with new menu items, which they would then enthusiastically market as if it were a Nobel-winning breakthrough.  The snarky kid in me would think: “Dude, that’s just meat, beans, lettuce, tomato, and cheese in a pillowy soft shell.  It’s not like it’s anything new.”  However, unconsciously I felt strong cravings to get myself to a Taco Bell pronto and try their new product. 

I realized that the ingredients were not necessarily new, but the Food UI was.  The appeal was specifically in the new way in which they packaged the food.  Fast food is frequently taken “to go”, so I believe a critical component of a fast food item is how easily one can eat it in a car. 

The last item that had me gunning for a Taco Bell was the Crunchwrap Supreme.  Of course it contained the requisite meat, beans, lettuce, tomato, and cheese.  But the entire thing is wrapped and sealed into a flat circular package by a large soft tortilla.  There’s even a flat hard shell inside to provide crunchiness as well as a structural foundation.  You could eat this thing with one hand and not worry about everything falling into your lap. 

The latest item to catch my fancy is the grilled taquito.  The thing I love about this is that it’s tightly wrapped into a narrow pipe-like form.  This means that you can progressively eat it in single bits all the way to the end.  No more working your way across the width of the item or worrying about contents being squeezed over to the sides.  Just chomp your way down.  It can also be eaten one-handed which then passes the eat-in-car test. 

I have to commend Taco Bell for constantly innovating their Food UI.  To their credit, it does actually compel me to make a run for the border.  Ding.

Follow Up

I was going through last month’s Real Simple issue (aug 07), and found an interesting solution to the problem posed in this entry.  Real Simple has a section they call “Solutions,” which is an assembly of innovative solutions using everyday items.  It’s the kind of section where you would go, “Cool! What a clever idea!”  I love having that reaction. 

This issue suggested lining a hard taco shell with a lettuce leaf.  That way, the contents have a safety net if (when) the shell breaks.  Clever, huh?  It seems like there are several layering options you could play with given this idea.  Maybe hard tacos will be re-introduced into my eating repertoire after all.

I was enjoying some English muffins with a friend recently.  As she was waiting for her muffin to toast, she noticed some intriguing marketing text on the packaging. 

“New Look! Same Great Taste. Heartier Nooks & Healthier Crannies”

“Heartier nooks and healthier crannies?”  What the heck is a hearty nook and a healthy cranny?  This is why I could never work in marketing.  Someone out there wrote that copy to be prominently plastered on the packaging with the sole reason to convince an indifferent buyer that they want to put it in their shopping cart (and of course I never even saw the text when I bought the package).  I literally could never have come up with that copy.  Wait, I take that back.  I could have come up with it, but I never would have thought to submit it for approval to be shipped into production.

I digress.  When I was a kid, English muffins and bagels were the big breakfast bread showdown.  I was a bagel girl.  I didn’t understand why we even bought English muffins in the first place.  Bagels were clearly superior.  They were so chewy and delicious.  They broke apart easily along their pre-cut seam.  English muffins needed the help of a knife or else those with unsteady dexterity risked a torn muffin or gummy fingers.

But the real difference occurred once the toasting was complete: slathering on the butter.  I loved the effortless swipe of buttering a bagel and watching the butter seep cozily into the hot bagel.  In moments, I would be merrily chomping away.  But with English muffins, those pesky nooks and crannies infuriated me.  You’d try your bagel swipe with panache only to be thwarted by the infinite trap doors of nooks and crannies.  Disgruntled, I’d then try prying some of the butter out of the initial holes to distribute to the rest of the muffin.  Then I’d panic as the butter pooled into the hot abyss of those nooks and crannies ruining any chance at an even distribution.  (Yes- the perfectionism started manifesting itself at a young age.)

The sole reason I preferred bagels over English muffins was because of those nooks and crannies.  They just annoyed me. 

This is also why, in my lifetime, I have consumed significantly fewer waffles than pancakes.  I feel compelled to fill each waffle hole with syrup, but that much syrup just makes me sick.  So I try to evenly distribute a reasonable dose per hole instead.  Then I think to myself, “I could have been chowing on pancakes by now.”  This problem is the worst for small holed waffles.  At least with the Belgium waffle style I have a chance to dole out the syrupy goodness with some accuracy.  I actually think waffles are very tasty, but I just never find myself ordering them.

These days, I probably eat bagels and English muffins equally.  Perhaps as I’ve gotten older, my ability to swipe the muffin has gotten a little better.  I still think bagels are tastier, but maybe that’s the refined white flour talking.  I’m not so excited about whole wheat bagels, but I’m ok with whole wheat English muffins.  So I suppose in the end, I’m benefiting from those healthier crannies after all.