Posts Tagged ‘food’

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Musings on Smelltaste

September 4, 2014

There is a word for smell (like when we smell roses) and a word for taste (mmm… ice cream). But there should be a word for the combination of them. As I have identified the deficit, I will use smelltaste until someone gives me a better term.

There are times when the smelltaste is exceedingly different from the smell or the taste of something.  Take Japanese sake as an example, if you smell good sake, it is often floral. If you drink it, the tastes ranges but is often fruity. If you take a whiff and then a drink, it tastes like tears of happiness. Errr… I mean it is a combination of fruity and floral that reminds me of honey without sweetness (yeah, I know that makes no sense, but still).

On the other hand, if you sample the smelltaste of cheap whiskey, it is a sinus burning phenomenon followed by coughing pain.

As much as I love champagne, its smelltaste is not often as good as its taste (which, I think, is why I like the less yeasty, less scented sparkling wines).

When you want to learn about an alcohol, one of the first things you need to figure out is if it should be tasted or smelltasted.

Fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and hot coffee are two items that are almost all smelltaste. The smell can be wonderful but the taste by itself is not as good as you might expect (yes, I did just give you an excuse to make cookies this afternoon, its for SCIENCE).

I got to thinking about this last night… while neither the smell nor the taste is reminiscent of anything particular, the black licorice smelltaste of Pastis reminds me of my childhood.

 

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Tootsie’s has the best cappuccino

April 28, 2014

There is a little restaurant in Palo Alto, really on Stanford, sort of near the mall. It is frou-frou food: if you get the fritatta, you don’t get to choose what is in it, you just get to be happy with the deliciousness that comes to you. With Nutella toast.

I love Tootsie’s. I love the cappuccino with its microfoam and deep espresso. I love the tiny donuts (zepole) that make me remember a time I liked donuts. The salads are great, the fruit is fresh, if you are there when they have macarons, get some. I sit outside, courting a pink nose, because the lavender is about to bloom (and the roses are already).

So, though it is a bit closer to her house than mine, it is absolutely no hardship to meet Elizabeth at Tootsie’s to talk about the are-you-ok manatee. It was almost enough to make up for the loss of the mock-up manatee that was so soft and spent so much time in my lap last week.

I’ll be getting a prototype in the next few weeks, probably with the LED and accelerometer sewn in. She’ll have to deal with the boards, though we’ve figured out that right angle connectors would have been better for the next revision. The height of the wires ended up being a bit, um, deformative to the stuffed animal.  I don’t know if Elizabeth is going to try modifying the sewing pattern to put more pocket inside the manatee or if it is going to be a bit lumpy.

Of course, it may not be a manatee. Elizabeth warned me that a whale would be good (for the twitter connection) and a narwhal would look great with an LED on the top of its tooth. I’m excited about all the options.

As punkiepunkie noted in the comments, I did update the agent code in github, cleaning up the comments and starting to indicate what other people are likely to want to change. I’m not done but I am very excited someone is trying this out. I do intent to add comments regarding using AA batteries and non-Sparkfun accels to the device. (Though, I’m hoping to make this a tutorial for Sparkfun. No, I don’t know how to do that. One step at a time… I’ll write up a proposal for the tutorial soon.)

I’ve got a few other things that need doing this week. I was cramming them in since the weather is about to get warm and I’d like to play hooky and go to the beach. But now I’m cramming a bit so I can stop mining salt (short contract) and get back to my gadget.

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Unsweetened

July 6, 2013

Every week this year I have a resolution, something to make me healthier, happier, or more productive. A friend mentioned that Jefferson did something similar through his whole life, focusing on one virtue for a fortnight before moving on to another, cycling through thirteen of them. I’m trying out all sorts, opening up myself to different ideas.

My resolution for the last 3.5 weeks is “no sugar”. And by that, I mean no sugar, no sugar substitutes, no honey, no maple syrup, no fruit juice (*), no dried fruit, no agave syrup, no sorbitol, no xylitol (which is poisonous to dogs!), nothing sweeter than fruit, eaten as fruit.

