One way to up the Fourth of July budget

My buddy A and I have known each other since I was six, she was five and she brought a pair of tiny waterguns to afamily friend's potluck. With that dysfunctional start, you can expect a typical IM conversation to look like this:

A: Dude, check this out.
H: Nope.
A: Why not?
H: Your link doesn't work RAWR.
A: Rawring is inapprops, since you wouldn't be doing that in real life. Check your email...wait, what is it?
H: It's not that hard when it's automatically saved into an address book.
A: My b.
H: WHAT THE FREAK. Awesome.
A: The watermelon?
H: Yeah. I should blog about this.
A: Haha, yeah.
H: Obvs?
A: You mean obviously. Get your vocab straight.

The picture in question:


And after a quick Google search for "square watermelon," I found out that
1) Those were real!
2) You, too, could stuff a watermelon plant in a box and quite possibly have it grow square.
3) This Japanese-developed fruit also happens to cost around 10,000 yen.

So you probably wouldn't spend $80 on a watermelon. But you could always cut up your watermelon (no curved rind showing, of course) and say, "This is where it came from." Kind of like how most weddings now use sheet cake, while the official cake is largely Styrofoam decoration.

In short: Weird but cool.

We know more than we thought we did?

Last weekend, I met up with Hank, who was in the Yard for a quiz bowl tournament. I was able to stick around to watch one of the rounds, and was proud that I recognized the plot of Fargo without ever having seen it (Minnesota, represent!). I became even more elated when I recognized Anthony Bourdain from various quotes, before the "clincher hint" that referenced his television show and book of the same name, Kitchen Confidential.

After dinner, I tagged along with him and a few of his teammates for dinner. Apparently all restaurants in Harvard Square are crowded at 8 pm on Saturday nights, or the influx of high school debaters (and coaches) that weekend just decided to fill up all the seats there (and those visiting prefrosh at Annenberg). After checking out Le's, Uno's, and Bartley's (still taking orders in a twenty-person line outside!), we settled on Bertucci's for the legit pizza and the free bread.

But Bertucci's was no exception to the horrors of a dinner line. When we asked for the wait, we were told "typically twenty-five minutes, but thirty-five for all of you" - which makes sense because we weren't the only seven-person group queuing up. So it was a long wait which became equally ridiculous when we realized that a) they only had one large-sized table, b) that thirty-five minute wait approached fifty-five minutes, and c) the servers told us that "we're running out of chairs" and couldn't put a spare chair up against a booth.

Service was fairly prompt - for having to deal with seven starving students who had to wait that long - although somewhat disparate; one waiter was significantly more helpful than the other. Good, but not ridiculously delicious, Bertucci's appeal lies in the free bread - hot, soft and not doughy with a crunchy crust - and the consistency of the food (although the tomato sauce is a little thin, the pizza crust was remarkably similar to the bread - which was a good thing).

The best part of the meal: not having to figure out how much to pay or how to calculate tip with six MIT students around - three of them who were math majors. Whew.

Updates on the site

As a few of you might have noticed, I've been tweaking some odds 'n ends on Foodivia. Some highlights:

- Foodivia is now available in RSS subscription, so you'll be able to read posts as soon as they're up.

- More posts, more often.

Specifically, in addition to "Did you know?" you'll be seeing a new feature: The Annenberg Cookbook. The dormmates and I have been experimenting with the dining hall food - we're figuring out how to add a little punch to the entree and to make do with what we have. Stuff that college students in d-halls (or people overwhelmed by their refrigerator contents - both descriptions fit me well) are still learning.

I've been impressed with the number of recipes we've made in this week alone (one a meal!). If we're especially ambitious, I daresay that we might be able to beat Rachael Ray's proliferation of recipes in Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats. While we're at it, I'll point out that unless there's a line for trays and silverware, we also go faster than 30-Minute Meals and eat for less than $40 a Day. Bring it, Ms. Ray.

That said, do bring your comments - active readership encouraged, too.

Happy reading!

This is Foodivia: #4

Certain members of my quiz bowl team have prompted me with the following:
"Heidi, we get questions about food all the time during meets."
"Not as many as Bill Gates questions."
"But quiz bowl questions about food are exactly about Foodivia. Write about us."

So let me tell you about food and quiz bowl: each competition featured greasy pizza. And another time, our teammate John once brought a half-gallon of chocolate milk from a gas station. He drank half of it straight from the jug, then offered it to a rival team. But I digress. (After all, food does play a starring role in memory.)

The two food questions I remember:
"The Japanese term that means to grill..." "Hibachi!"
"From French roots, the cooking term that means to delicately slice..." "Julienne!"

Julienning was something I had briefly encountered. Yet, it was "obscure" enough to be a quiz bowl question. Interestingly enough, my inspiration for this blog was that question - the first example of foodivia I encountered.

Do forgive my nostalgia, of course.

This is Foodivia: #3

#2 and #1 (the actual definition of foodivia) are here and here, respectively.

