Mayonnaise Ice Cream Exists and It Might Be Brilliant

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Wait!  Now here Us Out 

We now exist on the same physical plane as mayonnaise ice cream, and it’s either ingenious or the end of all mankind.

An ice cream shop in Falkirk, Scotland, debuted an ice cream made with Hellmann’s “real” mayonnaise, immediately sparking debate across social media about just how terrible this concept is. As some people pointed out, mayonnaise is sometimes used in recipes, especially for baked goods, for tanginess and a creamy texture. As other people pointed out, gross.

Debates aside, this mayonnaise ice cream might be perfect for exactly one thing: dipping french fries. French fries taste like heaven dipped in soft serve, their greasy, salty flavor complemented by the ice cream’s sweetness. (If you haven’t tried this, get yourself to a McDonald’s or Wendy’s drive-thru ASAP.) And as most of Europe can tell you, fries go better with mayonnaise than they do with ketchup. Put the ice cream and mayo together, and you might just achieve food nirvana.

For what it’s worth, the ice cream shop’s owner told the Today show that the dessert is a “full on hit of fat and cream followed with an eggy milky aftertaste.”

What’s next, sour cream sundaes?

By: Sarah Rense/Esquire 

 

 

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I hate cooking with my mom, but she can’t make fried chicken to save her life, so that’s what I make

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If your mom is an awful cooking partner (like mine), find a recipe she can’t participate in and hand her a cocktail

By: Bex Brian/Salon
For years whenever my mother left her Manhattan apartment and came to visit me in Brooklyn (which she called the country) she’d arrive disheveled and completely rattled, as if the number 2 train was a Wild West stagecoach wresting her from the safe confines of the city and plunking her down amongst the savages. Falling through the door, she’d whisper, “Get me a drink, darling.” Revived somewhat by a potent gin and tonic, she’d stare out across the low expanse longingly to the sun-blazed city so recently abandoned, and ask me what I intended to make her for dinner. It was at this point that I’d reach for my own bottle.

As children we merely bored her. As teenagers we bored her and frightened her. The problem now was, as adults, she had grown to like us, well, at least to need us, and that had totally thrown her for a loop. Which isn’t to say she was ready to let her guard down. One of us, at any moment, could suddenly marry a banker and start talking nonstop about derivatives. So far my sisters and I had resisted that urge, which didn’t leave her much to be bored by or critical of, except when we cooked. Her barrage of suggestions, her horror at technique, her scold would have me doubting my very existence, which was ridiculous because, empirically, I am a far better cook than she ever was. Every once in a while I would try to get her to back off, but she’d merely sniff and say she was only trying to help.

When she moved out to L.A. I can’t tell you the freedom I felt cutting my onions into slices instead of dicing them, using butter for sautéing instead of oil, and peeling my garlic like it was a fragrant pearl rather than smashing it as if it were a cockroach scurrying across my cutting board.

Being a good daughter, I do drag myself out to the coast to visit my mother once a year. And, as we’re not willing to just sit and stare at each other, I cook while she comments.

But this year I had a spark of inspiration. I would make something so far from my mother’s own experience that there would be no toehold for her muttered asides. “Really? Is that the best way to knead that dough?” Or, “If you leave that a moment longer you’re going to scorch it.” Or, “You sure you know what you’re doing? That much salt? You’ll ruin it. But go ahead, see for yourself.”

I told her that I was going to make fried chicken. Now I know fried chicken does not sound earth-shatteringly original, but my mother is a Cockney woman who migrated to Canada, where I was born. Fish and chips maybe. But fried chicken?

Never.

The chicken was great but the method was far too involved for the sort of cook I am and, since I do 99.9 percent of the cooking in our house, and since I’m just competitive enough to want to see if I could best his first attempt, I had to figure out how to do it with a lot less fuss.

At first I went the buttermilk marinade route, but didn’t like the texture it gave the chicken. I also tried cooking in high-heat oils, but then I would be in a panic turning the heat up or down trying to get an even boil. But eventually I hit on a version that suits my cooking temperament, which I would describe as a slapdash maniac with a decent palate.

With mother sitting in a chair in the middle of my sister’s kitchen, I began to assemble all that I needed. She watched with a gimlet eye as I dumped copious amounts of spice into my flour. I could see her craning her neck, but without any first-hand knowledge, she was rendered mute. When I pulled out my two-day dry-brined chicken cut into what I guess you could call hacked in the Chinese style pieces, she was too confused to offer a critique.

