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From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
This will have to be quick today. It’s been crazy here and I’m once again on a deadline. Some day I’ll be able to actually cook more than stir-fry and salads again. But let’s have some fun tonight. I thought in honor of our friends at Balloon-Juice’s “LOUDMOUTHS ACROSS AMERICA TOUR 2012” it might be fun to put together some road food for their trip.
JeffreyW thinks sandwiches are the perfect trip food:
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And he has a treasure trove of mouth-watering sandwich ideas, right here
I like the idea of a flavorful sandwich, I mean what’s to argue with there? For my car trips, I often pick up a bag of Vic’s popcorn and some mixed nuts. Then I always make a batch of something sweet to take along, too. Last couple of trips it’s been Orange Cookies (recipe below). What do think our intrepid explorers should take with them to North Carolina? Anyone else going to be there? Who else thinks this trip is going to be epic? Can’t wait for the videos…
Orange Cookies
¼ cup milk
2 tsp lemon juice
½ cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp orange zest
¼ cup orange juice
½ tsp vanilla
1 ¾ cups flour
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
dash salt
½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts or almonds
bowl & baking sheet
Add lemon juice to milk and let set for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, cream butter & sugar, add egg, orange peel, orange juice, vanilla, & milk. Mix well. Sift together dry ingredients, then add to butter mixture. Add nuts. Refrigerate 15 minutes or more (keep refrigerated between batches, also).
Drop by teaspoons full to baking sheet. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Makes 3 dozen.
srv
Nom nom nom… Jennifer Rubin is upset with Akin
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/social-conservative-leaders-blow-it/2012/08/23/80c8814e-ed57-11e1-9ddc-340d5efb1e9c_blog.html
nom nom nom
Mike in NC
Our neighbors with a condo in Charlotte know some great places to eat. I’ll have to ask for a list…
PurpleGirl
What is the sammich in the picture? I looked at the link but didn’t see anything explaining it. The other sammichs look really good.
butler
@PurpleGirl: It looks like a Cubano sandwich, big in Florida.
ETA: Although its hard to be sure, looking closer it doesn’t quite look like a normal Cubano. Maybe its a derivative.
sfinny
Love the sammiches. Dinner tonight was a tuna melt on sourdough bread with swiss cheese and sliced half sour pickles.
Corner Stone
@PurpleGirl: Looks like some kind of bastardized Cuban. A Fidel Jr., if you will.
For some strange reason it reminds me of the fried bologna sammiches we made when I was a boy and we were on a camping site. We never put red onions or pickles in there but the meat seems to call my name somehow.
Those were the freakin’ days man. Cutting a little triangle in the bolonie to let it fry flat in a cast iron pan over an open fire. Then slapping it in between some fresh baked bread with some mayo on it, and a slice or two of whatever cheese someone had bought.
Food of the gods my friends, fit for childish kings.
Dee Loralei
I’m gonna find out this Saturday if I get my free credentials to the Presidents speech! Wish me luck. If it does happen, some of my other OFA members and I are gonna road trip, leaving Wed evening, then driving all night so we can hang all day in Charlotte, and then find some place to sleep Thursday night and drive back to Memphis on Friday.
ETA: I want people who are attending to meet up Thursday sometime. Or exchange twitter names or numbers somewhere. I’d love to meet folks!
I was going to pack some of my smoked pepperjack turkey breast (brined in Jack Daniels and a crust of pepper and sugar and then spritzed during smoking with more Jack Daniels. ) It’s very nummy.
For Jeffrey, I make a basil mayo and serve it on a croissant with swiss cheese too.
Dee Loralei
@Corner Stone: Elvis loved fried bologna sammies too! HA!
Villago Delenda Est
This.is.BRILLIANT!
PurpleGirl
butler and Corner Stone: Thanks for the answers. Yes, it does look like a version of a Cuban. I had one in Miami years ago — a little hole in the wall Cuban place with great food at the northern end of South Beach.
Dee Loralei
Yea but Cubanos have roast pork, not salami. Though Jeffrey’s sammie looks great! and now I am hungry!
Also, I’d love to meet up with fellow BJers at the DNC. How can we arrange this?
TaMara (BHF)
I don’t think I’ve told you guys the story of how I ended up at the DNC in 2008. It was kinda fun. Friend flew out to stay with me (I live outside Denver)and partake in the festivities. We had no credentials, but downtown Denver was like a circus, so we didn’t care.
Late on the day of nomination, my friend caught up with his representative from IL at his hotel, (frickin’ IL people!) and as we were standing there, he came up to us and said, “oh, yeah, I was just downstairs talking with Barack.” I was awestruck just by being that close.
Anyway my friend and the IL rep talked for a while, the rep walked away and came back a few minutes later with the hologram passes. It took me a full 5 seconds to realize what he handed me. And just like that, we were going to be witnesses to history. No time to prepare, we were ushered to the stadium and the night was cool and electric. To be in that stadium with 80K people who were as excited as I was to witness this monumental event. Breathtaking.
