It's the berries, mate

For years I’ve found the fruit you get in the local supermarkets tasteless. With the exception of apples, oranges, grapes and sometimes cherries, everything (especially stone fruit) has the consistency of concrete chunks, the juice of a tax form and the taste of cardboard.

This usually includes berries. Occasionally you can find blueberries that don’t feel and taste like little balls of paste. And since all strawberries now seem to come from Driscoll, they’re gigantic, hard replicas of berries with no fragrance or taste.

So this summer I signed up for a CSA from a farm in Pennsylvania. So far, I’ve had two deliveries, both of which included strawberries. (The first one also had peaches, which frankly were indistinguishable from what I could find at Wegman’s—if they don’t smell like peaches, they won’t taste like peaches. The second had a clamshell of cherry plums, which were mildly flavorful, but of course they journeyed from South Carolina to Pennsylvania and then to the People’s Republic. The CSA farm did notify customers that it’s been a rocky year for fruit and they’d be supplementing their supplies with items from elsewhere.)

Those strawberries, though—they were the absolute berries (if I may be so bold.) Small, intensely flavored, richly crimson. They absolutely exploded with flavor. The first time in years I haven’t had to sprinkle sugar on a bowl to entice any taste out of them.

See what I mean?

Just a tiny slurp of Cointreau to macerate these babies:

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Nacho usual snack

Nothing much to report today, so I’m pulling something out from my files.

A while ago there was an exchange on Twitter about guacamole, and someone made a reference that I didn’t quite grok, so I asked her. Turned out to be something a year earlier about adding ground up apples.

Now, guacamole is like religion for its fans. Actually, it is religion for its fans. During the last Republican administration, there was a gigantic hoo-ha over First Lady Laura Bush’s recipe, which uses lemon juice. Folks were ready to riot in the streets because lime juice is what their mamas taught them.

(We won’t have to worry about anyone giving a toss about whatever recipe Melania might put forward in an attempt to seem in any way humanoid. No one would believe that she is.)

Anyhow, I was reminded of the New York Times screwing with the delicate balance of the guac universe with their peas nonsense. My Twitter pal pointed me to the earlier thread, which I share with you.

Buen provecho.

Super food

Well, hmm—I knew this was probably cued up: a new epidemic in the post-gluten, all-kale-all-the-time world that we face.

Yes, an epidemic of youths (or, in some areas, youts) facing another ten years in their parents’ basements, desperately trying to obliterate their anxieties about college entrance exams and failure to secure Series A investment in their app that’s the Uber of grunge bands with…

Well, just watch. If you dare.

This trend may have begun in the UK, as you can tell from the language (helpfully subtitled), but so did the fascinator.

Do you want to see either of these things in your subdivision? I mean—what happens when they start wearing the kale on their heads? We may indeed be looking into the face of Armageddon.

Health and something

A couple of weeks ago, our HR department held a “health and wellness fair”. There were vendors ranging from a health-focused chef serving salad-in-a-jar to mini-massages and a bank.

First off, I’m of the opinion that HR ought to eat its vegetables before it gets dessert, so I’d rather have them focus on things like timely responses to emails, managing benefits and shortening the hiring sequence from months to weeks. However, I thought I’d go down to see what was happening.

Second, I’m not exactly sure what a bank has to do with health and fitness, but whatever.

As part of the event, you carried a paper with your name on it around and got little stickers until you filled up the little sticker area, and dumped it into a box for a raffle.

Frankly, I was perfectly happy with that salad—you put the dressing in the bottom and then layer in a bunch of ingredients until you get to the greens, which in this case included spinach and watercress, and then when you’re ready to eat, you shake up the jar and bob’s your uncle.

That salad was so good that I actually went back down to the fair to thank the chef.

At any rate, I forgot about it until last week when one of my office neighbors appeared in my door while I was working on a PowerPoint deck, and he congratulated me.

Bas Bleu: “Hanh?”

Colleague: “You won a prize.”

Bas Bleu: “Hanh?”

Colleague: “You won a raffle prize. The email just came around.”

Well, it hadn’t for me, but it appeared shortly. And blow me if he wasn’t right: I won something called a NutriBullet.

Bas Bleu: “What’s a NutriBullet?”

Colleague: “I don’t know.”

We both frantically Googled it, he on his mobile phone and I on my desktop. Turns out it’s one of those mini blenders, only this one insists it’s not a blender, but something much better.

Because it “expertly pulverizes fruits, vegetables, superfoods and protein shakes.” Jeez—superfoods? It had to be superfoods?

