Zorba the Mustard!

Short post tonight.

A co-worker just got back from Greece after dumping a ton of project work on me and disappearing. Blame HIM for me not blogging as much! In an email from the island of Crete (bastard), he promised me six types of Greek olive. And all I got was a lousy jar of mustard. Luckily for him, I love mustard and the label is all in Greek so I can't tell anything about it. Flavored? Plain? Who knows until I dip something into it and let it flavors sneak up my tongue and take me to foreign lands.

I still miss the olives. I asked him about them.

"Oh, you can get Kalamata anywhere! We had them with every meal! In every meal! While we were drinking ouzo!" Again, I say BASTARD.

But I have the mustard. I will report back when I know more.

Condiment Grrl

Interpretive Dance - the liquid gold of the Oscars

It's not as fun to type as lutefisk, but as the arbiter of all that is condimental in this crazy world, I do declare that Interpretive Dance is a condiment for the Oscar ceremony.

I HEART the Oscars. I watch the arrivals and the entire ceremony every year with bated breath, waiting for the day I know Russell Crowe will wear a traditional Australian kilt to the ceremony. Don't email me with a correction -- this is my lurid fantasy. Now, THAT would be a condiment. Heh heh heh.

Okay, foraging on. So, every year I watch the Oscars and I devour the montages, tributes, dresses, faux paws, boobage, stupid songs (Sting with the old tyme roller thing?), and of course, the interpretive dance. All liquid diamond condiments poured over the solid chocolate Academy Award. The interpretive dance was back this year and it was actually innovative and interesting and really, really cool (C'mon, they did an interpretive Snakes on a Plane. Awesome.)

After, I am so sick of people bitching and whining and moaning about how boring and horrible the Oscars are and it gets worse every year and blah blah blah. Hey, it's the clue phone for you -- TURN THEM OFF IF YOU DON'T LIKE THEM. Don't complain about the montages -- it's a salute to film! The montages define the night! The montages rule! And Will Ferrell was actually funny! Shut up already!

Pass me my bacon wrapped figs with a olive relish and turn it up -- I think Celene Dion is going to smack Beyonce down.

Let me dream my balsamic dreams and mustard wishes. And Russell Crowe in a utilikilt.

Hooray for Hollywood!

Condiment Grrl

Lutefisk - the forgotten condiment

Okay, I'm kidding about that, but I just spent a day at Ikea so Baby Balsamic could experience a dying art form in the midst of a burgeoning art form -- theater performed in the store. Three adorable playlets were presented at the entrance, in the children's furniture section and in one of those glamorous Ikea bedrooms. Baby Balsamic was entranced and attempted to make off with a prop -- the princess' tiara.

Of course, a day at Ikea would not be complete without a visit to their unique cafeteria experience. Baby Balsamic enjoyed two plates of meatballs. Yes, you read that right -- two plates. And she especially enjoyed dipping her meatballs and french fries in this raspberry sauce that was slopped onto the plate with the rest of the food. I savored the lox on a bed of greens with a mustard dill dipping sauce. And I discovered the language of mustard with dill is Universal: they were bottling this sauce in the store as a Swedish specialty. Well, I think Mr. Norman Bishop would have something to say about that! The bottles were tempting, but the sauce tasted pretty much just like Norman Bishop's Seafood Dill sauce so I passed. But I did buy a can of dried onions to dribble on a salad.

And the lutefisk did not tempt me in the least, but I like typing that word so I'm finding ways to work it into the blog post. Lutefisk, lutefisk, lutefisk. It's a great word, but even were it deep fried and offered up to me with an array of delectable dipping sauces including rosemary mayonnaise, garlic aioli, G*D mustard, Pickapeppa sauce and fine condimento balsamic vinegar, I would have none of it.

And yet, I will type it once again. Lutefisk. The uncondimentable food.

Condiment Grrl

A vinegar is a vinegar is a vinegar

I know, I know, I haven't been posting as much as I promised. Stupid, stupid day job.