I’m hoping to get control of my sweet tooth, reset it to a different level so I don’t crave FROSTING levels of sweetness. My goal was to make it 4 weeks. I don’t think I’ll have a problem with it though it has been both easier and harder than I thought.

I consciously made an exception for alcohol; I have been drinking wine and sake. And I had one fruit juice cocktail (that was yummy but tasted way too sweet though it did an excellent job of delivering rum to my overtired system). There were a two other intentional exceptions: cough drops and calcium chews. There were two sweetened foods that I repeated even knowing they were sweetened: teriyaki sauce that didn’t end up on the side of my salmon and grape juice sweetened blueberries encrusting the Trader Joe’s goat cheese (rationalization: this was so good, killed sweet cravings, and I was already drinking grape juice).

I have been reading labels, put back potato chips, salad dressing, bread, (veggie) deli met, and frozen vegetable packages that had sugar (or other sweetener) as an ingredient. I came to the conclusion that sugar is lurking everywhere. I ordered dishes in restaurants that had the least likelihood of being spiked (except for salmon teriyaki).

We cleaned the house of ice cream, cookies, popsicles, and sweetened crackers. We talked about how we’d keep the house sugar-free for the foreseeable future (ideally forever) and limit our sugar intake to outside the house. But that plan would start after my 4 week long no-sugar plan. Even so, merely talking about it led to me daydreaming of going to the bakery, getting an icing shot (yes, our bakery has little cups of their excellent frosting available for purchase), and just doing the hit of sugar, right there, on the street.

The minute-to-minute implementation of being unsweetened wasn’t that difficult. Snacking on potato chips or bread and butter or string cheese sticks, there are always foods to eat (I didn’t lose any weight). Yogurt was tough, though after a 2 minute wait frozen fruit + plain yogurt leads to cold fruit covered in frozen yogurt. Actually, the latest technology for frozen berries without ice crystals has been wonderful, I’ve eaten a lot of still frozen fruit. That got me though the heat wave we had.

Breakfast was the hardest meal. I usually eat protein bars (I usually want to work with I wake up; making a nice breakfast gets in the way of me melding with my computer). I thought oatmeal and cream of wheat were a lost cause but when I went savory (adding sundried tomatoes and parmesan and a bit of butter), those were surprisingly yummy. Once I got oatmeal and cream of wheat working, I’d mix those up with the uberfast hunk of baguette and microwaved veggie sausage. I really didn’t have trouble finding good food to eat.

It was the daydreams and cravings that nearly killed me. Upon hearing my resolution, three people told me that they’d heard about a study that showed sugar was as addictive as crack. Two of them were eating dessert in front of me as they said this.

The worst time I had was at a birthday party. The social pressure of sharing cake is one thing, the vision of my husband scarfing up the moist cake and frosting (!!!!) haunted me for days. (Just writing about that, my mouth is all watery.) He ate maybe three bites but, still, to do it in front me… (never mind that everyone else there had a plate of cake, he gets all the blame).

I had a dream one night that I ate a bite of that cake. I could taste it. And since I’d broken my resolution, I woke up thinking I might as well have pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast. Lots of syrup.

If I felt about alcohol the way I feel about sugar, I think I would be an alcoholic. I’m embarrassed at how much time I spend plotting to get sweets and the many, varied forms that I want to consume. It is dumb and annoying, making me feel less in control of my life. Really annoying. Really embarrassing.

Like the resolution to eat whole grains, I’m happy I chose this as a resolution. It has given me a new bar for living as I want to live. It has made me comfortable with turning down sweets in social situations, enough that I think I could do it in the future. Keeping the house sweet-free is obviously the way to go (why didn’t we do this before?).

And yet, I’m still very much looking forward to this resolution ending and what I’m going to have for breakfast on Wednesday morning.

Taken in the salad section of a deli in a Flagstaff.

Taken in the salad section of a deli in a Flagstaff.

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Methode Champenoise

December 17, 2012

I thought today about doing a new twitter feed. To be clear, I kind of hate twitter, it is annoying to try to think of witty things to say all the time, feeling like I'm feeble at it, and listening to other people be at both their wittiest and whiniest.