I still have the hologram pass hanging in my office.
? Martin
Law of nature: all sandwiches are good. I’ll take any meal and convert it to sandwich form.
But my grandfather’s favorite were toasted spam and peanut butter sandwiches. Give it a try if you find yourself with a can of spam. That happens around here a lot – we have a large Korean population and they’re quite fond of recipes that involve spam, so it shows up all over the place.
TaMara (BHF)
@? Martin: My brothers love peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches.
I do not think I’ve ever had spam. Am I deprived?
? Martin
@TaMara (BHF):
Yes. Sorry, Spam may not be great food, but it is an American Icon and deserves to be consumed at least once.
Villago Delenda Est
@TaMara (BHF):
Breaded spam with pineapple slices on top.
It’s very very plebeian, but it’s also, at least to me, very good.
TaMara (BHF)
@? Martin: @Villago Delenda Est:
Great, now I have to go out and buy some spam.
Off to sleep now, it’s been some week.
? Martin
Ok, this is TaMara and jeffreyw’s challenge: Thursday Night Spam recipes. Something we can cook up after the Republican Apocalypse – since Spam has a shelf life of, probably forever.
YellowJournalism
@? Martin: I grew up in a pro-Spam household with a mom who found delicious ways to work with it, so I never understood te hate outside of health reasons. I have to say, though, that the best way to eat it was to dip pieces of fried Spam into the syrup of my pancakes. So bad, I know…
SatanicPanic
@TaMara (BHF): Damn I envy you, I would have loved to attend
Re: spam – you’re not missing much, but if you ever visit Hawaii you practially have to eat it
? Martin
@YellowJournalism: The hate comes from poor people that nearly relied on it as their main source of protein. Anything you have to eat too much of due to poverty goes on the hate list. I can provide you my list of ‘poor food’ I had to endure as a kid that might be awesome, but I’ll never ever eat again.
Worth reviewing.
Yutsano
@TaMara (BHF): OH. MY. GRAVY. You sooo need to go to Hawai’i and get Spam musubi. Or if you’re lucky find it locally. It tastes so much better than a processed pork product really should!
@YellowJournalism: Fried Spam is quite delicious, but it does have to be caramelized well or it just doesn’t work. When it is though, it’s crispy and salty and oh so delicious.
You’d never know I have a Jewish father sometimes. :)
KeithinOhio
Why is Mitt Romney’s campaign site advertised on this blog?
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
Another law of nature: a pizza is just a hot open-faced sandwich.
ETA: @? Martin:
Some suggestions:
egg and spam
egg, bacon, and spam
egg, bacon, sausage, and spam
spam, bacon, sausage, and spam
spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam
spam, sausage, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato, and spam
Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.
? Martin
@KeithinOhio:
Caz
PurpleGirl
I do eat spam. What I really like and can’t find in too many stores in NYC is scrapple. Cut thin and pan fried… yum.
Yutsano
@PurpleGirl: Go to Pennsylvania. Scrapple is a German dish by origin. My grandmother made it and I LOVED it!
sfinny
@Roger Moore: Regarding pizza and spam, one time in Mexico the special pizza from Domino’s was their Hawaiian pizza which featured spam and pineapple. Plus jalapenos cause it was Mexico. It was really popular and was everywhere.
Roger Moore
@sfinny:
I can imagine that a Hawaiian pizza with spam instead of ham would work pretty well. And jalapenos seem like they’d work pretty well with that, at least in something vaguely resembling moderation. My own twist on the Hawaiian pizza is to blend some pineapple in with the tomatoes when making the sauce. Other pizzas I’ve made:
Duck breast with orange sauce instead of tomato
Reuben (rye crust, sauerkraut, Russian dressing, and Gruyere)
Quesadilla (guacamole, queso quesadilla, and carnitas)
Chile Verde (sauce and topping in one!)
PurpleGirl
@Yutsano: Did a quick Google and found a web site with information about places to find it in NYC — including the Union Square Greenmarket. Saturday morning, greenmarket here I come.
? Martin
@Yutsano: Specifically, go to Stoltzfus Meats in Intercourse or Stoney’s in Lemoyne. Great scrapple at both places. Well, at least used to be 25 years ago. I’m sure both are still there – they were ancient 25 years ago.
YellowJournalism
@? Martin: I was thinking more of food snobs (not foodies–there is a difference) with my hate comment, but I took a look at your links and…
Holy shit. My mom grew up poor (lost her dad at age seven, one of six kids, welfare in the 1950s), so her expertise with Spam and all sorts of canned and frozen foods came from that experience. I never thought of the connection to why we got so much (and still do) at Christmas compared to our friends’ families (even the rich ones). She has mentioned a few times over the year about sacrificing at Christmas, especially to my crazy aunt who had to have everything despite the family circumstance. I know she got in trouble a few years for going overboard, too.
