The FDA said it can’t guarantee that all the contaminated dog and cat food have been removed from store shelves. I’ve been feeding Pokey Pedigree for the last few years (luckily not on the Menu Foods recall list). Regardless, this toxic dog food business has got me thinking of what the hell I’m forcing my dog to eat.

When Matt and I were apartment hunting, we drove by a Merrick truck. I had never heard of Merrick before. I saw there was a picture on the side of the truck of a tin can labeled “turducken” and I flipped out. Matt and I could’t figure out what it was. I was hoping it would be delicious stock or broth. Matt thought it might be gravy. It took us a few minutes to figure out it was dog food. I was kinda jealous.

It just so happens that the New York Magazine’s best pet store in Brooklyn*, Love Thy Pet, is a block away from our new place. So I took Pokey there and they gave him treats and a free can of dog food - Wingalings, made by Merrick ($1.79-$2.38 for a large 13.2 oz can).

This stuff looks good. Like REALLY good. Like if I was drunk enough, I’d probably try it. Hey, don’t judge - it’s free of artificial flavors, colors and preservatives. There are even whole chicken wings inside the can! The label says the bones have been softened and are perfectly safe for your dog to eat. Unlike those tainted Menu Foods dog foods, Merrick uses minimal processing. I figured since I started eating better in last few months, Pokey should too. Especially since he’s become a lazy, fat bastard. I am pretty sure that a can of Merrick dog food is healthier for you to consume than a Hungry Man Dinner - in case you are poor, hungry and/or drunk.

Merrick dog food, cat food and treats are available at better pet stores, some health food stores and online.

Soft food (what you probably call “wet food”) flavors come in: Thanksgiving Day Dinner, Turducken, Venison Holiday Stew, Wild Buffalo Grill, Wingaling, Wilderness Blend, Working Dog Stew, Rocky Mountain Rainbow, Senior Medley, Smothered Comfort, Puppy Plate, Mediterranean Banquet, New Zealand Summer, Cowboy Cookout, French Country Paté, Grammy’s Pot Pie, Harvest Moon, Brauts-n-Tots and a tasting menu called Gourmet Lunch Box which contains eight different flavors ($13.50-23). Hard food (what you probably call “dry food”) also available.

Merrick’s website (You can find cheaper places online to buy it then directly through them - like in bulk on Amazon!)

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*By “Brooklyn” I mean Boerum Hill / Cobble Hill / Carroll Gardens - The only parts of Brooklyn (aside from Park Slope) that that magazine deems worthy of recognition. Unless they are picking on hipsters in Williamburg, which is like shooting fish in a barrel.

I went to check out Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods in Union Square on Friday after getting my hair did. Instead of me ranting and bitching to you at length, I’ll just say that both experiences were very unpleasant and I didn’t even buy anything at either store. Whole Foods in Manhattan is a total rip-off compared to their Long Island locations (the Union Square olive bar was $9.99 / lb compared to $6.99 / lb at their Jericho location). I highly advise against going to both Union Square supermarkets unless you like dealing with crowds and long lines. Which, surprisingly, a lot of people don’t seem to mind.

I went back to Fairway today and bought that goose fat.

An update on the Fairway olive bar: Correcting my earlier post, their olive selection is more like 25-30 different kinds of olives. The best part is that you get to sample them! No one yells at you! You don’t even have to ask! Just pick away! You can stand there all day and just eat olives! This is a smart idea on their part because unlimited, unsupervised sampling led me to spontaneously buy some atlas olives, which are massive and yield copious amounts of meat.

(Side story: There was this kid at the supermarket, probably around nine or ten years old, fucking around with his dad’s shopping cart. His dad was ignoring him and trying to pick out hams. The kid kept saying, “Dad! Dad! I have a farting car!” and then proceeded to make fart noises with his mouth as he pushed the cart around the meat department. I burst out laughing.)

For dinner I made fresh store bought pumpkin gnocchi and made my own sauce (garlic, button mushrooms, thyme, chicken stock, heavy cream). It would have been a perfect dish had I added bacon. It wasn’t a very Springtime dish (the gnocchi tasted like pumpkin pie), but it was delicious nonetheless. Especially considering I have extremely limited experience cooking Italian.

The restaurant called me (despite them being closed today) and want me to trail again tomorrow, so I’m really psyched about that.

