Apple core

It's a daily illustration two-for-one day! Based on a discussion about various types of core (yarncore, hardcore and so on), the idea of corecore was brought up. So, an apple core.

Chalkboard fridge

Fridges are great. They're great when covered in pages from old comic books, they're great bare and I'm increasingly of the opinion that they're great when they double as chalkboards. I say that, of course, because a few months back (call it October 2009 or so), I painted the fridge with chalkboard paint. It's handy for keeping a running list of groceries in stock, shopping lists, or in the case of the front of the freezer at the moment, my resolution for 2010.

Mertgart

Quite some time ago, I mentioned a hair brained scheme: a sort of hyper-purist, pseudo-lambic beer. Here's more on that topic. The idea, which I've been batting around since a good while before the previous post, is to do a beer full of buzzwords. Vegan, Organic, Reinheitsgebot compliant, lambic and to a certain extent, vertically integrated. That's vertically integrated not to the extent of distribution, but to the extent of ingredients. And yes, that means grain fields. The beer would be lambic to the extent that pollen would be introduced through louvred walls in the brewery. Needless to say, it's likely to never happen, or to take a pretty long time if it does actually see the light of day. In the meantime, I'm playing to my strengths. It has a name (Mertgart) and a logo (below). Colour variations of the logo are shown. I'm still not sure which one I like.

Habanero Pepper

For no particular reason, a habanero pepper.

Pistachio pattern

Much enamoured of the pistachio I drew earlier, I've made it into a pattern. After all, you seldom see a single pistachio on its own.

Pistachios

I wanted some pistachios but wasn't willing to brave a Saturday afternoon grocery store. Instead, I drew one. Here are two iterations of the same pistachio.

Lemon

Continuing on the sliced fruit theme, a cross section of a lemon. For Alex, because he liked the tomato.

Tomato

Cross section of a tomato.

Boxfood: Popcorn

A few weeks back, I mentioned my plan to create homemade explanations of food normally found in boxes on supermarket shelves. Below, I present part one, the most basic of all boxfoods: popcorn.

To make popcorn (or anything, for that matter), the first step is a visit to the store. You'll need two items: oil and popcorn. Oil type is a personal decision. I tend to go for olive oil, but sunflower and other sorts of vegetable oil also work well. Just make sure it isn't an oil with a strong flavour. If you do go with olive oil, look for an extra virgin or even an oil labeled as light tasting. Whichever sort of oil you get, it's fairly basic: look for the oil section and pick a small bottle of your preferred type. The popcorn itself is where things get interesting. Most people are used to buying popcorn in a box. This is not what you want. Look for popcorn in a plastic bag or jar. Make sure you're getting kernels, not the microwave-ready stuff that comes in pouches. Another good option for popcorn purchasing is your local bulk food store. They'll have large bins full of it and you can buy as much or as little as you want.

Once you've gotten your ingredients, it's time to cook. You'll need two pieces of equipment for this: a stove and a pot with a tight-fitting lid. For preference, the pot should be stainless steel and a medium size. Put the pot on the stove. Don't put the lid on yet. Put about a teaspoon of oil into the pot. If you don't have a proper teaspoon, a normal soup or dessert spoon will do. Now you can turn on the stove. Make sure you're sending heat to the burner that your pot is actually sitting on. Turn the dial to maximum heat. Take one small handful of your popcorn and put it in the pot. Now you can put the lid on.

Let the pot sit. When you start to hear popping noises, you can lift the pot a little bit off of the burner and shake it from time to time. The point of this action is to move the unpopped kernels to the bottom of the pot and the popped ones to the top. Continue to alternate sitting and shaking. At the height of it, you'll hear popping constantly. As cooking slows down, there will be longer intervals between pops. When you can count to ten between pops, it's time to turn off the stove and remove the pot from heat. Removing the pot from heat is important if you're using an electric stove as there will still be residual heat in the coil. Most stoves are electric. A good rule of thumb is that if there's no visible fire, it's probably electric.

Once you've removed the pot from the burner, you'll want to put on an oven mitt (or even just use a tea towel) and remove the lid from the pot. Pour the popcorn from the pot into a large bowl. If using a plastic bowl, be sure not to let the pot touch it, since the metal may still be hot enough to cause melting.

Once the popcorn is in the bowl, you can think about garnishes. If you want butter or margarine, you can quickly put a tablespoon or two of it into your pot. The metal will hold heat for some time and should still be hot enough to melt your butter/margarine. Once the butter/margarine is melted, you can pour it over your popcorn and then carefully shake the bowl to distribute your topping more evenly. Popcorn toppings can be varied. While most people prefer butter/margarine and a little salt, you can experiment with cinnamon, brewer's yeast, or even a little cayenne pepper. You've got options.