Not to paraphrase Johnny Gilbert with my post title, but besides the “Did you knows?” I’ve also been searching examples of foodivia. And there are so many of them, it’s absolutely wonderful. Here is one that absolutely nailed my arbitrary definition on the head, from Floyd Skloot’s “Jambon Dreams”:

Halfway through lunch, [my brother] began the ritual quiz: “Okay, what’s a hero sandwich called in Philadelphia?”
“A hoagie.”
“In Boston?”
“Grinder.”
“What about Chicago?”
“A sub.”
“And why do they call it a sub?”
“Because it’s shaped like a submarine.”

Esq. Supertaster?

A food writer with no capacity for taste. A wave of nausea hit. I had no idea if it was the sour cream or white-hot panic. - David Leite, from "Tales of a Supertaster"

67% of the books that I’ve read this week (consisting of Eating My Words and Best Food Writing 2006) referred to Dr. Linda Bartoshuk. She’s a Yale professor who has developed tasks to evaluate how sensitive to a taste or taste element (e.g. sweet or sour) an individual is. (An example would be the test that our class did in biology, when we placed paper strips on our tongues to test our sensitivity of PCP PTC. This dominant trait causes most people to taste the paper as bitter.)

There is so much to be said about the sensation of food in your mouth, and most writers describe it from an emotional perspective. But the word “sensation,” like “sensual,” derives from the word “sense” – something grounded by physiological observation. In a similar vein, Bartoshuk’s research examines the biological basis and mechanism of taste, something we often overlook. Maybe we forget what our meatloaf tastes like because we’re engaged in a dinner conversation, but it could also be because we have stuffy noses – or as Bartoshuk’s lab considers, we’re genetically less sensitive to the flavors that comprise meatloaf.

Although Bartoshuk calls those significantly more sensitive to these tests "supertasters," but Connecticut food writer Leite discovers that the term doesn't refer to "gustatory supremacy." Nevertheless, I'm still interested. It's an good reason for a New Haven field trip.

Thursday's here, which means...

the arrival of the Star Tribune's Taste section on my doorstep. I love the Taste section, for several reasons:

1. It provides a rationale for me to eat at new restaurants. "But...it was reviewed by the Strib!" And sometimes, to buy new products (read: pomegranate chip ice cream).
2. I can cook vicariously by marveling over the pictures that accompany the recipes. (This is actually a reason why I've started to begin reading Martha Stewart Living.)
3. If Foodivia was a word (in the same vein as truthiness), then the Eat Your Words game is definitely foodivia (remember, food + trivia?). Tucked into the corner of one of the pages, it's a word game that tests your knowledge of food/cooking terms.

Today's Taste featured the "Taste 50," subtitled "Fifty people, products, places and ideas that make Minnesota the place for food fans." This time, nothing related to the State Fair was on the list, which makes me relieved that I hadn't missed out on deep-fried Snickers bars last year. (But...did you know that deep-fried Snickers bars are not unique to the Minnesota State Fair?)

The Taste 50 is an listing I annually pore over, and as usual, there were plenty of things I didn't know about. I'm hoping to try them soon (perhaps another quest for this blog?) -- but I was particularly excited at the second entry: Dong Yang. I would yell "Scoop," but judging from the fact that Dong Yang's always packed on weekend lunches, I don't think I was the first one to find out...

Introducing...Foodivia.

The second-most frequent conversation I've been asked this month is "What are you doing for your senior program?" (Senior program is the independent project seniors at our school complete in May.)

I always reply, "Eating."
"What? Aren't you supposed to actually do something?"
"Yeah...I'm eating."
"That's like getting credit for breathing. What a slacker."
"Ohh, let me clarify: my senior program is food writing."
"Food...writing?"
"Yeah. Writing about food."
"People do that? Oh, like reviews?"
"Yup - I'm excited."
"Me too. When are you bringing me out for lunch?"

---

I'm Heidi.

I've always liked writing, and even before that, I liked eating. For me, food writing intersects both realms. This blog will document my interactions with food - and some of yours, via feedback from comments and even guest bloggers. One of the larger themes of this blog will be how cultures are expressed in food. On this blog, I'll be writing restaurant reviews for (mostly) Minnesota as well as personal essays. Soon, I'll be investigating what "chocolatey chips" really are. I'm not a cook - as my friends know, the closest thing I have to a gourmet specialty is Pizza Rolls (Totino's), but I might try to make something. I'll keep you updated on that, too.

As for the name of the blog, Foodivia: it's a portmanteau of "food" and "trivia" - two of my very favorite topics. Where does the trivia come in? Well, this is a learning experience for me, from the writing to the eating, and I'm excited to take advantage of all the fun tidbits that will come along. There'll be a regular "Did you know?" feature - ranging from cooking techniques to weird facts about snack foods. (For your information, the Golden Gate Bridge is 28,800 Oreos long. I have an "Oreo Trivia" mug that tells me these things...)

So join me here - and happy eating.