John & Belle Have A Blog

Candyland

This is funny because it's true. I love kheer (rice pudding) and generally have a high tolerance for Indian desserts, but there's some large swathes of candy-like stuff I just don't get. Little orange piles of noodley things? Squares of um...something? With silver leaf on them (admittedly cool.)

Obama Returns From India With These Gross Candies For Everyone

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama returned from a recent diplomatic visit to India with several boxes of these disgusting candies that taste, smell, and look really weird, grossed-out White House sources reported Monday. "I feel bad for not wanting to eat them, but they're just awful," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, adding that Obama set the candies out in a common area and frequently checked to determine if anyone was eating the disgusting things. "They make me want to puke. One is like this log of sour paste surrounded by some kind of seeds, and another is really hard but tastes like soap. I think these jellied things might be aloe-flavored." Gibbs also confirmed that Obama's attempt to prepare aloo gobhi, an Indian dish consisting of cauliflower and potatoes sautéed in garam masala, stunk up the entire White House.

On a related holiday note, good garam masala (from the Indian store) is an incredible way to pep up traditional sweets such as pumpkin pie, gingersnaps, gingerbread, and the like. Not one that's heavy on the cumin, obviously, but many adapt to a sweet flavor profile beautifully and will have people asking why the gingerbread is so good. Usually the answer to all such dessert-related questions is "there's an incredibl amount of unsalted butter in there," so it's nice to be able to say "it's garam masala" for a change.

Halloween

The costume we ordered to make Violet a "candy-corn witch" won't get here quite in time for her to wear it to school Friday, so now we have paid for it and I have to sew one anyway. This seems sub-optimal. We are having a fun Halloween party, much of it taking place in our yard, as long as those poisonous caterpillers are really all dead. They seemed dead. John and I went on a revolting binge of killing them a few weeks back in an attempt to save a tree which was otherwise going to be an etch-a-sketch drawing in ten minutes. They were brilliant scarlet and black, and full of thick, green ichor. Later we learned they're poisonous. Reflecting on it, that's pretty much how nature tells you things are poisonous; look: I'm striped crimson and black with extra yellow bits! It's probably better we didn't know at the time, or we might not have been as ruthless. I should totally make this cake, though, right?

My mom is rolling her eyes, but this is way easier than some cakes I considered. You just twist the marshmallows into twisty triangles! That's all there is to it!

I Knew This Day Would Come

Last night at the fine Italian restaurant La Nonna (warning, flash page wth stupid camera-shutter noise) two humorous things ocurred. One, Zoe can actually read now and said "Oh my God restaurants are so expensive!!!" with genuine horror. Which, yeah, pretty much. Which is why we don't eat there all the time, but my kids have no doubt eaten in expensive restaurants approximately 500 times as often as I had at their age, and are generally rather blase about things like that. This restaurant used to have wild boar ragu with penne, which the girls loved and would split. They removed it, and there was nothing perfect for a while, but they have now insituted a one free pizza per child policy (of a reasonable, thin, 8-inch in diameter pizza) and have oxtail ragu with pappardelle, making for the perfect combination, since Violet and I can split pasta and John can eat Violet's pizza. House-made pappardelle, they are super-tender and good. Secondly, somehow it came up that I didn't know what Kirby Krackle was. Zoe turned to me with perfect seriousness and said, "have you read Kirby's 'The Demon'"? I was dying but, what could I say but yes? And it turned out Kirby Krackle is perfectly obvious and I would have figured it out myself eventually, but to have a 9-year-old be like, Mom, you know, in the spash page of the Demon Etrigan?, where...etc. A child of mine! I told John he is raising cute girls that will break the hearts of nerds of whatever gender, but he seems OK with that. I guess the only way it could have been worse would have been if it were Devil Dinosaur.

Greedy

This is a funny story of blogger hubris run wild:

A young food blogger who demanded that he and his three companions be given free meals at an upscale restaurant in the Joo Chiat area has sparked a huge furore online. The group of four had walked into Private Affairs, a small but exclusive eatery in Joo Chiat, for its Sunday champagne brunch promotion that costs S$68++ per person. The blogger in question, Brad Lau, who runs a food blog called ladyironchef had informed the management on Friday that he would be coming down to review the Sunday Brunch promotion. On the day itself, he and his partner came down at about 130pm, followed by his two other companions, each of whom came down half an hour apart. According to Private Affairs’ operations director Ross Valentine,  the four of them had brunch until 430pm, even when the restaurant’s official brunch hours was from 1130 am to 330pm. Brad and his partner also enjoyed two glasses of champagne each. 

