My Latest Food Obsession: The Monte Cristo Sandwich

On my recent trip to Anaheim and Disneyland, I ate some delicious things.  Being in California, I also ate some very fresh and healthy things.  One meal in particular stands out: the famous Monte Cristo sandwich from Cafe Orleans at Disneyland.  While it was definitely not healthy, it was at least wisely paired with fresh fruit as a side; french fries would have been overkill on the fried food front.  As it was, I focused on the meat and cheese containing parts while Mom "I'm just going to have a salad" took care of the corners for me.

The almighty reference, wikipedia, proclaims the version I had to be the traditional version, but with an addition.  That means the sandwich is completely dipped in fluffy, funnel cake-like batter, deep-fried, dusted with powdered sugar and served with a berry puree.  The addition was a common one in some areas of turkey to go with the traditional ham and Swiss.  The turkey was probably unnecessary since it was so mild it was essentially unnoticable when compared with all of the other flavors.

I had heard of the Monte Cristo sandwich, but I didn't really know what it was. Furthermore, I realized that I couldn't remember ever having noticed one on a menu around Wake County.  Though, I must admit that I don't usually pay too much attention to the sandwich sections of menus, especially if there is a Reuben listed near the beginning of the list.  I'm a sucker for pretty much anything involving sauerkraut as long as it is not of the Bavarian variety.  See shredded brussels sprouts for my opinion of caraway seeds.

In doing internet research around the Triangle in search of the elusive Monte Cristo, I have learned one thing: beware of imitations.  Yes, I know regional variation allows for the sandwich to just be fried on the outside.  It is even acceptable for the whole thing to just be thrown between a couple slices of French toast.  While both of those do sound tasty and might have pleased me previously, I have had the Cadillac and can now never turn back to tamer versions.

I have been ruined forever for anything but the original.  I have considered the improbability of powdered sugar on a ham and cheese sandwich and found the contrast delicious.  I have delighted in the crisp, fluffy batter encasing soft, fresh bread and its salty, smoky contents.  I have dunked in the berry puree until there was but a sad smear of it left in the cup.

Monte Cristo Sandwich - I will have you again, even if I must resort to cooking you myself!

Lost in Translation

As we are trying to teach Sweet P certain rules about how things work in our house as far as meal times and personal grooming, I realized that she isn't necessarily understanding what we are saying to her.  Some rules I realize are rather confusing upon analysis.  For example:

Rule: No cookies if you don't eat your dinner.
Analysis: If you eat food, you get more food.

Rule: You don't get crackers every time you ask for them, especially since you ask for them all the time.
Analysis:  Don't ask for crackers and you just might get some.  Also known as the Law of Random Crackering

Other rules I have translated based on her reaction to them.

Rule: It's time to go inside.
Translation: You don't get to do anything fun again for the rest of your life.

Rule: Big girls don't need bottles or pacifiers.
Translation: I'm taking away everything that you love.

Rule: No crackers before dinner.
Translation: I don't care if you're hungry, I'm just going to let you starve to death.

Rule: Go to sleep.
Translation: I don't love you anymore.

Rule: You have to sit in your booster seat and wear a bib to eat.
Translation: Ilike to torture you.

Rule: Let's wash your hands and face.
Translation: I like to torture you.

Rule: It's trim to trim your nails.
Translation: I like to torture you.

Book Review: Listen

First of all, I apologize for the hiatus.  I was battling the Mutant Death Crud for about a week and then just never found the time to write.  I also read a lot, and one novel has moved me to share.  If you have a nook, perhaps you downloaded the Free Friday book a few weeks ago?  If not, it is currently at $9.

Listen by Rene Gutteridge

In Listen, Rene addresses the power of the spoken word.  In this case, words not intended to be heard by the subject.  The story takes place in a small town full of seemingly normal people.  Then a website appears with transcripts of private conversations, turmoil ensues.  Turmoil that crosses generations and eventually ends in death.

I started reading the book and found it very entertaining with the aura of mystery surrounding the identity of the website creator.  I just finished it Sunday morning and I was surprised at how incredibly moved I felt at the end.  I am reminded of the pain I was put through by my classmates between 6th and 12th grade.  At first I was a brain, then later a freak as I tried to figure out who I was in the sea of conformity or social death that is high school.  In my struggle to identify myself as me, the only fact I had to work with was that I knew I wasn't everyone else.

