Where gluttony might be tolerated: Sweet and Savory

"Dear Members of the Class of 2011:

You are warmly invited to attend...
A Study Break hosted by President Drew Faust
"Sweet and Savory"

This is an opportunity you do not want to miss!
Come enjoy the amazing food, the company of your fellow freshmen, music, dancing, and a chance to mix and mingle with President Faust!

For those who like SWEET - it's a dessert lover's dream!
Including chocolate covered strawberries, fresh fruit, cheesecake with strawberry sauce, fudge layer cake, chocolate raspberry cake, and more!

For those who prefer SAVORY - it's munchies madness!
Including a potato skins bar, a nacho bar, and all the fixings you could imagine!

Music provided by DJ BC."

My friends had been buzzing about the study break a few days ago, and even ate less for dinner in hopes of indulging themselves on nachos. Needless to say, the hype extended to the freshman class, and by 9:15, there were crowds filling their plates with cake. A quick summary:

The amount of available sugar was astounding. While the advertised chocolate raspberry cake was a no-show, petits fours did take its place. Out of boxes, the cake was somewhat dry; in particular, the frosting was slightly hardened. The sweets weren't the high point - but the fruit was. Thankfully, my dorm entryway came early to grab chocolate-covered strawberries before they ran out. Actually, my roommate enjoyed getting fruit besides typical mealy apples and gladly went for blueberries.

The potato skins were my favorite, admittedly because I hadn't had any since I had left for college. I was impressed by the fact that dining services did carve out the potato flesh, resulting a nice hollow for my mushrooms-and-cheese-sauce filling. The consensus among my table was that this was the best pseudo-meal since Drew Faust's inauguration dinner (which involved sparkling cider, Grape-Nuts ice cream, and butternut squash tortellini, all made within 100 miles of Cambridge. Fortunately, the latter has made several appearances since October).

And yes, some people did dance...though the mood in the 'Berg was like orientation all over again.

A fitting attempt to compensate for the finals week looming in the background?

Upon return, false expectations

Where dinner and theatre meet...a video from 2006.



...so that's why they call it dinner theatre. (Again, the Annenberg in question is the freshman dining hall.)

Ice Cream: the Gateway Drug to...Froyo?

Once upon a time, it was a balmy September week in Boston: orientation time. As the freshmen scurried along from one social event to another, one thing stayed constant: Herrell's. Though distinguished with its rows of "Best of Boston" plaques, the Boston institution was omnipresent:

Back tables of Annenberg? Check.
Dorm social? Check.
Club raffle? Check.
The pile of $1 coupons I got off the street? Check.

As a young, eager freshman, I remember the feeling. It was only a few months ago that my September consisted of Herrell's, Herrell's and more Herrell's (and thankfully not the effects of the freshman fifteen). I must have had Herrell's ice cream an average of six times per week. After the first day of orientation, I knew that in Herrell's flavor-speak, malted chocolate really meant "haute Ovaltine" and oh! that chocolate pudding flavor was to swoon for. Not to mention the thick, almost chewy-caramel texture of the ice cream...and the fact that their peppermint flavor looked natural (that is, it sure wasn't green like what I had been used to). I unabashedly pronounced Herrell's the best ice cream in Boston - nay, the world.

Well, that opinion hasn't flip-flopped yet...but my consumption has.

-------

In mid-September, I received an invite (through Facebook) to try out Berryline. A new frozen yogurt store that had recently opened, it looked like a Pinkberry knockoff to me.

I wasn't impressed. After all, my first time trying "legit" froyo was at Yo!Berry. Which was refreshing, but sour and "healthy-tasting" enough for me to imagine that active cultures were gnawing my way through my intestine. And this place had even incorporated the "berry" into their name, again. In any case, I halfheartedly emailed my sister (a Yo!Berry fanatic), and she decided to try it.

She ended up hooked.