Thus, it is a little odd for me to want to engage more with twitter. But last night I opened a terrible bottle of champange. It was such a colossal letdown. 90 points at BevMo… unlikely. I must have picked up the wrong bottle or something. Yuck. Just yuck.

I thought that this pic would be a good twitter pic along with a pithy “I've had sodas that weren't as teeth achingly sweet as this plonk.”

In fact, I could make that my profile pic. And I could promise to tweet once a day, always about sparkling wine. Usually sparkling wine under $20 because I'm too cheap to buy the expensive stuff. (But occasionally someone else buys so there are high end bubbles ocassionally.) I'd use twitter to chronicle the good and the bad.

I don't open a bottle every day. I'd need some filler material; I could share: “I find that drinking a whole bottle in a day is deleterious for working the next. Those rubber stoppers for wine bottles are suitable for retaining fizz for up to three days.”

I could take picture at Bev Mo and CostCo of the champange in a fluted bottle I keep seeing. I keep almost buying it but I want to spend money on the wine, not the bottle: “Bring that pretty bottle here to me! (Nods to @ballisticcats for their lyric).”

I could look up what the name of the wire wrapper on the cork is called. I knew it for a little while. But then I forgot. But, you know, it'd be a good tweet. And the opportunity for risqué comments about the shape of the corks… I could get a not-safe-for-work rating.

I could mention buying wine from woot: “Yay to @Woot for their Rack and Riddle fizz. Yes, it was a vertical four pack. I'm not sure why only two are pictured here. Except that they were delicious.” Because, really, they were delicious.

I really do love champagne. I'm not too picky. Or so I'd like to think. And I'd like to think that I wouldn't mention a friends almost water-like cava that she prefers. I love the friend. But I'm not letting her choose wines again.

On the other hand, here's a good pic and tweet: “Yeah, I drink champagne from a can. A pink can. What of it? I don't use the straw (usually)!”

Except for the embarrassment of having to ask “do you have champagne in a can?”, the Sofia champagne is one of my favorites. I know I'm paying for the additional packaging (a little hypocritical, maybe I will get the fluted bottle next time I see it) but the cans don't make me feel wasteful if I don't finish a bottle in under a week.

I figured I'd even do Friday haikus: “Methode champenoise / Here add seven syllables / You make me bubbly.” Ok, so that one isn't finished.

I could point out that the Etoile bottle makes an excellent Christmas or New Year's host gift. Lots of points and delicisousness. It will please the snobs and the happy lushes.

For that one, I could give my tasting notes: “This is to sweetness as freeze-dried strawberries are to spring.” One good thing about twitter is that the tweets don't have to make sense. Which is good for me. Really good, especially after a glass of champagne. Though I will admit that that tweet wasn't a compliment. But I did not pour that bottle down the sink so it wasn't a loss, just a “will not buy again”.

I could mention champagne and cupcakes. Probably on my birthday. Of course, I think I did that on my normal (@logicalelegance) twitter feed.

And champagne cocktails… I do occasionally doctor my drinks… “St. Germain's is an eidelflower liquor that tastes like the first golden light of a spring day after a week fo dark rain. Add half a shot to your flute to raise your spirits.” Punny! Plus, again, pretty bottle.

“If your champange is not chilled enough, I recommend adding a frozen strawberry.” I don't know who couldn't think up that pearl of wisdom on their own but it would totally fit into the twitterverse. (I already mentioned my disdain for twitter, right?)

I looked up the recipe for champagne simple syrup this weekend; I was considering putting it on sponge cake, ended up with raspberries and whip cream but the syrup recipe was simple… though it involves “leftover champagne”, a foreign concept. Anyway, I could send out the “heat champagne, add sugar, stir, cool, pour over steak” instructions. Again for people who couldn't figure it out on their own. And, yes, I'm kidding about the steak. I'd poor it over sponge cake. Or strawberries. Or raspberries. Add it to whip cream. Put it in truffles. Add it to jam. Put it in soda water. Oh heck, I'd pour it over steak and then lick it off.