And regarding the Food Network Awards, I have nothing to say. Maybe you do.

I think I was looking at the Food Network all wrong. I had expected it to be like a supermarket: One stop shopping. Years ago, it used to be that if my supermarket didn’t have it, then fuck it, I didn’t need it and I’m not gonna go outta my way to get it. I’ve discovered that it’s not that there isn’t better food-based programming out there, it’s that I’ve been searching in the wrong place. If you want fresher, more esoteric ingredients then you are gonna have to go out there and search for them, right? Same with cooking shows.

I’ve been watching more Discovery Health and Discovery Home lately. Not all their cooking shows are great, but at least they are refreshing. These two channels put heavy emphasis on shooting and editing their cooking shows in a heavily food porn-ish way - which is, more often then not, annoying. I guess they figure creative editing will hold viewers attention.

Kylie Kwong: An Australian who does Chinese cooking. Almost all her dishes are lot more complicated and expensive then Ming Tsai’s. Also, she doesn’t explain her ingredients and steps very well - I guess this forces you to buy her books. The show seems to be more about the visuals. I will probably never make any of her dishes, but it’s still fun to watch.

License to Grill: Think a friendlier, black Bobby Flay meets a straight Michael Chiarello. Rob Rainford’s outdoor kitchen setup is nicer than my indoor kitchen (he’s got a fridge outside). He’s all about dry rubs on meat and even made nachos in a cast iron pan on the grill. I don’t really care for this show because I don’t cook large cuts of meat on the grill. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman and grilling is man’s work.

Healthy Decadence: Hosted by Devin Alexender, who reminds me of a less offensive, less hilarious Sarah Silverman. She does fresh, tasty, healthy cooking. So she’s basically Ellie Krieger (who hosts Healthy Appetite on the Food Network), except more personable. Then in contrast, a program about “super-obese” people came and it grossed Matt out so he had to change the channel.

Take Home Chef: This show blows. Curtis Stone is an Australian, B-version amalgamation of Jamie Oliver and Tyler Florence, except with a crappy haircut and bad highlights. He assaults random women in the supermarket and asks them if they will take him home so he can teach them how to a gourmet meal for their husbands (real progressive). He does almost all the cooking himself and the actual cooking poriton of the show is about five minutes. Lame.

Cookin’ in Brooklyn: Chef and host Alan Harding is a Carroll Gardens legend (he owns Schnäck and the Gowanus Yacht Club to name only a couple), so obviously I’m gonna love his show. He does casual, comfort cooking from the viewpoint of a trained chef. Basically, he’ll show you how to the make the best meat loaf and tell you why it’s the best. From the Discovery Home website: “‘I love onions and potatoes as much as I love truffles and foie gras,’ says Harding. His motto is ‘cooking should be fun, not complicated’.” I think one of the reasons I like this this show is because it’s just plain fun. Alan seems like a solid dude that you can grab a beer with. My only complaint is the scripted stuff they make Alan say. Oh, and the super lame theme song.

The Travel Channel not only has Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, but also Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman. I usually detest culinary travel shows, but I’d rather watch this white dude being forced to try aged tiger penis and live grubs in Malaysia than watch Giada eat an omelet and a fruit tart in Seattle.

Also, Mark Bittman has a new cooking show on PBS (WLIW 21 here). I haven’t seen it, but the New York Times gave it a pretty good review.

There’s a bunch more shows I have yet to see, like Chef Marcus Samuelsson (of Aquavit fame) in Inner Chef, so I’ll keep you updated . I opened up my nappy-headed horizons and look at the bounty of new-to-me cooking shows I found.

Star wipe and I’m out!

Cedar’s Pita Chips (plain flavored): Oh, boy! Are these things shitty! Imagine the thinnest chip physically possible. And then take away it’s flavor. And then try dragging that chip through a thick hummus. Did I mention that all the “chips” are broken up in the bag? These things are useless. Actually, maybe you can add milk and make a cereal out of it.

ChewFood grade: D-

Stacy’s Pita Chips (”Simply Naked” flavored): Awesome. The right amount of salt. Giant whole squares of crispy goodness. And they are uber thick - almost as thick as a book of matches. I also recommend the “Texarkana Hot” flavor - those things are spicy (the real kind of spicy, not the lame “spicy” that most brands make for white people’s sensitive taste buds).