Anyway...I traipsed to the store today to buy some cookies for an afternoon meeting (it's a key strategy in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People who Love Sugar). And I loaded up in the salad bar, piling my romaine lettuce high with beets, broccoli, kidney beans, artichoke hearts, and croutons (which I'm not supposed to have, if you've been keeping track of the short leash my naturopath attempts to keep me on). Now, I totally eschew store-made salad dressing. It's filled with sodium and never tastes very good unless it's blue cheese dressing and I can't have blue cheese (keep up, people, keep up). I drizzled my Dagwood Bumstead salad with some olive oil, then reached for the balsamic vinegar bottle.

But what's this? This is not straight balsamic vinegar -- it's some kind of balsamic vinegar dressing! How can this be? So, I walked right over to the vinegar section to buy my own bottle for work. You know, unless you're going for the super expensive stuff, just get the Colavita. Yes, it's all from Modena, but unless it's "Tradizionale" it's not the best stuff. I got the Colavita and it was perfectly good.

But I will not rest until I track down the store employee who put a pre-made Balsamic Vinaigrette in a Balsamic vinegar bottle. That's just sick and wrong.

Condiment Grrl

Ja love, Pickapeppa sauce

I recently bought a bottle of Pickapeppa sauce for the first time in a few years. The thick, spicy, Worchesthureushire (yeah, I know I misspelled it) like sauce brings back memories of when I first relocated to Seattle and would visit friends who lived rurally on the outskirts of Tenino (hot spot: The Beaver Den!). They are beloved people in my life; Sara is a sister to me. And yet, their love for condiments was lacking back then.

I was literally broke, living on the edge, whoring myself to Kelly Girl to make a few bucks, and yet, I would stop at the store before I got to their house to be sure they had a few food staples, including Pickapeppa sauce. I was in a stage then where it was not breakfast without boiled eggs slathered with Pickapeppa sauce. Without the tangy sting on my tongue mellowed by the tepid egg, I would be in a foul mood all day long.

Another friend introduced me to Pickapeppa sauce at a chick's gathering (or Women's group or something similar) where she placed a plate with a quivering block of cream cheese surrounded by Triskets. She then approached the strange site with a pretty brown bottle with a parrot on it, opened it and poured it on the cream cheese, picked up a cracker and swiped it through the strange mound. My mouth is watering at the memory. The thick sweet/spicy sauce compliments cream cheese perfectly.

My naturopath said I'm not supposed to eat eggs. And yet. And yet. I checked the fridge to see if I had any eggs. Baby Balsamic asked "Whatchu doin' mama?"

I covered the eggs with my arm, "Seeing if we have eggs. You are in for a breakfast treat tomorrow morning."

BTW...RIP Beaver Den which closed years ago. Now there's one of those hideous "Fifties style" diners in its place.

Condiment Grrl

Baby Balsamic - Intrepid Dipper

We all know that Baby Balsamic is MY daughter and as such, calls G*D mustard, "yellow sauce" and cranberry mustard "special ketchup." But, poor Big Mama Salsa took BB out to a Thai dinner and attempted to share chicken satay with her, but discovered that if it is something with a dipping sauce, BB will not share. She ate all the chicken satay and wouldn't touch the Pad Thai.

That's my baby girl.

Cilantro Chutney! Really? Hmmm....

I discovered a new taste treat at my local fyne food market -- turkey samosas! And the turkey filling was flavorful and spicy and it's hard to go wrong with flaky pastry shells, but they supplied a cilantro chutney dipping sauce that added a light flavor to the heavy samosa. But I'm used to thinking about chutneys as being chunky sauces with chunks of strange vegetables that have been pickled in strange vinegars shipped in from exotic ports of call. But this was kind of like someone tossed some cilantro and water and a little lime juice into a blender and called it a chutney.