And...well, me too. The colorful paintings lining the walls made the place feel like the hip Harvard version of the Digital Bean, in which I once envisioned spending my peppy, Disney-saturated adolescence. (The Digital Bean is to Lizzie McGuire as Central Perk was to Friends.) Thanks to the 125-calorie-for-five-ounces small serving and the "buy ten, get one free deal, " I reasoned that I was probably losing calories and getting a free froyo on the ten-minute walk over.

Let's not forget the yogurt, too: the crust was icy, but the interior was so creamy that it almost felt like ice cream. But not typical ice cream goodness: flavors I sampled over the semester included mango (my personal favorite), green tea, acai (the new, trendy berry), blueberry and pomegranate. Sweet and healthy.

Later towards the holiday season, they handed out their first non-fruit flavor besides original vanilla: peppermint. (In fact, upon discovering this, I jumped up and down and screamed "peppermint!" My roommate hasn't stopped telling this little anecdote.) And yet the draw for many of my friends was the fresh fruit: after fighting each other for the remaining grapes at Annenberg, they suddenly found that they could get mango, raspberries or even blackberries on top of their froyo - in December.

So it's suddenly easy to understand the addiction: all the 10 pm rendezvouses, study breaks and roomie trips you can imagine (that's right, at one point pulling in at five times a week). And with their promise of free Wi-fi access, I suddenly had an excuse to go by myself. (Even if I didn't bring anything except my wallet, which at this point was being used exclusively for Berryline expenses. By the way, thanks to Peer Advising Fellow - PAF - John, who funded one random trip when he saw my roommate and I there on a Thursday night.)

In essence, I started - to put it bluntly - stalking Berryline, finding out what their flavors were and memorizing store hours. I wasn't the only one: the owners (post-docs at Harvard and MIT) and the store got press, press, press. (The story of how Berryline happened to be is feel-good. I daresay the froyo's better.) When I headed to Berryline at night, there'd be a line stretching outside the door. In one case, a 10:30 pm Friday craving with my roommate put me behind a inebriated girl who needed two extra larges to satisfy her and a couple friends' own cravings.

And now I have a purpose for my Secret Santa gift certificates, because of this week's specialty flavors. Despite being at home, I immediately sent out an email to a few dormmates:

"Um, could we schedule a Berryline run sometime this weekend? Current flavors are original, raspberry and choco cookies 'n cream..."

The result: immediate responses within an hour.

"How do you know that?? Is there a website or something? and YES i NEED
raspberry!!!! HURRY AND COME HOME!!!!!!!!!!!"

"YES we SHALL GO!!!! HIP HIP HOORAY!"

"I would really, really, like to experience the RASPBERRY flavor..."

You said it.

-------

I don't mean to say that Berryline has converted me into anti-ice cream...or anti-Herrell's. But in Ec10, we learned that frozen yogurt and ice cream are essentially substitutes for one another. It's hard for me to say goodbye to Herrell's, so I won't. (In a case of dairy polygamy, I might get some pumpkin cheesecake ice cream when I return. It's hard to say though; I didn't check their flavors like I did with Berryline.) But the raspberry froyo beckons me: hello, hello again, Berryline!

The Schnoz and the Madeleine

Two things about me, if you care to know:

1. My New Year's resolution is to read Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. If I manage to make it through the colossus, then it's time for A la recherche du temps perdu (the original French; given this title, In Search of Lost Time is a better English title in light of the literal translation).

Ha.

2. My current status is as follows: sick.

That is, stuffy nose, sneezing, excess Kleenex consumption, sore throat that borders on a lost voice, etc.: stuff that should have been solved by a few Sudafeds, but wasn't.

So how do these two things relate?

Well, I decided to start on the Proust because two of my Christmas presents this year were books with Proust in the title - Proust was a Neuroscientist and Proust and the Squid. The latter discusses the process of reading and the development of language while in the former, author Jonah Lehrer details eight scenarios in which artists seemingly anticipated what neuroscientists would later observe in the brain - sense of self, innate grammar...and most relevant to this blog, taste.

