Author: zora

Aksu Honey Fruit Update

I went and bought some more of the Aksu Honey Fruit. Alas, the apricot variety is not nearly so satisfying as the sour cherry. (Why did I mess with success? I never learn.) Other varieties available: strawberry and wild raspberry.

This, verbatim from the tag around the jar:

“Aksu Honeyfruit” is a friendly and peacefully meeting of Natural Flower Honey with Fruit Varieties, by a special Formula after long-lasting technical researches. With “Aksu Honeyfruit”, Aksu VItal A.S. has aimed to increase the consumption of Natural Honey which is very beneficial and healthy nourishment for the human being by softening, lightening and facilitating the specific sharp aroma of Honey with pleasant tastes of carefully selected Fruits, especially for the Kids.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Now eat up, Kids!

Off the Vine

This just in from one of my Astoria correspondents:

Even though I loves me the Grand Liquor store for cheapie wines, I thought I make you wise to another alternative in the ‘hood called Off The Vine (44-21 30th Ave, right across from the kick ass Italian food shop, is that around 45th street? You know the one). They opened about 3 months ago. While Grand’s selection is kind of all over the place, Off The Vine has a lovely selection from smaller vineyards around the world. Plus, the owners are cool, and they had a big plate of cookies at the counter from the Italian bakery next door (yum!), and a bowl of doggie treats (can’t vouch for those). Check it out. I think they are worth supporting.

I’d cruised past the place a couple of weeks ago, but I was mid-errand and couldn’t stop. It’s high time Astoria got its own hipster wine shop. Grand Ave does indeed have some excellent stuff, but you have to know what you’re looking for to pull it out of the surrounding TGIFriday’s Magic Mudslide mixers.

Food and Politics

<I>I eat arugula...and I vote!</i>
I eat arugula...and I vote!
Good reading recently. A friend sent me an interesting piece in Plenty mag on the dangers of considering good food “elitist”–starting with the absurdity that anyone who eats arugula is branded a hopeless liberal.

Hopeless liberal Michael Pollan wrote a big feature in this weekend’s New York Times magazine: “An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief.” It’s nine pages, but worth the whole read. By the end, you might be a hopeful liberal.

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Zucchini Bread

<i>Those little shreds of green are good for you!</i>
Those little shreds of green are good for you!
In the same way that I only got a grill a couple of weeks ago, I just managed to perfect my zucchini bread recipe with the last two fresh zukes in the tristate area.

And in the same way that I always thought I was normal growing up, and then it turned out I totally wasn’t, I first went looking for a zucchini bread recipe in Joy of Cooking. It’s a standard recipe, you know? I was a little disturbed to see it wasn’t in there. I guess it’s a standard only if you grew up in 1970s New Mexico, and you had a garden that disgorged 800 tons of zucchini every fall. In that alternate hippie universe, zucchini bread is just as normal as zucchini chocolate cake, for instance.

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Circus Peanuts, Explained, Slightly

Tal forwarded me this Straight Dope column about circus peanuts. I do not like them. They are a disturbing texture and just plain taste bad.

Buried in the middle of the column is this:

“Over the years the best-selling item has been orange in color, banana in flavor, and peanut in shape.”

Banana flavor? I never would’ve identified it as that, being misled by the color and the shape. But now…yes, banana. I guess that’s what it is.

No wonder I dislike them. “Banana” is perhaps the worst of the artificial fruit flavors, with “lime” coming up not far behind.

Bike Paths: Thanks for Nothing

I wrote this a year ago, and forgot to post it after my rage subsided. I recently biked on the east side quote Greenway unquote again. Turns out nothing’s changed–which makes me mad all over again. File under “Mranh”, with all the other fodder for cranky letters I need to send.

On Sunday, I cursed the alleged Greenway effort a little bit, when Peter and I biked to Kew Gardens and attempted to ride through a big park–on an alleged bike path–but never saw any suitable signs to get us on the path. As a result, we biked for several miles, in traffic, lost, in our respective pissy snits, and also failed to make it to the movie on time. Adequate signage would’ve been the easy path to marital bliss–as it was, the best we could muster was, “Hey, thanks, Robert Moses, for actually putting an underpass under one of your motherf–king expressways…and then dumping us god knows where.”

Monday morning, I cursed the alleged Greenway in much more colorful language.

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Shoney’s or Bust

In a roundabout way, I just really amused myself and got a little trip down memory lane. Randomly, at the end of a post, Cook Eat Fret sent me to the following link:

Shoney‘s

Yeah, that Shoney’s. Now click the link. And once you’ve laughed, close the window. Otherwise the terrible music starts–complete with yokel-y whistling–and the pictures of the food start–and lord knows, you don’t want to scorch that onto your little eyeballs.

I’d laugh even harder, except: I kinda like Shoney’s. Or I used to, the last time I at there, which was probably at least half my lifetime ago (that’s 18 years, people–18 years! holy crapola).

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