ChewFood grade: A

Kettle Brand Pita Chips (”Salt Kissed” flavored): Apparently to the Kettle Brand people, “kissed” means “made out with tongues”. They were so salty that after a handful of chips, my tongue was swollen and numb. I thought that was especially weird for Kettle, whose potato chips are the best (Chedder Beer being my favorite). I wrote to them and told them this and they sent me two coupons for free bags of Kettle Brand Chips.

ChewFood grade: C+

Healthier hummus

Makes about a cup and a half of hummus - enough to last me for or a week or two. I pretty much just eyeball everything for this recipe now. It’s pretty hard to eff up hummus. I pan fry the garlic because it’s faster than roasting.

• One 15 oz. can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• Juice from half a lemon
• One teaspoon of Hungarian paprika (you can substitute regular paprika with a dash of cayenne)
• Small handful of flat leaf parsley
• Two tablespoons (less or more depending on your taste) of tahini - if you don’t want to shell out the bones for tahini, Alton Brown uses peanut butter
• Six cloves of garlic
• Three or four tablespoons olive oil

Pan fry garlic in olive oil over medium heat until soft and brown (about five minutes). Set aside to cool. Once cool, throw everything in the food processor (including the garlic infused olive oil) and whiz. If too thick, add more olive oil and/or water to desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper or more fresh lemon juice. Serve with crudité or pita chips. Use instead of mayo on sandwiches and tuna salads.

Health: This is pretty good for you even though it’s high in (good) fat. Eat in moderation.

Cost: Cheap. $1.10 for about ten to twelve servings.

Cost breakdown:
chickpeas $.75
lemon $.25
paprika $.10 ($3 a tin)
parsley $.25 ($1.99 a bunch)
tahini $.50 ($5 a jar)
garlic $.25

Matt and I went to the Fairway in Red Hook yesterday for the first time. Dear lord, this is what a supermarket is supposed to be. It’s a gourmand’s wet dream. They have practically everything you want or need (well, except for the $18 pepper, I checked). Regular and organic and health foods in one building. It’s like a less pretentious, somewhat more middle class version of Whole Foods.

I only have four complaints. The first is that it’s designed as a maze: You are forced to walk through the entire store (like Stew Leonard’s, minus the animatronics), so it makes it really hard just to pop in and just buy some milk and bread. Secondly, you need a car to go there. The third is that the produce wasn’t as fresh as you’d think. Fourth, is that even despite the three previous qualms, Fairway is too awesome. Too awesome means that I will want to go there all the time to buy stuff that I don’t really need. Pretty soon I’ll end up like Jeffrey Steingarten or Hedonism-Bot (as seen above, being smothered in chocolate). I’ll be smacking my lips loudly and wheezing while I eat.

Anyway, here’s a brief list of awesomeness I found:

• Freshly made pumpkin gnocchi
• Two mega-lobster-saurus’ at $12/lb
• Organic hypo-allergenic free-range cruelty-free sustainable flax-based biodegradable condoms (okay, this one I made up)
• Foie gras
• Jiffy Pop
• Rick’s Picks
• About twenty different kinds of loose olives for $6/lb
• Eight or ten different Fairway brand olive oils that you could test out with baguette slices
• An entire skinned goat sitting in the butcher’s case - with the head still on
• And the thing-de-resistance:

Goose fat! For $9 a jar!

So I say fuck Whole Foods coming to Brooklyn. Fairway doesn’t need gimmicks like conveyer belt sushi and a “shower” in the cheese department.

I went to shopping at Whole Foods to pick up some shit as I was in the mood to do some serious cooking this past weekend. I was planning to test out the Chewy Noodle Soup recipe and make some fancy burgers, a chorizo/black bean soup and being my experimentation with Chinese Beef Noodle soup. On the ingredient tip, I had pretty much all I needed but, instead of normal pepper I only had the gay tri-color pepper…which really isn’t that bad if you need to spice up some cock or add that extra kick of flavor to the salad you are about to toss, but for my purposes, it was not what I wanted or needed. I wanted to get me some old school whole black pepper – no fancy colors or anything, just OG pepper. Anyway, so I’m at Whole Foods looking for pepper and I find this 1lb bag of the stuff – normal black pepper and there’s no price on the bag – whatevs – it’s fucking pepper…how much can 1lb of pepper cost?