Once your popcorn is in the bowl and topped, all that's left to do is eat. You can now enjoy the economic (far less expensive than microwave) and environmental (no bags to throw away) benefits of stovetop popcorn.

Making industrial boxfood at home

Earlier this year, I found myself explaining the procedure for making popcorn in a pot, on the stove, without pre-buttered, microwaveable kernels. I had never before realized that there are people who think that the only way to make popcorn is in a microwaveable bag. This revelation led to an idea: take foods that are best known in their instant format and create a cookbook/cookzine/cookblog explaining the procedure for making them the proper/old fashioned/slow/healthy way.

I can think of a few foods that might benefit from this treatment. Macaroni and cheese may be the most notable example. Among other boxfoods, though, there's stroganoff, french fries (which don't actually have to come out of a bag in the frozen food section), any number of sauces and salad dressings, the abovementioned popcorn and a whole legion of other foods. Suggestions in the comments, if you have something to add to the list.

The joys of fridge ownership

I've been working on a wallpapering project involving old books and my currently uninspiring living room. I'm afraid it's made me a little glue happy. I realized last night that the big perk of owning a fridge (as opposed to having one provided by my landlord) is being able to modify it. So: old Archie comics Mod Podged to my decrepit fridge.

Being watched by potatoes

Below: An illustration I've just finished for a review of a book about potatoes. Really.

Unbranded grocery stores

Assumptions: Food is a necessity. Without food, human beings can't live. Most people do not have easy access to farmer's markets or community shared agriculture schemes. Most North Americans shop in supermarkets.

Observations: It's impossible to look anywhere in a grocery store without seeing invasive brand messages. Okay, that last sentence was a tiny exaggeration. The ceiling is almost always free of brand messages and in most cases, so is the floor. The remainder, on the other hand, is generally quite thoroughly visually cluttered.

Solution: There needs to be a completely unbranded grocery store. I don't mean that there needs to be a store that sells only their own brand of food. I mean packaged goods in the unbranded store need to be blank except for the name of the food, the country of provenance, the nutritional information and the ingredients.

Think: Many of the necessary foods can already be found brand-free. Vegetables and fruits, more often than not, aren't branded (although there seems to be a trend towards branding them). Some stores have bulk sections which allow for the purchase of ingredients like flour that aren't branded.

Implementation: The unbranded grocery store needs to take advantage of the existing private label infrastructure. In the same way that Loblaw has food sold under its own name, the unbranded grocery store can implement a private label brand. The only difference is that this brand isn't a brand. It is instead the complete absence of a brand. Of course, it also makes a kind of good business sense to stock a store entirely with private label products. Margins are higher on private label than on national brands and prices can be lower.

Of course, the store would be a promotional disaster. Many consumers take comfort in familiar brands. A store that offered a reprieve from visual noise might not be widely welcomed, even if the prices were lower. But, just at this moment, having grown tired of too much visual clutter in supermarkets, I'd jump at the chance to shop at an unbranded grocery store.

Vegan trading cards

Finally, after years of being asked what vegans eat, I'm tired of answering. As a result, I've devised a clever solution: vegan trading cards. Imagine little trading cards which, instead of featuring hockey players, picture and explain vegan food. Each card would have a picture of a typical vegan dish on the front (think: curry, stir fry, hummus, tabouleh, etc.) and stats about that dish on the back. The stats would show ingredients as well as nutritional information. It would be a fun way to answer a question that does get a little wearing after a while. Not only that, but the nutritional information would prevent the second question that non-vegans normally ask, namely "Where do you get protein/iron from?" They could look at the card, see that vegans eat a variety of tasty food, and then be shocked by how nutritionally complete those foods actually are. It would save the valuable minutes of my life that I currently wind up spending, trying to remember what I've eaten for the last few days.

Spoon napkin ring

Yet another use for old spoons: Supremely awesome napkin rings.

Creamer Architecture

I really shouldn't be allowed to go to restaurants where they serve cream in little individual containers. Why? I like corbelling too much. This is what happens when it gets extreme.

The week-old pizza flowchart

I humbly present to the reading few a handy tool for deciding whether or not to eat the pizza that's been sitting out for a week. I take no responsibility for any un-tastiness or food poisoning that might result from consulting this chart.

