SALAD & CANDY

Molly's Ideal Lunch #2, by Molly Young

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:34:00 -0500

Bowl of rice topped with fried stuff at Panya.

Secret: after you eat the fried stuff and have disproportionate rice left, apply mayonnaise.

Things my mom tries to get me to eat that I still do not really enjoy

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:21:26 -0500

-Chicken (“It’s such a clean protein”)

-Mung beans

-Walnuts

Molly's Ideal Lunch, By Molly Young

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:10:00 -0500

Tuna melt and black coffee….followed by

ENORMO WEDGE OF CARROT CAKE!

Lazy craving equivalency chart

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:25:46 -0500

Burrito = Microwaved tortilla with salsa and inappropriate (parmesan) cheese

Toast= Microwaved bread with butter on it

PB&J= Mouthful of dry cereal + spoonful of peanut butter + spoonful of jelly

Fizzy soda= flat soda swished around in mouth

Sushi= old rice, soy sauce, any vegetable

Two ladies and a cat, Friday night, New York City

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:14:23 -0500

Firstly, some caveats: we were kindly gifted these ingredients by Molly’s mom as a lure to the Upper West Side, and on our end, the project was a return to last summer’s eating habits - ones that seem foreign to us now.

Preface: silken tofu would make a great material for breast implants.

Note the rule of thirds in this classical composition. Should we have photoshopped in a skull memento mori? A glistening bunch of grapes? A lamb shank? A strangely small baby?

I like my women the way I like my pudding: whipped.

This is a combination of ingredients and processes no grown man should ever indulge in.

It’s like all vegan stuff: not that good, but three bites in and you’re hooked.

“Chick food.” - Dad

…or CHIC FOOD???????

WE’RE BAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! New...

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:59:34 -0500

WE’RE BAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New posts start Monday! HYPE DIS ON TWITTER FOOOOOL

Hiatus Alert

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:45:48 -0400

We’ll be taking a brief hiatus from S&C to catch up on a flood of projects.

Stay tuned!

Mermaid's Purse

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:36:07 -0400

Dumping a whole bunch of stuff in a pot of boiling broth is the ultimate in-house, fast food. This sort of meal is why Asians are seldom morbidly obese. Follow suit, and slurp up your maritime foliage. Create a Blue Zone right in your own kitchen!

Great Eastern Sun has an immense line of sea vegetables: affordable, exotic and potent. How often do you read those three adjectives in tandem?

Mermaids’ Purses: The ultimate seashore find.

—Alice

Buddha cookie with red nipples and mordant belly-button.

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:12:19 -0400

Buddha cookie with red nipples and mordant belly-button.

Bryan Derballa on Island Eating

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:50:22 -0400

Our friend BRYAN DERBALLA of Lovebryan is here to tell us about island eating. Bryan is a freelance documentary photographer living in Brooklyn, NY, and he has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The FADER, Wired.com.

The sun will set at 6:41 p.m. today. Summer is quickly coming to a close and the ice cream truck song is fading into the distance. It’s days like these that I like to take in the last sweet bits of sunshine in short sleeves. The most appropriate snack combo for such days is coconut water and plantain chips. My neighborhood is heavy PR/DR, so every bodega carries a decent assortment of tropical treats.

Goya or Foco — the brand of the coconut water doesn’t matter so long as it comes in a tall can. Don’t bother with that Vita Coco crap. It may have fierce electrolytical power but it lacks the added sugar to curb the marinated battery taste inherent in young coconuts.

As for the plantain chips, I always go for the Chile ‘N Lime flavor. They make a Chile and they make a Lemon, but Chile ‘N Lime makes me feel like I’m getting two bags for the price of one. Sitting on the stoop alternating sips and chips and listening to reggaeton in passing cars is about as Brooklyn as it gets for me. It’s not quite the tropics but neither are the snacks (“Product of Thailand” or Mfd. in Queens).

Just like summer, the best part of this fare is the last bit. After all the plantain chips are gone, the bag is filled with a Chile ‘N Lime powder that’s at once sour and spicy, like Sour Patch Kid dust that grow hair on your chest. And the tall can is left with juicy cubes of coconut pulp that you can’t help but stack on your tongue. When that’s gone and the sun has set, brace yourself for five months of whitish-gray haze and tepid porridge. Buena Suerte.

What I eat when I don’t feel like eating at all: ham and...

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:50:01 -0400

What I eat when I don’t feel like eating at all: ham and cheese and Scotch and soda.

-Molly

Inspired by HEAB’s haiku in celebration of kabocha squash, I decided to write some of my own...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:18:00 -0400

Inspired by HEAB’s haiku in celebration of kabocha squash, I decided to write some of my own on this misty morning.

I hate to say it:
Mo Kombucha mo problems
Where my money at?

Mori-Nu tofu
Baby, baby you so fine
Cute seams on your side

You monopolize
the fridge, distress my colon
Raw Kale - you’re banished

—Alice

Gena's Carrot Fries

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:59:38 -0400

Today’s lunch included (but was not limited to) Gena’s carrot fries. She posts very good recipes, and is a reliably charming blogger–– well-versed in realms beyond the food. That’s always important.