An hour or so later I placed a platter piled high with perfectly cooked fried chicken on the table, along with a cabbage salad laced with French Feta cheese and bowls of honey in which slices of Serrano peppers had marinated through the afternoon.

My whole family dove in. And soon I heard what every cook wants to hear, the groan of pure pleasure. My mother, though, had yet to pick up a piece. I didn’t blame her. After all, she had had no hand in its creation. Eventually, her hunger won out, and she begrudgingly grabbed a thigh. I can’t swear I saw a slight smile, but I am willing myself to believe that I did.

Recipe for Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Chicken: cut into 10 pieces, pat dry and heavily salt under the skin using Kosher or good sea salt (I like Maldon); leave uncovered in the fridge overnight or up to two days.

  • 3 cups white flour
  • 3 teaspoons cayenne pepper
  • 3 teaspoons Hungarian paprika
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon adobo
  • 6  Egg whites, more if need,
  • Olive oil, not extra virgin.

Method

Stir in cayenne and paprika; the flour should definitely have a reddish hue. Then the garlic powder and adobo. Adjust for taste. Many people sneer at flavor enhancers, but this is fried chicken; no point in getting snobby.

Dip chicken in flour, then egg whites (I like just the whites; the chicken has a lighter feel and more of a crackle without the yolk) then flour again. Heat the oil. It’s ready when you throw in a tiny edge of chicken skin and it quickly sizzles to the top. Cook in small batches until done, about 10 to 15 minutes per batch.

Keep warm on a wire rack in oven (200 degrees) until ready to serve.

Very much not New York pizza

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A recipe for pizza toast in Atlanta starts out as cold comfort, then provides a path forward

By: Julia Bainbridge/Salon.com

I checked the weather app on my iPhone as soon as my plane touched the ground in Georgia. It registered 89 degrees. Hours before, I finished a cup of coffee in a drizzly Manhattan and hugged my friend goodbye, and when I discovered the app’s findings, I texted her a screenshot. “Jealous!” she responded.   I abhor the heat.

Rummaging through the refrigerator in the apartment I’ve lived in for just over a year, I found sliced sourdough bread, tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese that I had shredded and stored in a plastic container. I toasted the bread and then layered on the tomato sauce, which I mixed with a tablespoon of an Indian-style tomato condiment that another friend makes (and sells through her company Brooklyn Delhi) and then the mozzarella, which I melted under my oven’s broiler. It was a kind of pizza, I guess; pizza toast, let’s call it. It was fine. It was dinner that night.

Four nights earlier, I had ordered a New York pizza. It was a New York pizza in style — generous in diameter, with a thin, crisp but pliable crust — but also in fact. I was in New York and I ordered a pizza. It was a New York pizza because it was baked, sliced, delivered and, ultimately, devoured in New York. Hundreds of pizzas were simultaneously being delivered within a couple miles of me, and they were all New York pizzas.

This particular one arrived in a 20-inch cardboard box via a slender man named Weiqun. The time was 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and as I stood on the sidewalk in my silk pajama set waiting for Weiqun to unzip his insulated carrying case, I noticed a handsome brown leather briefcase to my left. Following the navy pant leg of its owner up to his face, I saw a late twenty-something man leaning against the brick facade of my friend’s apartment building, wrapping up a phone call about some business deal or another. Whether or not he does so ironically, I was charmed to discover that at least one millennial carries a briefcase to work.

For 30 seconds, Weiqun, the millennial financier and I were subjected (happily, in my case) to the synthesizers in Rihanna’s ragamuffin-style “Rude Boy” trilling out of the speakers of the boombox affixed to the back of Weiqun’s bicycle seat and onto Thompson Street. Once the pizza box reached my hand, off I went to the fifth floor.

As for the aforementioned devouring, it was done properly, by New York standards: My right-hand thumb and pinkie finger pushed together the two vertices on either side of the crust edge of each cheese-topped triangle, folding it in half lengthwise. I ate three slices, standing at my friend’s kitchen counter while streaming a Netflix documentary about early 90s-era club kid (and criminal) Michael Alig on my laptop.