(My sister accused me of wanting Proust was a Neuroscientist because it had a picture of a madeleine in the center of the cover. I can't deny that, but I should point out that the madeleine in the book - as in so many other literary commentaries - is only referred to in the context of memory, not buttery goodness.)

In any case, the case study is Auguste Escoffier, a 19th century French chef well-known not only for serving meals in hot, fresh courses (a not-so-luxurious practice at the time) but for his flavorful sauces - specifically veal stock. What made Escoffier's sauces - the creations which he considered "scientifically constructed" - so delicious to any and all eaters?

The answer: L-glutamate, which Japanese scientist Kikunae Ineda discovers, and whose taste he calls "unami." And later on, studies find that our tongues have buds for this flavor, along with the four other tastes (sweet, sour, bitter and salty). Unami (occasionally called the savory flavor) now has its own receptor; Lehrer adds that it's the reason why adding parmesan cheese to tomato sauce makes it even better. In Emeril-lingo, it kicks the unami up a notch. (Notably, Ineda eventually developed this into the form of MSG. That's right, guys - the "Mmm, So Good!" ingredient in my rice cracker addiction.)

The similarities that Lehrer plays up in comparing the frames of "then/humanities" and "now/neuroscience" are pretty clear in this scenario, though I do think Lehrer stretches the selected artists' perspectives and the metaphors of their work to "prove" recent developments in neuroscience. (For those of you who end up reading it, I thought Stavinsky's projected attitude of "if we build it, they will come" modern music was a bit out of context with the idea of brain plasticity with regard to sound; that is, our perspective of how music is supposed to be can change as we listen to different kinds of music). That said, it's a good effort in straddling disciplines.

Especially this week, it also reinforced the idea that 90% of your eating experience - not accounting for the dining environment - centers around the scent. With my stuffy nose, I can barely taste anything. I can "feel" if something tastes sweet (like hot cocoa) or hot (curry chicken - if I tried hard enough, I could hear my taste buds sizzle), or sense the texture of my meal, but I don't actually get to taste the milky goodness or the spicy complex. Sigh.

I did, however, consume a ridiculous amount of wasabi today (at least for me; it was probably a little more than a portion for an average sushi eater. Wasabi, after all, is an acquired taste). I only felt a tiny burn in the back of my throat, though. How disappointing: I thought it would clear my sinuses.

Hot Pot, Hot Pot...

Survivor: China was the first season of Survivor that I actually watched more than one episode of, only because there was a DVR handy. (The delay on this post is proof of this fact.) In particular, one scene towards the end of the season caught my eye. As TV Grapevine puts it:

"Although Denise, Todd and Courtney seemed blown away by the sight of the Great Wall they spent their entire time complaining about the food they were provided [from the reward challenge]. It was a Chinese Hot Pot which none of the three knew anything about."

A brief definition: hot pot consists of a pot of steaming hot broth (usually chicken, although another meat base can be used). Various vegetables, thinly-sliced meat or seafood are placed by the pot, and it is the eater's job to put into the pot what he or she wants to eat at that time (by using individual mesh baskets with handles). When the food is fully cooked, the eater takes it out and eats it, after dipping it in a sauce - like a fondue, basically. The pot is kept hot throughout the meal, either by a gas/electric stove built into the table, or more commonly, a hot plate. It's also known as the onomatopoeic term "shabu-shabu," for the swishing sound the meat makes when cooked in the soup.

The variations on how people do hot pot are astounding. Some people cook with chicken broth, others splash a dash of chili sauce before boiling. Someone might make an all-seafood hot pot, while the next week, he or she might skip the scallops. Fried tofu? Soft tofu? It depends.