I looked at the list of prizes and said, “I would have liked one of the massages.” My colleague said, “I’d like the Fitbit.” (Only, of course, he’d have had to go to the fair to be entered in the raffle, wouldn’t he?)

Well, it turns out that this thing will also pulverize ice, and you can make margaritas with it. So it might be a good thing after all.

Proud-pied April: Waiting in a hot tureen

It’s not possible to have National Poetry Month without something from Lewis Carroll. Every time you think poets are going to disappear into their self-importance, Carroll keeps it real.

This year’s entry is from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, brought to us by the Mock Turtle. In case you, like Alice, don’t even know what a Mock Turtle is, here’s the illustration by John Tenniel:

Because the Mock Turtle is “the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from,” as the Queen informs us. The Mock Turtle's a rather melancholy creature, having once been a real turtle (although we’re never told how he transmogrified). Also, he’s a complete mish-mash of the animals that end up in the eponymous Victorian soup.

If you’ve got a strong stomach, here’s a recipe for it from a Mrs. Fowle (and I didn’t make that name up):

“Take a large calf's head. Scald off the hair. Boil it until the horn is tender, then cut it into slices about the size of your finger, with as little lean as possible. Have ready three pints of good mutton or veal broth, put in it half a pint of Madeira wine, half a teaspoonful of thyme, pepper, a large onion, and the peel of a lemon chop't very small. A ¼ of a pint of oysters chop't very small, and their liquor; a little salt, the juice of two large onions, some sweet herbs, and the brains chop't. Stand all these together for about an hour, and send it up to the table with the forcemeat balls made small and the yolks of hard eggs.”

(As an aside, a few years ago I was enjoying The Swamp in the California Academy of Science. You know—the one with Claude, the albino alligator. CalAcademy has a number of volunteer docents—mostly retired-looking folks—who really know their onions. Or, in this case, their reptiles. I was chatting with one of them and he told me that the terrapins there were rescue sea turtles: many years before, the fish and wildlife folks had got a tip about a shipment of sea turtles coming into SFO, apparently headed for a very upscale dinner party. It’s illegal to import them, so the feds scooped up the turtles and they ended up in The Swamp. Maybe the diners got mock turtle soup instead. It would serve them right.)

Anyway, back to Wonderland. The Mock Turtle, the Gryphon and Alice have one of those wonderlandish conversations, and there are a couple of musical interludes. “Beautiful Soup” is apparently Carroll’s parody of the popular song “Star of the Evening”. I find it slightly creepily charming that the Mock Turtle, presumably destined for the tureen himself, sings so eloquently about soup. But that’s Wonderland for you.

"Beautiful Soup"

BEAUTIFUL Soup, so rich and green,

Waiting in a hot tureen!

Who for such dainties would not stoop?

Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!

Soo- oop of the e- e- evening,

Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,

Game, or any other dish?

Who would not give all else for two

Pennyworth only of Beautiful Soup?

Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!

Soo- oop of the e- e- evening,

Beautiful, beauti- FUL SOUP!

Strawberries and surrenders

It turns out that I have a connection—albeit tenuous—to the events in Tokyo Bay 70 years ago.

In the summer between my sophomore and junior year in college I met a retired rear admiral who, as a very junior officer, had been one of the scores of men hanging off of every possible vantage point on the USS Missouri to watch the Japanese sign the instrument of surrender.

He was an interesting man, quite active well into retirement. But I’m sorry to say that the only other thing I remember about him (aside from his brush with history) is that my recipe for Strawberries Romanoff came from him.

It was the first recipe I ever had that used booze (Cointreau), and it made me feel ultra-cosmopolitan to have such a thing. Even though I didn’t have Cointreau and had no legal means of acquiring it. I think I was also somewhat vague about the whipping cream, because I’d never seen that on the hoof, only in those squirty cans.

I mean—it was a whole new world for me.

So, for me, the picture of Japanese officials in morning coats and top hats bending over the table to sign the document that ended their empire will always lie alongside the taste of summer strawberries floating in a sea of vanilla ice cream, slightly whipped cream and Cointreau.

And I believe that that’s as good a way to do history as any.

Peas in our time

I just do not know about this week—we may be headed for End of Days.

First, the New York Times opens the gates to hell with their recipe for guacamole. Which includes…peas.

Which, I suppose, is only what you can expect from a stodgy old institution in New York City with a great big how-can-we-show-how-trendy-we-are poker up its collective butt. But, seriously—peas in guacamole?

No. Just no.

As the Twitterverse rushed to point out, gracias a Dios. 

But then, hard upon #GuacamoleGate came news that the company that manufactures Bubble Wrap is moving to a product that won’t pop when you press it. They’re calling it (of course they are) iBubble.