 

I thought of that pizza as I plodded around my kitchen in Atlanta and ate my pizza toast in silence, watching the sluggish sway of dogwood trees billowing with flowers through my living room window. Visions of Weiqun came to me, as did flickers of Rihanna’s steel drums. My pizza toast tasted better after the first three bites, as I remembered my New York pizza and the scenario involved in acquiring it. Sometimes pleasure can be had in eating something so unlike the other that, in comparing the two, they’re both with you. The tomato achaar’s black mustard seeds revealed themselves, then the fenugreek. Tamarind! Gosh, I haven’t cooked with tamarind for a while, I thought as I reached the center of the slice. By the time I finished it, I was searching for tamarind recipes on my laptop. The next night I used the fruit’s pulp in a warming and garlicky chickpea curry, something I’d never made before.

New York City, where I lived for ten years, is a dirty, difficult place with endless potential for magic. About once a quarter, most New Yorkers wonder aloud where else they might move. I could have a yard in Nashville. I could afford a second bedroom in Portland. I could own a bed and breakfast in Maine. I could run an heirloom squash farm upstate. In the end, they usually stay. A piece of the reason why is that they feel a part of a phenomenal and phenomenally twisted club. Loving New York for the energy it provides and the willingness to sacrifice so much else for that energy is a very specific taste. Are you wacked enough to immerse yourself in it? So am I. Let’s play.

I left, and I’ll probably return. I say “probably” because, in this year away, a year that forced me into saying I’m in my mid and not early thirties, I’ve grown used to the ease of being able to seat eight guests comfortably at a table in my dining room. I’ve enjoyed the company of less rapacious men, men actually seeking committed relationships. And I’ve had the room to, instead of hustling to pay rent, try new things, like making chickpea curry from scratch. Twenty percent of me still isn’t sure I want to return to carrying my laundry two blocks once a week or engaging in months of flirtatious texts that lead nowhere over and over again. Another thirty percent of me is curious to see what else I might get up to with the time I have now, time that used to be taken up scraping New York’s dirt off of me at the end of each day.

I’ll spend the summer touring Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, San Francisco and most places in between as I research for a book. Pizza toast will appear here and there to fuel me, I’m sure. Maybe in Philadelphia, I’ll make it on a hoagie roll. Maybe in Los Angeles, I’ll get my hands on some of that tomato achaar and make a version that’s close to my Atlanta original. I’ll think of my kitchen in Georgia and all of other the things I cooked there. And I bet when I order New York pizza, those flavors will be with me.

 

Pizza Toast

Serves 1

1 slice sourdough bread

1 tablespoon tomato sauce (or whatever your desired amount for spreading)

Shredded mozzarella cheese (usually about 1/4 cup, depending on your mood)

Optional toppings: flaky sea salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes or dried oregano

Place bread on a sheet pan. Broil on both sides until golden.

Spread one side with tomato sauce and top with cheese. Broil once more until the cheese is melted.

Serve immediately.

She Warned them She wanted her Fries Fresh and Hot!

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In “The Devil Wears Prada”  Miranda Priestly demanded that her Starbucks be hot SEARING hot.

Brooklyn Park, Minnesota’s own Eiram Chanel Amir Dixson  feels that way about her fries.  She wants them FRESH and HOT !  There will be NO PROBLEM as long as she gets her fries her way.

Well dammit!  There was a break down in communication last Thursday at the Wendy’s drive through in nearby Coon Rapids.

 M’s Dixon didn’t receive hot and fresh fries.

 

It wasn’t pretty after that!  Ms Dixson got out of her car and told the Wendy’s employees what she thought!  At one point she allegedly started to reach through the drive thru window. and an employee threw a soda at her.

NO THEY DIDN’T ! Ms Dixson went from 350 to 550! 

The Wendy employees said she returned to her car and grabbed her Mace and started spraying it through the drive thru window.

3 Bonus Points

Ms Dixson lazer focused aim earned her three bonus points this round.  She was charged with a felony and  could receive five years in the joint, plus a fine of ten grand.    As she hit the manager who was standing in the window and two other employees with the Mace.

All over hot fries!

SMH

CityFella

 

 

Chocolates and scotch

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By: Suzanne Dunaway\The American-In Italia

Do you ever follow through with New Year’s resolutions? I admit I haven’t kept track of mine in recent years. They may be on my mind a bit more this year because of the strange and disturbing tidings coming from my home “town” of America.