When presented with the final bill of $435, the blogger initially refused to pay and repeatedly told the restaurant’s chef, “I never pay for food in any restaurant.” The restaurant eventually offered to waive off the cost of the meal for him and his partner as well as the cost of the champagne out of goodwill, thus lowering the bill to $159. Still upset but finally relenting to pay, the blogger then threw his credit card onto the bar counter in front of the cashier before storming out. 

His site is down and the newspeople can't get him. To the brave belong the fair, and all...but I can't imagine trying this stunt.

Aviatrix!

I've been searching for the name of this amazing series of books for ages, ever since I read them in Georgetown, S.C., and at last, through the magic of the intertubes, I have found them. The Linda Carlton series, published in the early 30's, is about a girl pilot who eventually acquires her own gyrocopter, thereby becoming the most bad-ass person ever in my 11-year-old eyes. John just scored me the first three on Abe books, but the last two of the series are apparently incredibly rare, which is making me gnash my teeth over the fact that I had the fourth one at one time. Then again, that was basically when my family was at its brokest, so maybe I just checked it out of the library. My mom was working on an assembly line for a while, during which time my step-dad contributed to life by taking me and Ben to the beach on Pawley's Island, drinking beer, and having us all sing the Rolling Stones song "Factory Girl" when we picked her up after work in our 1967 convertible Camaro, white with red leather interior. That car was the bomb. (But the song really pissed her off). Later she got some office-type job, and used to steal food, like packets of Lance crackers, from the break room for us to eat at home. Other than that we mainly just ate beans and rice, box macaroni and cheese, and chicken, first roast, then as salad, then as soup. Being poor sucks. The kids at school made fun of my shoes because they were from Payless rather than being branded tennis shoes. My mom believes that my firm determination to acquire and wear the best clothes and shoes ever (a determination to which my bursting closet bears witness) was born in this merciless crucible.

Tofutti Break!!

This letter to Slate's tedious Prudence reminded me of the classic Mr. Show skit.

Dear Prudie,
I have a question about employee recognition. At my company, when a colleague does something great—secures a new account, exceeds a goal, etc.—everyone is called into the lobby. The person's supervisor announces what she did, and she has to dance in front of everyone. I've heard that public speaking is the most common fear, and public dancing has to be up there, especially when you're the only one dancing and everyone is watching you. I've been with the company for three months, and I have been forced to dance three times. How can I let the company know that public humiliation is not a valid form of employee recognition? Let me take an afternoon off, get me a Starbucks gift card, or just give me a handwritten note. This forced dancing is encouraging me to fly under the radar and aim for mediocrity.

—Ballerina Not in Job Description

Like, what? And she has to dance? Do male employees never secure new accounts or whatever? Very dubious. Arbeit macht speil. And oh, God, I had forgotten about Jeepers Creepers!

F%^&#$g Racists, How Do They Work?

This is a really moving essay by Roger Ebert, partly about the school mural being painted and re-painted in Prescott, AZ, and partly about his own journey from the racism that formed the background of his youth. I'll pull a quote but the whole thing is great:

At some time during the years after the day I sat on the floor and looked at that little boy's palm, something happened inside me and I saw black people differently--and brown people and Asians as well. I made friends, I dated, I worked with them, I drank with them, we cooked, we partied, we laughed, sometimes we loved. This is as it should have been from the start of my life, but I was born into a different America and was a child of my times until I learned enough to grow up. I do not propose myself as an example, because I was carried along with my society as it awkwardly felt and fought its way out of racism.

He writes about his changed attitudes without self-congratulation, and it's lovely to read.

Zoë cracked me up bad at dinner the other night (it was my birthday, and we went out for Italian food). We were talking about the oil spill in the gulf and how I was so scared it might come up the east coast too. She said she wanted to bop the oil company president on the head, and we all agreed that seemed reasonable. Then I mentioned that some politicians were proposing a cap on damages, and she wanted to know why. I said, well, they're Republicans, and they serve the interests of big business and of rich people generally. Zoë, totally deadpan: "don't they also serve the interests of white people who don't like black people?" BAM.

Fried Chicken: Not Actually Hard To Make

From Ta-Nehisi, and all so very true:

Not that I'm able to make much these days. Still, when I was kid and first learned my way around the kitchen, the sense was that part of the beauty of fried chicken  was its simplicity--some flour, egg, salt, pepper, and maybe some kind of herbalism. If you were fancy you had thyme, but most negroes were fine with Season-All. Hook up some potato salad real quick, and you were on.

These days, when I look up a fried chicken recipe it tends to be a 48-hour affair including brining, buttermilk, bay-leaves, and double-binding.  When did this happen? Were we all eating bad fried chicken as kids? Is this a nefarious plan to get us to cut back on fatty foods? It's definitely working. The one advantage of all these new and complicated recipes, is that they're so much work, that I can only see myself frying a chicken once a decade.