What the hell? Seriously—what the all bleeding hell?

Evidently, to save space, the product formerly known as Bubble Wrap will come to the user flat and the user will have to inflate it. Instead of individual cells, therefore, there are long rows of connected air chambers.

Euw. #Deflategate all over again.

I don’t know what people are going to use for therapeutic bubble-popping. They certainly can’t drown their anxiety sorrows in the NYT’s guacamole. Maybe just move straight to margaritas.

Or if cutting limes is too onerous, just a bottle of tequila and a straw. Maybe more than one.

Breakfast of losers?

The Telegraph ran a story last week on a study that indicates that chocolate cake at breakfast may help with weight loss.

When you drill down past the headline, it says that a “slice” of chocolate cake as “part of a balanced breakfast” is what the unnamed researchers are talking about. (It’s not clear to me whether this Professor Daniela Jakubowicz, of Tel Aviv University, was involved in the study or is just commenting on it. But I purely admire a journal called Steroids.)

There’s a lot about this that I don’t get.

First—what’s this “as part of a balanced breakfast” stuff? Chocolate cake is a balanced meal; it has cake and it has icing. That’s perfectly balanced.

But secondly—they keep throwing out the number of 600 calories for this allegedly balanced breakfast. If a slice of chocolate cake is 300 calories (which is the number the Telegraph is using) that leaves you 300 for…what? Two eggs and three slices of bacon are 450.

Okay—a bowl of oatmeal is 160, but I’m not eating that without cream and a little brown sugar. I’m also not eating an entire meal of nothing but carbs.

So, what do they want? A cup of Greek yoghurt and half a grapefruit? I’m just not getting this.

But while we’re here—let’s open the discussion on apple pie.

Stalling for time

Panera Bread has been one of my regular coffee spots since I moved to the Valley They Call Silicon. I don’t actually eat there, beyond a bagel or the occasional bowl of oatmeal, but they provide an acceptable place to spend a couple of hours researching or writing.

Also, the people-watching is pretty good. And there are three that are geographically adequate jumping-off points for other activities in the day—Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Mountain View.

As a restaurant chain, you find the kind of standardized experience you’d expect—layout, décor, Stepford Wife interaction at the counter. (Why do they inevitably ask, “Do you have a Panera card with us?” when you’re holding it out to them?)

What’s interesting, if less attractive, is that they also seem to have no budget for maintaining their toilet facilities. (Well, the Women’s Rooms; I have no experience of the Men’s Rooms.)

Of the Sunnyvale two regular and one handicapped stalls, only one door actually can be secured with the latch. The others will only precariously hold until someone opens or closes one of the other ones, which sets the others swinging open. This is not at all restful. And it’s been that way for the three years I’ve been patronizing the place.

Curiously, the one closeable door’s bag hook has been in this condition for well over a year:

There’s never been any attempt to fix it, or to realign the doors. I wonder if no store employee ever uses the facilities to report this situation? Or perhaps if there have been reports, the parent company just declines to invest in repairs.

Over at Mountain View, now, which has been open for only a couple of years, the doors do indeed stay closed. But one of the stalls has looked like this for months:

Again, it’s as though management either doesn’t know or doesn’t care enough to make repairs.

(Actually, I noticed this week that the Sunnyvale store isn't even bothering to repair ripped booth seats.)

I wonder where all that maintenance money is going?

Social constraints

For some reason—and I really don’t know why—two wineries have started following my professional account on Twitter. You know—the account I use to follow software companies and people involved in technology in one way or another, and to tweet tech-related things so I look, well, professional.

Meaning: the really boring account.

So I really don’t see the connection between cyber security breaches or social media tips and wine making and marketing. But once Kendall-Jackson followed me, for some reason Murphy-Goode did also.

I’ve certainly supported their product lines over the years, but I doubt they know it. At least, I really hope they’re not keeping direct tabs on what I buy when Safeway has those 30%-off sales.

Anyhow, when I looked at their profiles, I found something I thought quite interesting:

I’m not quite getting this you-must-be-21-years-old-to-come-to-our-exclusive-yet-completely-public-Twitter-feed thing. Yes—seems like every liquor website that uses English as its language makes you swear that you’re 21 (or, in some cases, 18). If it were strictly an e-commerce relationship, I could see that—but since when does going to a company website (or Twitter feed) require proof of age? If you’re not old enough to purchase or consume the stuff legally, you shouldn’t be able to know anything about it?

That’s like saying that you shouldn’t provide sex education for adolescents because they’re not really old enough to make intelligent decisions about those activities. And that has been shown over the centuries to be entirely wrongheaded as an approach.

