keep your fingers crossed

when you've somehow sucked it up and gone jogging for the last three nights and eaten mostly fruits and veggies (trying to clean that fridge out before we move!) it's easy to just give in to temptation. especially when temptation is battered and deep fried.

but let's start with the booze. i went to the POPE on tuesday for the tapping of the flying fish exit 11 firkin. this is part of flying fish brewery's "exit series" of beers, which celebrates their home state by brewing a set of beers as diverse as new jersey itself. according to the website:

Exit 11 is a confluence of styles and ingredients, just as exit 11 is the point in New Jersey where the Garden State Parkway, the New Jersey Turnpike and several other highways come together.

cute concept, great beer. i was a bit taken aback to find that the beer was room temperature, but i now see that is the way of the firkin, normally served at 55 degrees. i read that exit 11 is an american-style wheat beer, brewed with english ale yeast, three different kinds of hops and half belgian pale malt and half white wheat. i don't know what all that adds up to except a crisp, clean pint of beer with a tart, fruity finish. and it's a big beer, with a 6.2% abv, meaning at $5.50 a pint, i only ordered (and only needed) one.

then it was on to dinner. i haven't been to POPE since they launched their new menu and i've heard mixed reviews of the veggie burger, the seitan steak and the polenta napoleon. it was hot out and i wasn't in the mood for something super heavy, but damn if i'm not a sucker for junk once in a while. enter: seitan fingers and french fries. these are the veggie version of chicken fingers and they MIGHT fool your carniverous boyfriend if his eyes are closed. the fingers were crisp and hot with juicy tender seitan inside. thumbs up to the fries - and i recently figured out the trick to successful leftovers: eat all the fries while you're at the restaurant and take half the sandwich/fingers/whatever home because those fries just ain't the same on day 2. so i had 2 fingers leftover for tomorrow (or later - drunk midnight snack, don't judge me). oh, how could i forget the spicy bbq dipping sauce? it's like a citrusy spicy light bbq sauce and i shall forever regret not taking a little cup to go with my leftovers.

(you might not think it, but in that condiment cup is liquid gold)

my buddy ciarra basically went the complete opposite direction and ordered the st. pablo's watermelon special which was 3 big slices of watermelon with cayenne, lime juice and salt and a sad side salad (that should be your new band's name).

the bite i had was pretty banging, but i want watermelon when i'm on someone else's parents' backyard deck overlooking the pool i'm about to wash said watermelon juice off in (confusing, i know, but true to life). when i'm at a bar with a pint of strong beer, i want something fried, even if it is 88 degrees out. that's just how you give humidity the middle [seitan] finger.

big jerk

vegan jerky: there is so much to say, and yet so little. some think it tastes like dog treats, some think it doesn't, and some secretly always wished they could try dog treats and are excited that there is a quasi-acceptable and meatless way to do so. there is a weirdly wide variety of vegan jerky on the market, and i've sampled a nice selection. the most commonly available kinds, it seems, are the tofurkey kind (bleck), the impressive number of flavors of primal strips (their slogan is "fun meaty satisfaction" - ewww!), and stonewall jerquee. there is also a veg jerky that comes in bulk that's occasionally sold at our local co-op. last summer, all members of our house, even the naysayers, became obsessed with the co-op mystery jerky. well, guess what? the mystery is solved! as a gift for our california friends, lauren ordered a 5 pound bulk bag of the jerky and it is stonewall's! i never would have guessed that, because it tastes so much different than the pre-packaged "snack paks" (their spelling, not mine) made by the very same brand. i wonder if it's a freshness issue? or perhaps solely psychological?

stonewall's jerquee (please, pronounce it as we do: "jer-kwee") is made by lumen soy foods. their website, soybean.com, is worth checking out. it looks like it was designed by a 9th grader in computer class in 1995. but that's okay! i'm pretty sure they mean well, and they offer a bizarre range of products that i've never heard of. according to them, the jerky leaves you feeling "full" and "warm" inside, which isn't totally accurate, but man they sure are fun to chew!

and, have you ever seen 5 pounds of jerky? it's kind of intense (see the apple for scale):


a note on nutrition: yeah, this stuff is kind of garbage. it probably has some protein, but also a crazy amount of sodium. a quick scan of the ingredients leads me to believe that it is no where near as processed, or as scary, as meat jerky. we try to only get it as a special treat, and we also try to accept that fact that as far as snacks go, carrot sticks ain't always gonna cut it. we will just leave it at that!

love,
emily

stick team

a note to begin: do not be mislead by the charming icon on the left, the expectant chef tasting a delicate consommé or reduction or whatever. what transpired today was an experiment of an entirely low brow nature, an experiment involving vegetarian hot dogs, thick beer spiked batter and a deep fryer from the 70's. what happened today was corndogs.

for me, major televised sporting events are an excuse to drink beer in the afternoon and eat funny food. when my hometown team wins, that's a great bonus! people will be nicer to one another on the street the next day and i'll have something to chit chat about with the regulars at work. sadly, today i drank no beer (i'm fighting an oncoming cold) and the home team lost, but funny food was still in full effect.

i've never made corndogs and i've never used the deep fryer my mom gave me (out of her basement, i think?) a few summers ago. that's why this whole endeavor counts as a culinary experiment, even though cheffy up there in the corner would surely scoff (or, as the french say, escoffier) at such a notion. but the way i see it, every food - trashy or high falutin - has its day. and football is a lot like a hot dog: a symbol of the good parts of americana (simplicity, non-pretension, commitment to pleasure) and the bad parts, too (commodification of pleasure, convenience over health, machismo). but i digress: the point, friends is that ryan and i made vegan corndogs today and, dammit, they were good.

first, the batter: equal parts flour (we used whole wheat which kind of made us feel better about the negative nutritional value of these suckers) and corn meal, generous pinches of salt, sugar and cayenne, and big splashes of soy milk (plain vitasoy) and beer (schmidt's). we made the batter pretty thin - after all, the goal is a nice, crispy coating, not a sheath of corn bread. we cut two packs of veegs doggies in halves, so there would be more to go around at the sports watching get together. sharing is key, dudes. the halves were rolled in some cornstarch:


then, we fired up the deep fryer. because of his restaurant experiences, ryan was way more comfortable with the fryer than me, so i let him take over that very integral part of the process. we first used a vegetable oil and olive oil blend (b/c we were low on veg oil), but it wasn't really getting hot enough so i ran out to the market to buy more veg oil. it takes a disgusting amount of oil to deep fry - try not to think about it. so with 100% vegetable oil, we really got that baby going.

in the above photo, there are too many doggies in the stew. we quickly learned that the dogs like to stick to each other and must be limited to three at a time. it's time consuming but worth it when they started to come out perfectly. we made a big batch of the corndogs, a hand full of onion rings and one lone jalapeno popper, and took it all over to the football friend get-down. and they were a hit! who doesn't love a battered hot dog, i mean really. shown below with some ketchup spiked with sriracha for dipping, wake up to your golden nugget junk food dreams.

love,
emily

p.s. another special thanks to ryan (master! snack master!) for really captaining this entire process.