Apparently, $18…

Which, by my calculations, is almost six times how much I should have paid for a pound of pepper. As I was opening the package and putting the pepper into my grinder (true hotness – peep the Alessi grinder, son! Which, parentheticallier [as we’re already in a parenthetical], is a pretty damn decent grinder, easy to clean and allowing you mad control over the size of the grind), I was thinking that this pepper had best have slices of gold in it or some sort of peppercorn genie that is gonna give me free blowjobs to justify the price I paid for it.

Grind, grind…

HOLY SHIT!!!

The second I started grinding, my olfactory senses (yes, I have more than one) were assaulted by the bright aromatic smell of pepper. Not some normal shit either, this smell was big, bright and fresh and actually smelled a bit spicy…kinda like the distilled essence of pepper.

Taste test results = HOT DAMN!!! This shit is without a doubt the best pepper I have ever tasted in my life. This is what pepper is supposed to taste like! A sharp, long lasting flavor, spice that literally dances on the tip of your tongue, a flavor that develops - just a little bit and yer all set on flavor. This is the pepper God likely uses in his kitchen (yes, god exists, god is a man and he’s a fucking awesome cook – fuck you aetheists!).

Now, my amazement at the flavor got me into research mode – how can pepper be this delicious? What kind of ambrosia is this and where did it come from? Is it actually a gift from God or was it made by the Devil to tempt us into his fiery kingdom of pain and suffering?

The answer lies in India.

Specifically in Tellicherry, on the Malabar Coast of Kerala in Southern India. That is where Tellicherry pepper is grown and word on the street is that Tellicherry pepper is the bestest pepper in the universe (Malabar pepper is #2). Both grow on the east coast of India. Tellicherry is a large berry, very black, with a bold flavor, whereas Malabar is slightly less black, smaller and less pungent. Tellicherry pepper and Malabar pepper come from the same plant and are harvested at almost the same time. Tellicherry pepper however gets to chill on the vine longer and mack out, thereby incresing the percentage of essential oils in it, which in turn makes it more aromatic and jacks up its deliciousness like it was on steroids.

So, was it worth $18?

(Keep in mind that I am a cheap bastard)

Hells yeah! Totally worth it. This is like top of the line when it comes to pepper and seeing as how you put pepper on so much damn stuff and it often plays a central role in increasing the deliciousness of food, $18 is a fucking paltry sum to spend to increase the deliciousness of all your meals so much. Not to mention that the shit needs to be used in such small quantities that the 1lb bag will last you for at least a year – so yer really paying like a buck fifty a month to substantially increase the awesomeness of all your meals. Knowing that, how could you not buy it?

Final Verdict:
YOU BUY NOW!!!!!!

I am not a fan of most chocolates. I am picky about chocolate. I snub my nose at Mars and Snickers and just about any other chocolate candy you will find at the impulse buy section of a drugstore. I won’t even put a single Hersey’s Chocolate Kiss in my mouth. But I am a real sucker for Guylian’s Perles de Ocean. I think Pierre Marcolini is a chocolate artist and genius and could eat an entire box of his chocolates in one sitting. And I probably would if they weren’t so expensive. So I was kinda bummed that America didn’t have great commerical chocolates as Europe does. Until I was introduced to The Cocoa Room.

My old boss gave me a box of Chicago based The Cocoa Room’s Eclectic Mix Dragee (retail price $6-7* for 4 oz.) for Christmas of 2005. They are pretty, shiny, color coated chocolate coated sunflower seeds, almonds and peanuts (much prettier and shinier and delicious than M&M’s). They come in a clear and frosted plastic box tied with a ribbon. They just look appetizing. Not like a plain ol’ regular chocolate bar, which looks like, well you’ve seen “Caddyshack”.

I cannot tell you how fun it is to eat these things. The textures are amazing. The taste is sweet without hurting your teeth and not chalky like macro chocolatiers. The sunflower seed ones taste like chocolate covered Rice Krispies. The peanuts are coated in something delicious I cannot identify - I think it’s some sort of peanut brittle material. And dark chocolate covers (I should use the word “enrobed” because that seems to be a term people use to describe luxurious chocolate things) the almonds.