Well, I clicked on Murphy-Goode and so we’re now following buddies, woo-hoo. But, interestingly, when I hit the Follow button on Kendall-Jackson, here’s what appeared:

People—it’s a public freaking feed, not the Illuminati! What could you possibly be tweeting that’s not for the eyes of the under-21 set? Okay—perhaps a little food porn in your timeline. But, really—I have to show government-issued ID to see it?

Plus—is there anyone who, when confronted with your little faux-authentication step, isn’t going to lie about his or her age?

Tell you what—I’ve just looked up one of my favorite-most wineries ever, King Estate. They don’t even have that twaddle about being 21 to view their precious tweets. And so I just followed them instead of Kendall-Jackson.

They have the best Pinot Gris on the market, anyhow.

Social media gotta be free, dudes.

Tequila and tarantulas

This appeared on my social radar a while ago:

Deep-fried tequila shots.

You cut up angel food cake into cubes, soak them in tequila and then fry them in really hot oil. Pretty easy, as long as you’re not drinking the tequila concurrently with working with the hot oil. Blot them on paper towels and sprinkle some powdered sugar over them.

Apparently they’re not big enough to constitute a whole thing yet, but there’s one thing to be said for this. There’s finally a use for angel food cake, which otherwise is a complete waste of time and effort, because it’s like eating tasteless, spongified chemically-extruded substances that you really don’t want defined for you.

So the tequila would help a lot.

Rum would be good, too—not silver, gold. Or Myers.

But back to the cake. One of my favorite pieces of Raymond Chandler’s writing is his description of Moose Malloy in the opening paragraphs of Farewell, My Lovely.

“Slim quiet Negroes passed up and down the street and stared at him with darting side glances. He was worth looking at. He wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough gray sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie, pleated gray flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes. From his outer breast pocket cascaded a show handkerchief of the same brilliant yellow as his tie. There were a couple of colored feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn’t really need them. Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”

Moose would have taken his tequila straight, no cake, no powdered sugar.

Eating healthy

This seems like a succinct way to close out the week.

It’s also pretty true.

Gratitude Monday: Tasting summer

Gratitude Monday, and I’m grateful for the wonderful produce of summer, which is filling the farmers markets.

I’m talking multiple varieties of peaches, tomatoes, corn-on-the-cob, blueberries, artichokes (hey—this is California, dude), cherries, asparagus, plums, melons, squashes, strawberries, herbs and even stuff I don’t care that much about, like eggplant and cauliflower.

Have you met Saturn peaches? AKA Donut peaches?

Or did you imagine all the varieties of plums? And that's before you get to pluots. 

I don't know whether to eat these peppers or install them as art.

At the Sunnyvale farmers market you can sample your way through breakfast and lunch--little slivers of whatever's on offer at each stall. Even dates, if you want to clog your insides. 

The plums take me back to summers when I was a kid, before a lightning strike killed the plum tree in our back yard. (Of course it couldn't hit the persimmon tree, oh, no; had to be the plum tree.) I don't think there's anything better than ripe, juicy plums; unless it's peaches; or maybe watermelon. Well, maybe intensely-flavored strawberries that were on the bush yesterday.

I think the farmers markets here in the Valley they call Silicon are the best of anywhere. You're buying direct from the actual producers , because we're close to a lot of truck farms and small ranching and fishing operations. 

And I just love the notion of squash shaped like...well, you know... Snuggling up next to brilliant baby pattypans:

I have to be physically restrained from buying armloads of squash or crates of berries, and when I drive home, my car is engulfed in the scent of cantaloupe or peaches. 

Here's the result of me exercising restraint on a recent trip:

See what I mean?

This all means caprese salads, poached chicken breasts with tomato mayonnaise (homemade, with basil), sautéed summer squash, Greek yoghurt with peach slices,  bowls of mixed melon, salade Niçoise, strawberry shortcake (using cream scones, actually, and with blueberries and raspberries and just a splash of Cointreau), mango-steak-and-grilled asparagus on watercress, pasta primavera…

Oh, yum—summer!

Cookie monster redux

Oh—those cookies I mentioned? The ones I was making to send to my friend Ros?

I just paid $77.23 in postage to mail them to the UK.

I feel like an idiot. But the only box I could fit five dozen cookies into was one of those Priority Mail things; and with those, you pays what you pays based on size. (So yes—size does matter.)

I mentioned this—the $77.23—to a friend of mine. He said, “You should have just sent $20 and the recipe. And you could PayPal the money and email the recipe.”

Well, sure—now I could.