My dad’s family was anything but poor (small-town society people), so he took these experiences as new and exciting while my mom was just living how and in reaction to what she’d learned. Thanks for that post.
Oh, and my mom fried Spam perfectly. Still does! Unfortunately, I’m a lousy cook and a decent baker at best, so my poor kids know the thrill of frozen food way too often when I’m cooking. Thank god for my husband!
? Martin
@YellowJournalism: That cracked piece, and the other one about being poor are dead-fucking-on-the-money. Made my kids read both of them.
But I still remember when I was little asking my mom why she stopped eating dinner with me and her telling me she wasn’t hungry anymore (my dad had taken a new job a few hundred miles away and while it was a raise, the split living setup made us even poorer for a while until we could get moved). Eventually we dug out of that hole, but it cost a marriage.
The cost on me is that I’m hyper-self-sufficient. A lot of that came from my grandfather, who taught me everything, but we never hired anyone to do anything. We almost never went out to eat. I thought we did it because that’s what people do – they convert their yard into a vegetable garden, cook all their meals, repair everything themselves. Learned later that no, we were just poor.
I’m not poor, but I still do all of that. It drives me fucking crazy to hire someone to do something I know I can do – even when I don’t have time to do it.
sfinny
@Roger Moore: Your pizza’s sound great, well except for the Rueben one where the sauerkraut could swamp the whole thing. The spam pizza in Mexico was pretty good, with the fresh salsa to pile on.
Roger Moore
@sfinny:
You have to drain it very thoroughly. I actually spread it on a tea towel, roll it up, and wring it out to get some extra juice out. You also have to be careful with the Russian dressing to make sure it doesn’t leak oil when it’s heated, which causes a mess. I’ve pretty much concluded it’s more effort than it’s worth, even though I dearly love a good Reuben.
TheOtherWA
@? Martin: Koreans like Spam too? Interesting. Hawaiians like it a lot. I went to a Hawaiian themed party recently, and they served Spam sushi. I had to try it. And it was good!
sfinny
@Roger Moore: Hey, I love a good Reuben but the actual performance of the sandwich alone is difficult. Translating it to pizza?
? Martin
@TheOtherWA: Yeah, very popular in Korean recipes. Apparently it took off after the war but Spam sold there is higher quality than elsewhere and relatively expensive. But it’s really common in fried rice and to contrast the flavor of kimchi. The regular grocery store might have a dozen cans of the stuff, but the Asian stores have tons of it in stock. I’ve been told its getting more popular in China as well.
Anne Laurie
@TheOtherWA:
The explanation I’ve heard from Hawaiians is that, pre-1960s, everything that wasn’t grown on the islands was shipped in slow boats, and that meant canned meats because fresh meat didn’t keep well enough. So people grew up eating it, and it became ‘comfort food’.
Korea was really, really poor up into the 1970s, so I suspect Spam may have the same nostalgia factor, especially since I remember it being one of the all-American products USAID sold cheaply to our “partners against the Red Menace” after WWII.
Roger Moore
@sfinny:
I won’t argue the point, which is part of the reason I’ve given up on the idea of the Reuben pizza. It might be more accurate to say that I’m always on the lookout for a good Reuben because hardly anyone does them right. They skimp on the sauerkraut or the bread is cheap “rye” that’s basically wonder with a few caraway seeds in it or the sandwich is so soggy by the time you get it that it disintegrates as you bite into it. I’ll almost always try the Reuben at any place that sells one, but I’m disappointed 9 times out of 10. I guess continuing to look proves I’m an optimist.
? Martin
@Roger Moore: I should try making the reuben pizza. I think it’s quite viable. It’d be easy to modify my pizza dough recipe to rye. High enough heat should take care of sauerkraut sogginess – and thankfully I can get Krüegermann sauerkraut. (Who knew you could find good sauerkraut in L.A.?) I’d cook it on the grill, probably as a smallish pizza due to how heavy it’d be and therefore hard to manage.
You know, making a soft rye pretzel dough for the crust might be just the ticket. It’d have more heft than a usual pizza dough and would go quite nicely.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Anne Laurie: My mom has a real aversion to Spam, based on memories from her childhood, when there was rationing in Ireland during WW2.
raven
wow 2hrs?
jeffreyw
@PurpleGirl: salami, pepperoni, ham, provolone, and pepper jack with whole grain mustard, on a home made bun
jeffreyw
@butler: My Cubano
jeffreyw
@raven: yo
raven
@jeffreyw: What it is?
jeffreyw
@raven: it is coffee time
burnspbesq
I have fond memories of long-ago road trips that we’re fueled by Freihofer’s chocolate chip cookies.
More recently, the road-trip food of choice has been Trader Joe’s buffalo jerky.
raven
@jeffreyw: Gotta get the doggies and bride up for that morning walk to the bakery.