Then the matter of sauce expands hot pot possibilities, as people mix according to their individual tastes. Most Chinese families use a satay sauce - made out of brine shrimp - coupled with some soy sauce (to make the sauce more fluid), and then they add other garnishes, like cilantro. Some people add raw egg to their sauce for thickness as well (it's apparently better than hollandaise sauce). And one person I know adds a teaspoon of sugar to his sauce to "neutralize" the salty part, per his family tradition. Meanwhile, Japanese shabu-style restaurants (like Shabu-Zen, a new Boston favorite of mine) use a lighter, sweeter - almost vinegary - sort of soy sauce or even a peanut sauce. One adds chopped garlic, onions or hot pepper to this base at his or own discretion.

It's these regional differences that interest me the most. Sometimes, when I visit family friends for hot pot, I'm momentarily shocked that they don't put spinach in like we do at home. But ultimately, good soup is good soup. Case-in-point: not only is hot pot one of my favorite meals, it was my dinner tonight.

And so that's what peeved me about this segment of Survivor (if you'd like to look it up, it's episode 12: "Hello, I'm Still a Person"). The hot pot was part of the reward, so clearly it wasn't disgusting, not to mention too daunting to learn - in fact, there was a lot on the table, and it looked pretty good to me. What bothered me was that the Survivors were disgruntled about it and complained all the way to the Tribal Council.

It's fine to not take risks or to refuse something- admittedly, I like trying out "weird-looking" fruits more than I like more physically-trying feats. But in my opinion, it's another thing to complain about how other cultures do food (although cannibalism is another story). And honestly, hot pot is about boiling - not eating bugs or slugs or random pieces of cardboard, and it's fairly easy to do. Food flexibility shouldn't be too much of an issue...especially if you're a Survivor.

On milkshakes

"My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they're like, it's better than yours." - Kelis, "Milkshake"

Long before Urban Dictionary attempted to clarify Kelis' lyrics, I had long shied away from the milkshake. It's not that I was actually fearful of it - or even lactose-intolerant - but I questioned its legitimacy.

In fact, the ambiguous identity of the milkshake kept me at bay, until sometime this year; now I have a hesitant, though no longer estranged - relationship with this dairy curiosity. After all, milkshakes straddle the border between beverage and dessert. Why buy a milkshake if you can get a scoop of ice cream or even a slice of pecan pie (my fatal weakness)? Why drink a milkshake when you can get a caramel latte, an actual drink? What's the difference between a smoothie and a milkshake? And what the heck is a milkshake, at least in the Kelis sense? What makes a good milkshake? And what led me towards the milkshake lifestyle?

Well, read ahead.

1. Why drink milkshakes?
The cheater way to answer this question would be that it depends on your taste. That’s probably the right answer, too.

I can't quite elaborate on the superiority of the milkshake over other sweet substitutes, since I've never loved milkshakes for their texture. They felt too much like drinks, and not even one that satisfied my thirst. And how healthy you believe a milkshake is depends on the framing involved behind the marketing. The "milk" in the milkshake might suggest vitamin D or calcium, but a milkshake has as many calories as an ice cream sundae. After all, a milkshake has ice cream in it, too. On the other hand, a caramel latte, as a beverage, gives the impression of having less calories than either of the previous two options.

Yeah, right.

So I suppose it’s about whatever floats your boat. Although if you’re drinking milkshakes, I suppose there’s no banana boat involved.

2. What's the difference between a smoothie and a milkshake?

I'll hand over this job to Wikipedia: after all, if Wikipedia says it, it must be true:

"A milkshake is a sweet, cold beverage which is made from milk, ice cream, or iced milk, and sweet flavorings such as fruit syrup or chocolate sauce..."

A fairly basic definition. (Side note: I'm a huge fan of actual frozen milk - not the sherbet/sorbet concoction Wikipedia links to for "iced milk." Our freezer was set too cold, and I woke up five minutes before class scooping frozen skim out of the carton. Delicious - no sarcasm.)