They have flavors like green tea, lavender blueberry, cayenne pepper, white ginger and pumpkin spice that I cannot wait to try. As well as chocolate covered fruit - apricot, blueberry and cherry.

www.thecocoaroom.com or available at various stores like Crate & Barrel

*That’s the price of a pack of cigarettes. I quit smoking a couple of months ago and now like to justify my spending on various things by reasoning, “Well, I’m not spending it on cigarettes!”

Midtown Manhattan. Formerly known as the land of shitty pizza.

I say “formerly” as a new discovery has just saved this area from the seventh level of pizza hell. A find more awesome than James Cameron’s unearthing of the tomb of Jesus, but with no Discovery channel special (so far). I present to you one of the greatest inventions known to man:

Pizza Truck (with an oven in it!).

Pizza truck (actually called Jiannetto’s Pizza) serves all sorts of I-talian foods - pasta, sammiches, various types of parmigianas and, of course, pizza. Not just any pizza either, this is old school Sicilian style: Rectangular “slices”, all sauce, no cheese and done right - not to mention served fresh and hot, thanks to the futuristic internal truck oven. In addition to the foods I just listed, they also have (a limited number each day) Arancine (I-talian Rice balls for you filthy Americans). As I’m not super-fat just yet, I only ate the pizza and the arancine, so I can speak for the quality of the other stuff but, feel free to try it and let me know - my days of eating everything on the menu (over the course of time, mind you) are over. Continue reading…

Electric kettles are a must if you love hot beverages. I would say ours gets turned on about a dozen times a day. Every Brit, Scot and Irish has one in their kitchen because they love tea as much as they love a pint. I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on here (except in hotels).

This dealie heats up water in seconds and frees up your stove’s burners. The best thing? It’s for the forgetful. You turn it on, leave to do some other shit and it turns out automatically after it comes to a roaring boil.

Alton Brown uses his to make hard boiled eggs in. We use it for our coffee (recently switching from drip to French press).

Now you are probably going to say, “Chewy, you are smart, funny, talented and beautiful and I’d hate to argue with you, but aren’t those things going to become obsolete when everyone has a Tasso-type machine?” No! Those on cup pod machine things are amazingly fast, but they won’t make you a proper cup. Water for coffee should be heated to about 190 degrees F and water for green tea should be heated to about 165 degrees F.

$10 from Amazon.com* (as pictured). They have $60+ Braun ones, but that’s a jack. Why pay six times more for something that just heats water? I guess if you are a sucker for designer names and chrome, but you shouldn’t be reading this blog if you are like that, anyway.

*Right now, they have a promotion at Amazon.com where if you buy four selected kitchen gadgets, you get one of them for free. And this electric kettle is in the deal. I’ve already taken advantage of it twice.

The Braun Multiquick has been my favorite kitchen gadget since I got it three years ago. For $28 (now priced at $35) it’s been my mixer, mini food chopper and submersion blender: A tri-tasker!

Some of the things you can do with it:

• Fine chops garlic, onions, nuts, etc. in seconds
• Grind spices
• Whatever one does with an electric beater
• Purée soups
• Make smoothies
• Make salad dressings
• Make tapanades, hummus, salsa, etc.
• Make someone fall in love with you

Things I wish you could do with it:

• Control the television
• Send and receive calls
• Use it as a carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing that tells time
• Be a time machine

The image above is the 400 series model I own. In the future, I hope to upgrade to the spiffy chrome 5000 series, 5-speed one for $63.

Pros:

• Comes with a wall mount
• Comes with the pictured measuring dealie
• All attachments are dishwasher safe
• Small and easy to store
• Cuts down on prep time
• Cheap
• Awesome to the max

Cons of the 400 series:

• Fixed speed (insert hipster bicycle joke)
• Immersion blender will want to suction itself to the bottom of the vessel
• The whisk is flimsier than a real mixer’s beater - but screw it - I don’t bake so I don’t care

I say it’s the best appliance that you aren’t going to buy because I’ve been raving about it for years to anyone who will listen, but no one else I know has gotten it. It’s only $35 and that’s not even the amount of money it costs to go out drinking for a night. I guess it’s not worth $35 to make your life easier and cut down on kitchen clutter. Suckers. Go back to your Wish-Bone Zesty Italian dressing and get out of my face.

Braun Multiquicks on Amazon.com