As it was the 90's, I got caught up in the "grunge" or "alternative" scene.  I wore baggy pants and flannel shirts from thrift stores the hung awkwardly on my painfully thin frame.  I finally grew tired of it and stopped dressing like an old, color-blind man, but not until after I had been identified as "the biggest pothead in the school."  Which was intriguing because I had never done drugs.  I'm pretty sure it was also said I was anorexic, which was also not true.  I was only blessed with an extremely good metabolism, which has now, sadly, gone the way of the old-man pants.  At times I was also apparently a slut, but isn't that what most gossips will eventually resort to when the target is a female?

The struggles of Jenna, one of the main character's teenage daughter, make my heart ache for what Sweet P will have to endure throughout her life.  Paradoxically, Doug was the taunter rather than the tanted in school.  I can only hope that between the two of us and our different experiences we will have the strength and knowledge to get her through it relatively unscathed.

To be honest, I am guilty of many conversations that I would be mortified to have exposed.  It won't be easy, but I hope to learn to consider what I say, even if the subject isn't present.

------------------------------------------------------------------

"...as much as I hated it at first, I actually think it has done some good.  I hear it in the break room.  People are starting to talk about the power of words.  People are listening more than they're talking...Life and death are in the power of the tongue, if you give the tongue all of the power, I guess."

Too Pretty to Eat...Almost

Doug and I were introduced to the joys of bacon from happy pigs last New Year's Eve when some friends brought over some from Rainbow Meadow Farms.  It has since been referred to as the "Amazing Bacon".  It is so thick and fresh that it doesn't even curl up when you cook it.  I bake it in the oven and it comes out, flat, crisp and, well, amazing.  Unfortunately there are no pictures of the bacon, I was too busy eating it.

I went by the Rainbow Meadow Farms stand on my latest trip to the State Farmers Market to hopefully score some Amazing Bacon and to consider buying an Amazing Chicken while I was at it.  While I am all in favor of eating critters that live a happy life in open pastures, I am not quite ready for an $18 chicken.  This is in large part due to my lack of expertise with cooking whole birds.  I'll get there.

The very nice (and chatty) lady running the booth was going to run my debit card for the $7.something for the bacon even though she only liked to do it for over $10 when she offered me some fresh eggs to go with it.  Having not even thought about eggs, I happily agreed.  She then pulled out the most beautiful eggs I have ever seen.  They are Araucana eggs, and although I had a hard time capturing it on film, they are a delicate greenish-blue.

I'll admit to having entirely too much fun snapping pictures of these little beauties.  After a lifetime of sorted-by-size plain old white eggs, I found it incredibly and ridiculously charming that these were all different shapes and sizes.  I fried a bunch of them up (in a bit of Amazing Bacon fat of course) to have with the Amazing Bacon on Sunday and got a surprise.  I felt silly because I was a little sad to break such pretty eggs, but it was fun to crack the two biggest ones to find double yolks.  These eggs were even pretty on the inside, with a rich, golden yolk.  The only thing that could have made Sunday breakfast better would have been fresh-baked bread, but I have absolutely no luck in the kitchen with yeast.  In the lab, on the other hand, I put those yeasties to work!

Now, prepare for Eggs as Art!

Fancy Salad

Grandad (Papa) and Grammy (Yea-Yea) came out this weekend to visit their Sweet P.  We made our way down to the State Farmers Market on Saturday and I was inspired by all of the beautiful and delicious things I found there.  More on that in another post.  And, yes, I know that most or all of the produce I bought was not grown locally.  I'm okay with that for now.  Slowly, slowly I will consider the buy local thing for produce.  I'm not quite ready to only eat within the growing season, forsaking all else.

For dinner Saturday night I made a salad similar to one I've seen made on one the the approximately 9.5 million cooking shows I've watched.  First, the most beautiful, green and healthy-looking Boston lettuce I've ever seen, $5.00 for two giant heads.

Then toasted pecans and dried cherries because I didn't have any dried cranberries.  Finally, I broiled some rounds of goat cheese to put on top.  I think I overbroiled them just a tad, but they sure were pretty. I know it looks like a scallop in the photo, but it was goat cheese.  Add balsamic vinagrette and enjoy (with the sparkling wine we never drank at New Year's).  Yum!