Someone wrote me recently that we should stock our larders with plenty of chocolate and Scotch. We’ll need them to wash down the mind-boggling developments likely to come out of the U.S. in the coming months. Sounds good to me, but maybe a little Armagnac would go better with the Sprüngli chocolates. Or maybe buy them both and alternate.

As for resolutions, I’ve decided to clean out my excess of carrot peelers, cheese graters, butter paddles, rosemary strippers, and champagne bottle stoppers (the kind that blow holes in the ceiling). That and other doo dads Santa seems drop off are all on their way out.

I’ve also decided that this year I won’t be asking guests about their food allergies or specific likes or dislikes. I’ll make the lunch and dinner meals I want, and let guests decide what to do. I don’t have food dossiers on all my friends and I’m not going to start compiling them now.

I’m not being difficult or defiant. It’s just that the changes in what people can and cannot eat for whatever real or incredibly unreal reason come so fast and furious it’s hard for a cook to keep up. So I won’t.

A very dear friend brings little white pills to dinners at houses or restaurants where she might encounter cow’s milk products. She can thankfully tolerate goat and sheep milk, which keeps cheese in play (heaven forbid a Frenchwoman doing without cheese). When I cook for her I’m careful to use milk alternatives — sorbet instead of ice cream, say. But you’d never know she had a problem. Why? She doesn’t make a fuss. When dining in private homes, she politely eats whatever else is available, and there’s always something, even if it’s just a peanut butter sandwich.

Though I have always tried to cook with Einstein in mind — “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler…” — this year I’m going to try harder. A dish that gives you more than what it’s essence is all about or fails to live up to what it’s essence could be, is probably a dish with too many twists and turns (or maybe you left out the salt).

That may sound flip, but there are way too many recipes that call for 20 ingredients when a handful would do. A few recipes fall short in the other direction: too few ingredients to be really tasty. That’s when your own creativity can kick in. But it’s a thin line.

Take spaghetti alla carbonara. It’s made with pasta, olive oil, bacon, eggs, Parmesan (five ingredients), and boy do they work. So-called creative chefs insist on adding onions, cream, garlic, or even goat cheese. Bad idea.

Coming up with resolution is one thing, going through with them another. But given the goings-on in Washington I do get the feeling I’ll be hitting the Scotch (or Armagnac) and chocolate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cake or cuddle? Both should be banned from the workplace

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 No touching: offices, like hospitals, are for work not play

No touching: offices, like hospitals, are for work not play CREDIT: SCRUBS TV STILL

By: Rhymer Rigby/UK Telegraph

Yesterday, The Faculty of Dental Surgery, an influential group of dentists, suggested that companies should tackle “cake culture” at work because it contributes to obesity and poor health.

This is long overdue. In the past few years Britain has gone cake mad and this extends to the workplace. Where once we might have seen office cake a couple of time a year, cakes are now brought in to celebrate birthdays, departures, promotions, new hires, making it through the 3pm meeting, and so on. Work in a decent sized office and it’s not unusual to have one or two “cake days” a week.

What’s more, all these “event cakes” come on top of the muffins and Danish pastries and pain au chocolats that people routinely grab on the way to work. If we were a nation of svelte athletes, none of this would matter. But we’re not: almost two thirds of UK adults are overweight or obese. So what’s the solution?

Yesterday, Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum suggested that instead of dishing out cake to colleagues, we should “give them a smile, a hug or both!”

Well, she had me up to the word smile. Hugs at work, I’m not so sure about. You see, old misery guts that I am, not only do I not like cake, I’m not particularly touchy-feely either. I don’t see co-workers and experience an immediate urge to embrace them.

Yet hugging, like cake, has become commonplace in the office. Where once a handshake was enough, hugs are now increasingly de rigeur. Presumably there are even offices where you have a pre-cake hug (if you can reach each other over your sugar-addled bellies).

It would be easy to attack the office hug on robust, old-school grounds. To say that we used to have stiff upper lips. To say that this kind of emotional incontinence is all a bit American and ghastly and unbecoming. To suggest that hugs should be reserved for wives, small children, pets and close friends (if you really must).