If I doled these factoids out over a month or two, 140 characters at a time, I wouldn't seem like a drunkard. Probably.

I really do like champagne. I wonder what this one is going to taste like.

 

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Coloring in the lines

June 28, 2012

I don’t color in the lines very well. I often want to. I look at other people and think that what they’ve done is pretty and neat, so much tidier than I could manage.

And by coloring in the lines I mean all the idiomatic meanings… I run my own business. People can hire me, pay for my time, and tell me what to do. But I can always say no. They aren’t the boss of me; I am the boss of me. And, by the way, I don’t want to be the boss of you either.

Let’s take a trivial example… I’ve already mentioned that I use a haphazard ratiometric approach to baking cookies, never able to reproduce a particular baked good unless it it yummy enough to write down the recipe. And then I never consider following the recipe that I wrote down, always tweaking it here and there.

So it was a little odd that last week, having agreed to bring dessert to a potluck, I baked two kinds of cookies, following the recipes as best as I was able. And they both worked out really, really well.

The first was a chocolate chip cookie. Now, it is hard to have a bad chocolate chip cookie. I think the only disastrous ones were when I used old fashion oatmeal that was a little too old fashioned. The oat husks stuck out at odd angles from the top of the cookie and bit back when I tried to eat them. But the cookies from Cooks Illustrated were fantastic.

Loads and loads of butter but they were crunchy and chewy at the same time. Really yummy.

The other cookies were odd: 2 egg whites whipped to stiff peaks, 2 cups brown sugar (chunks broken up) and 2 cups pecans folded gently in then baked at 350F for 20 min. Given the recipe, I expected them to taste like pecan candy. Instead, they were like chunky macaron outer cookies.

In fact, mixed one a plate with the chocolate chip cookies, both brown and chunky, my husband thought the pecan cookies were the chocolate chip cookies and said there were good but only subtly chocolatey. The pecan meringues were very cookie like and the texture was right for the chips. They were odd but really good; nice to remember when you need gluten-free, lactose-free cookies.

Both cookies went over well at the potluck. I felt like an integrated member of society. Having colored in the lines actually turned out well. On the other hand, the potluck was a cross section of software engineers, ballet dancers and motorcycle riders; possibly conforming to regular societal norms was the most nonconformist thing I could have done at that particular party. Sheesh, I didn’t think of that but I also wore a pretty linen skirt…

I tweeted recently about having left the keys to social interaction on the table at home. I’d had an incident at work where I misread the cues, thought it was time to work when it was time to chat and I felt hideously awkward. Hence the tweet. The response was amusing, clearly I am not the only one who feels like everyone else has a key and I’m trying to pick the lock.

Coloring in the lines is my response to that feeling. Except… well, except I can only keep it up for a limited time before I burn out. Yes, now I can make two really good cookies from recipe. So? Anyone can make these cookies. It wasn’t even hard let alone creative. No one but me can wander around my kitchen, picking herbs from the garden, fruit about to go bad, and ingredients on hand and say, “You know what we need? Lavender-blueberry muffins!” (My husband squawked and then later admitted the sweet/spice of lavender went really well with the blueberries.)

I feel like I should start singing “I gotta be meeeeeee!” but I waver. A lot. The confidence is usually an act. I want to be confident in who and what I am, hideous disasters and all (I swear the goal was not mint extract in the strawberry crepes, it was supposed to be vanilla!). But I’m not. I used to think that this feeling would go away when I grew up. But I think that already happened when I wasn’t watching.

Today at work, I’ll be refusing to color in the lines. I had a minor meltdown yesterday after trying too hard to do what they want, even though it is wrong (and stupid and untestable and a poor user experience). I shouldn’t have tried so hard but I want them to like me; every time I ventured outside the lines, the manager hit my knuckles with a ruler (metaphorically, of course). Getting frustrated doesn’t help. And I am the boss of me! So if this is a product I think is going to hell because of poor vision, well, I can take my ball of talent and go elsewhere (eek!). Or they can watch the picture I create, if they simply tell me what they want and let the lines fall naturally.

 

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