Shades of Gray, Episode 1: High-fructose Corn Syrup

Okay, folks.  I have done my best to be a neutral informer, with a few opinions thrown in for interest.  Comments should be open, no login needed.  Talk to me!

A recent blog post by a friend addressed the pickle of the abundance of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in food and how expensive a trip to the grocery store can be if you want to avoid it.  Please read the post and my comment to gain some background for this post.

I took her challenge to look in my pantry to see where I found HFCS and I actually found much less than I expected.  Where I did find it was in products that we don't need, like packaged cookies and the few soft drinks we have.  This includes my ginger ale, which I don't intend to give up.  I know you can use tonic water as a mixer, but I prefer my Canada Dry.  Gin, vodka, rum, whiskey...you really can't go wrong.

From my position atop the fence of science I wanted to give some background on the topic and share my thoughts on the subject.  I don't propose to know anything about government subsidies or tariffs or anything like that.  I do know about science and food, so that is what I will focus on.

The basic health concern is that HFCS makes us fat, as in fatter than eating regular sugar would.  The reasoning is that there is more fructose - which does not trigger an insulin response and feelings of satiety - than glucose which does.  This is not exactly comparing apples to apples, but I'll do my best.

First of all, what is sucrose?

Sucrose, or table sugar, is a disaccharide with one glucose molecule and one fructose molecule.  For future reference, that's 50% glucose and 50% fructose.  It is made by crystallizing the juice squeezed from sugar cane or sugar beets (1).

What is high fructose corn syrup?
HFCS is made by treating corn starch with several enzymes.  First of all, you need to know that corn starch is made up of long, branched chains of glucose molecules.  To make HFCS, it is treated with:

1. alpha-amylase - breaks the long, branched chains of glucose down into shorter, unbranched chains of glucose molecules
2. glucoamylase - breaks the shorter chains of glucose into individual glucose molecules
3. xylose isomerase - converts some of the glucose into fructose

Stopping after Step 2 produces corn syrup, as in Karo Syrup, with no fructose (check the label, I have some store brand corn syrup that does contain HFCS).  After all three steps, the final product is about 42% fructose and 50-52% glucose with small amounts of some other sugars.    Then, in a separate process, some of the 42% fructose solution is enriched to about 90% fructose and 10% glucose.  The 90% fructose solution is blended back into the 42% solution to create a solution of 55% fructose and 42% glucose.  So, there are three products:

1. HFCS 42 - used in foods and baked goods
2. HFCS 55 - mostly used in soft drinks
3. HFCS 90 - used in some (unspecified) specialty applications, but mostly used for making HFCS 55

High fructose corn syrup was first created in 1957, but it could not be produced on a large scale until the late 1960's.  Then, from 1975 to 1985, it was rapidly introduced into the food processing industry, especially soft drinks (1).

Why is HFCS so widely used?
There are several reasons, but a major reason is the fact that it is cheaper than sucrose.  Corn subsidies, tariffs and trade quotas artificially raise the price of refined sugar in the United States and a few other places.  Additionally, it is easier to transport and blend into products because it is a liquid (1).

Functionality in foods
I went looking for reasons why HFCS as an ingredient may be preferable to sugar and found this (2).  My opinion is that, except for perhaps the extension of shelf stability (meaning anti-staling in this case), pourability of frozen concentrates and firmness retention in frozen fruits, sugar serves most of the same purposes, though it will take more labor and energy to incorporate it into the product because it will have to be dissolved with heat and mixing.  This means a higher production cost which means a higher price on the grocery store shelf.

So, who is to blame?
I would say greed and primal instincts.  We can hardly be surprised that the Corn Refiners Association is defending their product.  They do need to sell it, after all.  However, instead of telling us that HFCS is good for us, I would prefer to see them create some data that at least shows that it's not worse for us than sucrose.  Many studies have been done, but, as with most scientific research, for every study that says one thing there is a bigger and better study that says something completely different.