Very picky beer

Latest project that may never see the light of day: a totally wonderful organic, vegan, Reinheitsgebot compliant, pseudo-lambic beer. Also, it has a made up name and a pretty logo. The whole thing is meant to appeal to a young generation of picky, snooty beer drinkers. If it ever sees the light of day, I'll write about it in more detail. If it flops completely, I'll still write about it in more detail. Until either of those happens, I have a fun secret to keep.

Kind of gross, but so very useful

Another one for the clever idea file: I have these mugs that have no handles. They're nice looking, they stack well, and they're fantastic for cold liquids. The only problem is that they majorly burn when hot tea goes in instead of cold water or juice. It makes taking tea from the counter to the table ridiculously difficult. I've tried leaving lots of room for rice milk, but it just doesn't cool the mug down enough. Today, I tried putting ice cubes in the tea to cool it down. It worked well, bit it watered down the tea a bit. That led me to an exciting new solution. I decided to put rice milk in the ice cube tray. They idea of rice milk ice cubes seems a little nasty to me. But it seems like a good way to cool down hot tea and add milk at the same time. If it works out, it may become a fixture of my freezer.

Late night grocery stores

There's a late night grocery store on my way home. I hardly ever use it, but I appreciate that it exists. In that sense, for me at least, it's similar to a falafel restaurant. Tonight, however, I got the chance to use it. Wandering home from a late movie, I got a jones for orange juice. But where can I possibly get orange juice at one o'clock in the morning? Quite simply, I can get the orange juice about one block away from home, on my path from movie to bed.

Most of the time, the late night grocery store is a service I don't feel the need to use. Even though I seldom use it, it's something I like to have around, just in case I find myself needing it.

Bowls and forks

All I want in life right now are a bowl and fork that are meant to be together. I enjoy eating out of bowls, but it drives me crazy to not be able to move a fork properly around the edges of a bowl. If someone would make a fork that had the same contour on the side as the bowl it was meant to fit into, my life would be complete.

Airport gum

Finally getting around to transcribing everything I wrote last time I flew. I find that I get a lot of thinking done on planes. It's a nice bit of escape from my normal routine.

What I'm wondering right now is whether or not convenience stores at airports sell more gum than normal convenience stores do. It seems logical that people would exit from planes, ears unpopped, and seek out gum. But do they actually? I could just be making silly assumptions.

Kitchen mitre box

I've just had the silliest idea ever. This is the ultimate in excessive kitchen gear: a kitchen saw and mitre box. Get perfect right angles on your bread slices! Carrots, sliced at 45 degree angles! It could revolutionize the geometry of food.

Food value of a t-shirt

Here's an idea I've been hoarding for a while: I want to take a t-shirt to a food testing place and get the nutritional value figured out. I want to know what vitamins it has, protein, calories, fibre, all that stuff. I like the idea of going completely overboard with labelling. So I'd really like to see a shirt that has a hang tag with nutritional info. It's purely useless information, unless you plan to eat the shirt, but still, I think it could be an entertaining gimmick, if nothing else.

Jam Jars

I have issues with jam jars. The standard practise is to get jam out of jars through the use of butter knives, or in some cases, a spoon. The jam jar is made of glass. The knife or spoon is made of metal. Jam jars come in all shapes and sizes, so do knives and spoons. All of this means that it proves very difficult to get the last of the jam out of the jar. It just doesn't work. I wind up getting frustrated and wasting valuable jam when I rinse the jar. A spatula would probably work quite well, since flexibility and malleability are of importance in this situation. The problem is, though, that I do not own a spatula small enough to fit into the jam jar. I know that they exist, but I don't own one. I can't see the use, other than for getting the last jam out of the jar. It seems a little wasteful to own a tool whose only use is to get the last jam out of the jar. Although who knows, that may be less wasteful than having to constantly waste jam.

Mixed feelings about falafel

Ever since I first set foot in Montreal, even before I moved here, I've had a love-hate relationship with falafel places. I don't really like falafel pita that much, and whenever I get a plate instead of a pita, there are always a load of things that I just don't want to eat. (Actually, I think that might be a corollary of Murphy's Law: No matter what you order on the falafel plate, there's always something unappetizing.) Even though I don't actually like falafel that much, and even though I never feel good after eating it, I have a strange sense of security knowing that I can always get one if I want to. I think that's a little odd. I have some kind of strange dependency on falafel places, even if I hardly ever patronize them. Maybe it's like having a fire station nearby. Even if I don't plan on setting fire to my house, I feel more comfortable knowing that there are pumper trucks and fire fighters a few blocks away. Falafel as emergency service?