I just looked up a recipe on an Indian foods site, www.indianfoodsco.com, and it contained this list of ingredients:

1 bunch cilantro, fresh
1 or 2 small green chili, fresh, remove seeds
juice of one lime
salt to taste
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, roasted, ground
1 pinch of black pepper
1 tbsp. coriander powder

This chutney didn't taste like it had all these ingredients, but it was still good. I even stole an extra container to add to my morning rice and beans.

Condiment Grrl

A toast! Then a delightful burning...

Doesn't that sound like a line from a lessor-known Noel Coward tune? The full lyric would go something like:

Clink spoons, not glasses, my dear
Laugh and face the light
Enjoy the substance similar to beer
But softer and cleaner, still a wicked plight

Hoist out your cracker by its own petard
Put down your pretty pursa
It's champagne with mustard!
Or vice versa

I thought it was quite good until I got to pursa. Ah well. That is why I am a Condiment Grrl and nothing else. Except a mother. And a writer. And I knit, badly.

I have no idea how long this jar of Champagne Mustard sitting before me has been opened. I can't remember opening it. Mr. Mustard can't remember opening it. It may just be one of those things that sweeps behind the coupling and co-housing of a couple, an object caught in the wake of the joining. Good lord, I'm poetic tonight. It's probably because of Prince's awesome performance in the Super Bowl.

Anyway, I've always kind of avoided it. It seemed just like a mediocre variety of a hot and sweet mustard. And why call it Champagne mustard? Is that just a food industry standard for a sweet mustard? I just read the label and saw that Champagne is an actual ingredient, which kind of surprised me. I thought it was just a flourish, not a real ingredient. The mustard itself is pretty straightforward, nothing that memorable, sweet, but not too much. It's a brand called Putney's and I mostly pulled it out because, HORRORS, I couldn't find any Dijon mustard for a salad dressing that I was making.

I went and searched the Mustard Museum website and I see that they have about 25 varieties of Champagne mustard including one from Norman Bishop. I am horrified that I didn't find out about it until now. Strange side note -- it includes White Wine, not Champagne.

This blog entry gets stranger yet. I just did a wikipedia search on "Champagne Mustard" and saw that they pulled up a reference to an episode of the greatest show EVER "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as having a 3.9% match to my query (there's no entry for Champagne Mustard).

The episode summary contains this line: "In St. Petersburg, Russia, 1905, Anyanka and Halfrek dine on champagne after massacring a room full of men."

I sense another Noel Coward tune in the making...

Condiment Grrl

The Healing Power of Condiments

I had sushi today for lunch and I know I've blogged before about the healing and restorative powers of the condiments that accompany sushi - wasabi and pickled ginger and soy sauce. But today, I was also craving lemon with my raw salmon. Really craving lemon. So, I bought a small lemon along with my sushi and consumed it, peel and all, along with my pork of the sea.

Now, all my naturopath-loving, vegan, hippie Berkeley-like friends would be like "Woah, it's like you're craving the Vitamin C or something. Wow, have you ever looked at your hand? I mean really looked at your hand?" And they would be right. I am fighting off a cold and when you're really looking down the yawning maw of a bad cold, that is when you must turn to the healing power of condiments.

Garlic, I mean, c'mon. Boring. Even the most sheltered Republican midwesterner who only shops at Piggly Wiggly (or whatever it's called), knows that garlic has lots of healing powers (the Weekly World News runs articles about it and the aliens who live in the Empire State Building all the time). And then there's ginger (covered with pickled ginger). And in my earliest blogs, I talked about the turmeric in mustard which has been found to stave off Alzheimer's. And lemon. And vinegar, which helps with weight loss and repulses vampires. Or is that mushrooms?

The whole point is that one reason to worship condiments as I do, is that they promote healing and general health. Especially when consumed with lots of red wine. Which stops heart attacks.

One more note on this, then I'll stop -- Cyclone Cider. Hailed as a restoritive, cure-all, it's basically a giant condiment experiment (like I used to do with my friends) gone oh-so-right.

Condiment Grrl.