Food manufacturers also need to sell their products, and they sell us want we want.  We choose the products in taste tests that determine the formulations used in food products, and we likely choose the ones with with the sweetest taste (i.e. higher levels of HFCS).  All living things have the need for sustenance, and we all like sweet things and fat.  This is a survival instinct and has been true since the dawn of time.  I bet if there was a pecan pie available the cave kids would have been trying to sneak a slice before they finished their hunk of woolly mammoth.

And now...DATA!
You knew it was coming.

In 2002, consumers around the world spent almost 3 times as much money on soft drinks as we did on fruit, $193 billion (USD) on soft drinks and $69 billion on fruit (3).  That was more than 327 billion liters!  I couldn't find anything more recent on spending, but I did find this table showing that we Southerners consistently spend the most on soft drinks (4).  Maybe this has something to do with that old joke about Mountain Dew in the baby bottle.  It is cheaper than formula.

I did some research at the local grocery store to attempt to put the spending in perspective.  I chose the 2 liter soft drink as the vessel for comparison.  The store brand 2 liter soft drink is $1.29 and name brands are $1.59 to $1.79, we'll say $1.50 for an average.  According to the label, a 2 liter bottle contains eight eight ounce servings, that's about $0.19 per serving.  For the same $1.50 you could buy:

• 1.5 apples ($1 per serving)
• 1.5 pears ($1 per serving)
• 1.5 oranges ($1 per serving)
• 1/2 lb. strawberries ($0.75 per serving)
• 1.5 grapefruits ($0.50 per serving)
• 1/3 lb. grapes ($0.50 per serving)
• 1/2 a cantaloupe ($0.37 per serving)
• 8 medium bananas ($0.19 per serving)

The only fruit that is comparable in cost per serving is the banana.  So, excluding the banana, you can get 2 to 5 servings (that's 8 ounces!) of soda for the same price as one serving of fruit.  By my wonky calculations, that changes the implications of the previous spending statistic quite a bit.  As in we actually consumed a lot more than three times the amount of soda compared to fruit.

In Conclusion
By the numbers, most of the HFCS we encounter outside of soft drinks actually has less fructose than regular white sugar (42% fructose compared to 50% in table sugar).  What is in soft drinks is only a little more fructose than glucose (55% fructose).

I believe it's not the amount of HFCS we eat, it's the amount of sugar in any form that we eat that is the problem (5).  If you've ever read books that take place in the late 19th and early 20th century (such as my favorite - The Little House on the Prairie series), you know that white sugar and candy were very special treats.  It was brought out for company and occasionally found in a Christmas stocking.  I'm not saying that we need to be that spartan with the sugar.  I have as much of a sweet tooth as anyone else and I am happy to have a drawer full of chocolate and candy I can dig into at any time.  I just have to remember that is was my choice to buy it in the first place, and my choice to eat it.

As a final point, the actual amount of soda consumed at one sitting by the average consumer is far more than eight ounces. I've seen people drink 5 glasses at one meal, each one probably 12 to 16 ounces. I've never seen anyone eat 10 apples at once.


Resources

1. The Ultimate Resource - wikipedia.org
2. Corn Refiners Association - sweetsurprise.com
3. Market Research - researchwikis.com/Soft_Drink_Market
4. US Regional soft drink consumption - beveragemarketing.com
5. Health - mayoclinic.com

Recipe of the Week

I have something a little different for this weekend's recipe: a recipe for an ingredient!

The first time I visited Denmark in the spring of 2007, I was taken to a gourmet food shop in Copenhagen where I found a small packet of herb salt and a Weck jar.  Perfect for a souvenirs in my opinion - small, relatively inexpensive and practical.  The Weck jar is now the happy home of my brown sugar (and my brown sugar bear).  I put the salt in my sea salt grinder when I got home and starting grinding it on everything.

It's awesome on scrambled eggs.  I found that out when all I could manage for breakfast every day for about three weeks near the end of the first trimester was one egg scrambled in butter with the herb salt.  I don't really remember what was in it besides rosemary, but I recreate my own now with my favorite herbs.  Try it with your own favorite combination, but I highly recommend the rosemary.  It adds a tasty kick to vegetables, rice, eggs, you name it.

Herbed Sea Salt
*amounts are approximate

1 cup coarse sea salt
2 tbsp. dried rosemary leaves
1 tbsp. dried thyme leaves
1 tbsp. dried basil leaves

Mix all ingredients together and store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.  Grind over everything!