She died, of course

You may be aware of the big horsemeat scandal currently enveloping Europe. It’s not so much that people are eating horsemeat; it’s that horsemeat is being introduced into the meat supply chain & subsequently marketed & sold as beef.

I’m not exactly sure what prompted the rash of tests run on prepared meals & pre-formed hamburger patties—or, for that matter, why tests aren’t routinely run to begin with—but they turned up at times substantial percentages of Dobbin in the products that were being sold as 100% beef. Or as close to 100% as you get in these kinds of things. (Remember the pink slime scandal here a while ago?)

Well, now it’s swept through Ikea—seems the that Czech authorities found horsemeat in the Swedish pressed-sawdust furniture giant’s Kottbullar meatballs. Ikea has recalled them—a search on their UK site for “meatballs” returned only the chicken product. Or at least, a product labeled as chicken:

I’m not going to get all wound up in the issue of the ethics of agribusiness or animal slaughter practices. I will point out that the story opens up the way for all kinds of punny comments, which NPR readers have taken full advantage of.

There were a couple of prize entries:

“Not a whinnying combination. Maybe IKEA is jockeying for a new market.”

“The meatballs have more horsepower than a turbo Saab.”

There was also this exchange:

“Was wood found in the Idea furniture?” 

“Traces of it has [sic] been detected within the glued laminations…I wonder what the glue is made from.”

But the one that just undid me was, “Would you care for some spaghetti bologneighs?”

Well, we all know what happened to the old woman who swallowed a horse.

A fine kettle of fish

This story came via NPR and focuses on NYC, but I’m betting that if anyone were to sniff around any city in the country, the results would probably be the same.

Seems that “off” smell all around us is the odor of the piscatorial equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb, according to a study by Oceana, a conservation group.

Meaning that there’s a whole lotta mislabeling of fish going on—you think you’re getting one thing, but in fact you’re getting (and paying for) another. Including some critters that are not at all good for your health.

Oceana’s report indicates that 60% of the retail outlets they sampled (from bodegas to high-end restaurants) were selling mislabeled fish. And 100% of the sushi bars they visited had species inaccuracies.

Certainly it’s all problematic, but what I’m not getting is: who buys fish from bodegas?

Bon anniversaire, Julia

Julia Child was born 100 years ago today, and although she died eight years ago, her legacy is living on in kitchens (home and professional) all across America.

Google honors her today with its doodle:

Child opened our eyes and minds and taste buds and hearts to much more than French cooking. She passed on the sheer joy that can come from a meal of fresh, seasonal ingredients, prepared with respect and shared with friends.

“You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces—just good food from fresh ingredients.”

Her seminal first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, basically roused Americans from the post-war somnolence of convenience foods and invited us all to venture out into new regions of cookery because we’d be well rewarded.

Her culinary credo was pretty much “de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace”; but she backed it up with meticulous investigation into how things work, constant practice and unquenchable curiosity. She gave us permission to experiment, to fail and (above all) to enjoy.

“Learn how to cook—try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all, have fun.”

The first Julia Child recipe I ever attempted was her “Selle d’Agneau Rôtie” (roast saddle of lamb). The butchers at the upscale food market in downtown Durham, N.C., had photocopies of the pages from Mastering Volume II to hand out. They assured me that the saddle was an amazing cut and that Child’s take on it was the way to go.

God bless ‘em—they were right. The meat cost a freaking fortune, but Julia was right there beside me and the dinner was stunning.

(I didn’t realize until I recently started reading a biography of Child that I had a somewhat close connection with her. I of course knew that she came from Pasadena (as do I), but it turns out that one of her childhood houses was smack behind the one where I grew up, in the southern end of town. Well, blow me: I used to peer into that back yard when trimming the ivy. Why is it that was one of the few back yards I didn't invade and explore? And the house where she grew up was around the corner. Way before my time, of course, but still.)

Mastering and her French Chef TV series for PBS opened that saddle-of-lamb world to a lot of people. I’m frankly not wild about the part of that world includes the Food Network and all its pompous self-involved twits; but you have to take the good with the bad—and know how to tell the difference.

It wasn’t all haute cuisine for Child. She enjoyed burgers from In ‘n Out, and McDonald’s French fries—until they switched from cooking them in lard to vegetable oil on account of the nutrition Gestapo.

“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.”

She liked what she liked and didn’t apologize to anyone for it. She lived her life that way, too.

On this her 100^th birthday, I hope you are taking time to enjoy a lovely meal (perhaps including one of her 100 favorite recipes) and spare a minute for Julia Child.

Bon appétit! Really.