But actually it’s just as easy to attack workplace hugging on practical grounds. Indeed, you can even make a strong PC case for a hug-free workplace. The fact is, in a country like the UK, hugging at work is a legal, psychological and managerial nightmare.

For starters, there’s just so much that can go wrong. Lunge in for a hug that’s unexpected or unwanted and at best it will be awkwardly reciprocated. At worst, you could find yourself accused of sexual harassment.

 

Research published by the TUC in 2016 suggests that over 50% of women have been sexually harassed at work – and, this includes “inappropriate hugging.” What is “inappropriate hugging”? Well, it’s any hug that the recipient doesn’t want. It could be a hug that you meant well. Why take the risk? Do you really want to cuddle a colleague that much?

In some cases there’s also the problem of how it looks. Sure, there may be nothing untoward when a 57-year-old boss hugs a 22-year-old intern. But appearances do matter. And, if you’re that boss, how you know that the 22-year old really wants to hug you? In fact, if you’re any sort of boss, there’s a power dynamic at work. You may be placing the other person under a kind of hug obligation.

Again, why put them (or yourself) in that position? Smile and say good morning instead.

OK, but let’s say you only hug people who you know are totally cool with hugs. And everyone else gets a handshake. Does that mean everything’s OK? No. You’re creating an “in- group” and an “out group.” I might hug Alison and Bob, rather than Claire and Dave, because the first two are huggers – and the second two aren’t. But this can still create the impression that I favour the first group over the second. If I’m in position of power, that’s a potential problem.

Given that hugging tends to be a younger person’s game, there is perhaps a bit more to be said for peer to peer hugging. If Alison wants to hug Bob and Claire and they’re all at roughly the same age and level of seniority, perhaps this gets rid of some of the issues. But even so, problems abound: the hug could be unwanted and the peer group could be split into huggers and non-huggers with the non-huggers feeling an uncomfortable obligation to hug. You see the quagmire we’re embracing here?

Of course, there probably are some situations where hugging a colleague is OK. Perhaps you’re in Argentina or Turkey where people are more tactile and hugging is a cultural norm. Or perhaps you’re meeting a colleague socially. But these are exceptions. In the office, you are unlikely to ever go wrong with a pleasant smile or a handshake.

Perhaps the most compelling reason not to hug colleagues though is that it distorts the idea of what work is “for” and what workplace relationships mean. In this sense, it’s part of the “fun workplace” movement where there’s little distinction between your job and the rest of your life and you’re all in the office to have a great time. Which is great until it all goes wrong.

Say you have to give someone a final written warming. Perhaps you got the promotion a colleague wanted. Or maybe the company’s not doing so well and you have to make some tough decisions. None of these things are fun. But they’re a lot easier if you have a professional working relationship with the other person. And they’re a lot harder if you’ve spent the last two years hugging the individual and they turn round in tears and say, “but I thought you were my friend.”

So yes, by all means let’s get rid of cake in the office. But let’s replace it with fruit, not hugs.

Taco Bell Taco Bell Taco Bell Dammit!

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It’s Saturday Night in Lakeland, Tennessee an 22 year old Logan Bagley has a hankerin for some Taco Bell.  A real hankerin!

But the 22 year old didn’t have cash!

MOM!

Logan was having a full meltdown a Taco Bell withdrawal* which got the attention of their neighbor who stepped out on her porch.  In their garage, she witnessed Logan take out his aggression on a defenseless freezer (that probably never harmed anyone since that unfortunate incident in 2009) with something that looked like a golf club, then the garage door closed.

MOM!

taco bell! Taco Bell! TACO BELL!

He wanted his mom’s debit card so he could get TACO “DAMM” BELL!

She told him there was no money in the account, but he took it anyway!

 

The Heartbreak of Decline!

Logan presented his mother’s credit card and …………..

Denied!  Logan was enraged and confronted his mother in their garage. He struck her in the head with a hockey stick and KNOCKED HER OUT!

The police were called…

Mr Badgley told the police he had a few drinks. The police took the hockey stick into evidence and noticed his mom had a one inch  laceration to the head.

Wonder if there is a “Taco Bell ” in the Shelby County Jail?

Charged with aggravated assault, Shelby County Jail is Logan’s home (unless someone other than his mom can bond him out) until his November 1 court date.

* Shelby County does have twelve step meetings to combat Taco Bell Withdrawal.