"A smoothie is a blended, chilled, sweet beverage made from fresh fruit. It is sometimes blended with crushed ice, frozen fruit, or frozen yogurt, although it can be argued that adding these items makes the drink less of a smoothie and not entirely natural. They have a milkshake-like consistency which is thicker than slush drinks, but unlike milkshakes, they do not usually contain cow's milk or ice cream. Smoothies are marketed to health-conscious people..."

There we go: the difference is marked by non-fruit flavors (or fruit syrup) versus actual fruit, as well as a recurring lack of dairy.

So if smoothies don't involve dairy and "regular flavors," then how do we advocate for Jamba Juice's matcha smoothie imposter, aka the Matcha Green Tea Blast? Well, we don't have to - Jamba Juice's online menu doesn't refer to any of its items as smoothies. So when I complain about the icy texture on my Caribbean Passion, it's partially from the inherent definition of the smoothie, if not from a shortened blending time. On the other hand, Orange Julius' smoothies are creamy good impostors, by the Wikipedia definition.

Conclusion: whatever floats your boat. (Again.)

3. What is a Kelis-style milkshake?

Since it's a long-debated question among my fellow friends and dormmates, I can't give a conclusive answer here without an equally valid (or quoteworthy) retort. Unfortunately, the best bet for settling the dispute - Urban Dictionary (in lieu of a sketchier venue) - contains a variety of interpretations. Apologies for the bait-and-switch!

4. What makes a good milkshake?

Most people would probably say the richness or the quality of the ice cream involved: texture is key. (Did you know that in Boston, "milkshakes" are made with syrup and milk? Adding ice cream transforms the creamy concoction into a "frappe" in the Boston vernacular. Now that's good trivia.)

I take a different tack, though - I really don't like thick milkshakes. By those standards, my first time drinking a "legit milkshake" was actually last summer with my cousin Howard. Sitting in the Steak 'n Shake (which is open twenty-four hours, for the win) was quite enjoyable, but I underestimated the regular sized dark chocolate shake (approximately 20 ounces of short-run energy, topped off with real whipped cream and chocolate chips). Whoops. Since then, I've had an aversion to thick shakes - even at Herrell's, where as the Tufts Daily claims, "their milkshakes bring all the boys to Harvard Yard." and of all things, Bartley's Burgers. (Reviews for both forthcoming.) And that leads me to my last question:

5. Why convert?

I might've misled you when I said I didn't like milkshakes, and as previously stated, I'm still wary of them. But having found the definition of milkshake, I do realize that I did like some milkshakes from the very beginning - they just weren't the traditional sort. For instance, good ol' Mickey D's, spurned for its artificial ingredients, captured the sweet taste buds on the tip of my tongue, as did Orange Julius' tropical pseudo-smoothies. Why?

Somewhat thinner than other comparable dairy desserts, these shakes are thin enough to be easily slurped up by a straw and foamy at the top. Perhaps their machinized production process appeals to the soft-serve addict in me.

As George Orwell might (not) have said at his (non-existent) neighborhood soda fountain, "All milkshakes are created equal...but some milkshakes are more equal than others." Certainly, all milkshakes start off with milk, "a flavor," and optional ice cream, but the product quality can defined by the qualities of each individual ingredient. That's probably a good place to start, but ultimately, evaluating a milkshake - as well as whether one likes them in general - is for the most part, subjective. (So yes, reviews are subjective - but finding bits of plastic wrap in your food should be a good indicator of "bad.")

Whether they lead to Harvard Yard - or uh...hopefully not Kelis' - a little more milkshake taste-testing won't hurt too badly. I think.

When I read the title of the following article, I immediately thought of cannibalism. Don't ask.

My thoughts on eating local and in general, local food, are a bit confusing. Don't get me wrong - locally-grown produce does enhance the flavor of the food; Spoonriver is the Minnesotan example of that.

Yes, by eating locally you can save on gas consumption. And yes, growing produce in Berkeley schools with Alice Waters simultaneously helps middle schools enjoy their food and learn about the environment.

Somehow, though...the local food movement seems a little bit - dare I say it? - overhyped.