1. Put some flour, salt and pepper and a tiny but of cayenne in a empty Piggly Wiggly* plastic bag.
2. Put a few pieces of raw chicken in there and shake it around till they're coated.
3. Get the deep, melted Crisco, or lard, or even peanut oil in a cast-iron Dutch oven so bubbling hot that you start to worry about fatal burns. My dad always taught me to let a piece of stale bread fry in there while it heats so it doesn't blow up in some unspecified way (a superheated bubble from underneath bursts to the surface?), and while I don't know if this is true, I've never dared skip it, so...
4. Fry the chicken. Don't crowd the pan too bad. Turn it over and fry it till the other side is golden too.
5. Let it stay warm in a merely warm oven on a bunch of paper towels until the rest is done.
6. Eat it. It is also good cold for a picnic.
*Not actually crucial.

Indian Rojak Sales Down Across the Island

Another person died from the Indian rojak food poisoning thing, one remains in a coma, and one woman miscarried, sadly.  I was reassured in my distaste for Indian rojak when a Singaporean friend shared her similar feelings. It's not just that all this greasy fried stuff is just sitting around at room temperature, it's that some of it is dyed a lurid red. And deep-fried battered hot dogs, just not very appetizing. There are some photos here but none of them show the scary red stuff. This random discussion is kind of interesting, in terms of revealing prejudices, anyway. I don't actually know whether the people running the stall were non-Singaporean Indians, as some of the commenters imply. I didn't actually think that type of worker could work in a hawker stall; most of the foreign workers you see are construction workers/highway maintenance types (all men, from Bangladesh or China for the most part) or domestic workers (all women, from the Philippines, Indonesia, and others). The people who clean up at the hawker centres, taking the plates away and so on, are always Singaporean. Singapore is a place with many foreign workers, and those workers are legally treated very differently from citizens. (I mean, different minimum wages, days off, and so forth, which makes them much cheaper to employ.) It will be interesting to see whether attitudes towards foreign workers might become negative as the economic downturn goes on.

Rojak

A woman here in Singapore has died and 100 others have been sickened by an outbreak of food poisoning at a Geylang Serai rojak stall.  My first thought was that it must have been Malay rojak given the location, but reading the articles I see it was, in fact, Indian rojak.

Many customers turned up to find the stall shuttered, unaware that other than Mdm Aminah, at least 30 others - including children - have been warded at CGH, Tan Tock Hospital and KK Hospital.

This is the first time they have heard of a major food poisoning incident in the market, said hawkers and regular customers.

Some like material controller Omar Ahmad expressed surprise as the stall has been around for 20 years. Some said they would still buy from it when it re-opens.

Mr Omar, 56, said he ordered from it every weekend. “At first when I saw that it was closed, I thought they were taking a holiday.”

Mdm Rabeah Samson thinks the food poisoning might have less to do with the stall than with the surroundings. “I’ll not lose trust in the stall as nothing happened to me the previous times I ate from it,” said the 54-year-old housewife.

“But the environment in the centre is not very clean. Sometimes there is rubbish around and it is very near to the wet market.”

But banking officer Yeni Sani, 32, said: “I don’t think it’s the hygiene level of the stall or the centre. It’s a one-off incident, hopefully it won’t happen again.”

Hawkers at the market told TODAY that an Indian father and son team operate the stall with three workers.

A chicken rice seller who only wanted to be known as Mr Man said the stall owner was probably unaware of the mass food poisoning as he turned up on Saturday morning to set up the stall.

Inspectors from the National Environment Agency (NEA) came to close it down at about 8am, said Mr Man.

“He (the stall owner) looked ‘blur’ when the officers talked to him.”

A satay seller who didn’t want to be identified, said “The stall owner is usually very friendly. I’m shocked because he has been in the business for so long.”

 

Looking or being 'blur' is a distinctively Singaporean state of mind, and it's pretty much just what you think: confused or spaced out.

Malay (or Indonesian) rojak is a kind of mixed-up salad of fruits and/or vegetables and/or ginger buds, with a delicious sweet/spicy sauce of gula melaka (palm sugar) and chilis and tamarind and stuff, and is really delicious. Indian rojak is, in my opinion, not so great. You make your own selection  from an assortment of little fried items, savory doughnuts, battered prawn fritters, etc. I know, you're thinking, what could be wrong with little fried things? Well...something. They're room temperature and greasy, not chaat-like and yummy. I don't know, obviously Singaporeans don't agree with me as there are probably 5 times as many Indian rojak stalls as Malay ones. Maybe I haven't been to the right rojak stalls. Singaporeans also use 'rojak' where Americans would say 'melting pot', to refer to the harmonious mix of people here (and in Malaysia too).