I like the crispy burnt edges the best.

-Molly

Let down your hair

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:02:41 -0400

My actions often don’t match up with the persona that I hold to be self-evident. Case in point: Splenda. I use it all the time while believing firmly that it is tackiness incarnate. Tackiness is really my only issue with Splenda (Crystal Light, Diet Coke, etc.). Of course they’re all bad for you, but worse, they’re déclassé. At some point though, I abandoned the secretive sweetening in favor of frank embrace. Splenda to me actually tastes better than real sugar. It’s more concentrated and adds a unique sting to plain yogurt. If it were not for Rapunzel Organic Whole Cane Sugar, the Splenda habit would have stayed with me for life.

This new species of sucrose looks like one of two things:

-Pessimistically: The texture is the same as that coarse, dusty sand found at cut-rate tropical vacation beaches that claim “white sand beaches.”

-Optimistically: The granules look like bee pollen, which is a tricky comparison, because though it sounds appealing, bee pollen in itself is disappointing looking (not tasting!).

Just next to the explanatory distillation diagram on the back of the bag is a brownie recipe. Geir and I debated its hypothetical success over breakfast (Would the properties that make the sugar so exceptional come through? Would not the chocolate overwhelm its subtle notes?). Geir made a great point: if you were to follow the recipe exactly and use only Rapunzel brand flours, sugars and cocoa, the brownie might taste EXACTLY LIKE 1974.

Once my hair grows out a bit and reaches the “freaky, horse-girl” breaking point, I’ll start cookin.’

—Alice

How to eat monkishly but nutritiously and stay full in New York for $3 / day

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:31:18 -0400

You need:

-One canister oatmeal
-One cabbage
-One carton eggs
-Soy sauce
-Butter

For breakfast: A bowl of oatmeal with lots of butter on top.

For lunch: Cabbage stir-fried with an egg and soy sauce (poor man’s moo shu).

For dinner: One or both of the previous, in doubled or tripled quantity.

Use the money saved to buy mezcal, get a cat or go camping. It’s not as bad as it looks.

Soulflax

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:56:34 -0400

I have two irrational fears: the fear of getting bored and the fear of getting hungry. I carry reading material with me everywhere I go, regardless of the fact that on particular days I am absolutely sure that there will be no time for it. I even bring books to parties. It’s a protective act that ensures my self-sufficiency.

It’s taken me years though – literally a decade – to accept the fact that preventative eating does not work. Actually, it has the opposite effect. Eating all the food you normally would in 12 hours just before you board an all-day flight, for instance, will only yield sky-high pretzel scrounging, ginger ale chugging and pining stares at fellow sandwich-eating passengers. Promise.

It’s unfortunate then that this age of consent coincides with such a life-altering discovery. Many people, often ones like me with finicky stomachs, believe in food combining, the theory that certain groups of food are more compatible with each other than others and thus promote healthy digestion. That’s great, but my discovery is of a different variety of combination. Like the ancient South American tribes who were able to subside off a diet whose staple was the proverbial “complete protein” (rice and beans), I have learned this week that I can sustain my self for an ENTIRE DAY with a early morning pairing of flax seed crackers and peanut butter. Who knew? Peanut butter on whole wheat toast is incapable of such a feat. I’ve tried.

Matter of Flax sent us a big ol’ box of cracker samples: each flavor of Whole Life Flax Crisps (East Indian, Greek, Herb Garden, Italian and Mexican) and their Jalapeno Cilantro No Bean Hummus, which I have yet to try. It was fun to compose jagged towers of ethnic flax crackers mortared together with peanut butter. I was kept satisfied, multicultural and full of fatty acids all day long!

If only I had known about this combination before. High school classes would have been free of stomach growling, college lectures would have been sat all the way through and drives upstate could have been made without stops for snacking.

—Alice

Jeffrey Dahmer cupcake storage

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:19:00 -0400

Jeffrey Dahmer cupcake storage

Recessionistas

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:07:52 -0400

In high school, my parents did the very typical 2004-era thang of sending me off to the Carribean for the summer. According to the program’s literature, we would improve our French language skills and perform meaningful community service. Really, our days followed a 1:1:8 ratio. One part joking around in French with the locals, one part painting an ugly mural, eight parts flirting and/or forming cliques.

My main memory of the summer, conveniently bought and literally souvenired, was a straw baseball hat with a ill-proportioned Nike swoosh woven in. It’s long gone, and unfortunately there is no photo documentation. We also drank a lot of fresh, exotic fruit juice. We also all got dysentery.

Those two memories, humorously fake designer goods and liquified produce, cross-breed and remind me of something that I dabble in frequently.

By sweetly asking the guy at your local bodega for an empty plastic cup with a lid and a straw, you too can drink seemingly overpriced beverages! I replicate One Lucky Duck’s Thai Green in my own kitchen before pouring it into a takeaway cup. Molly’s the same way: only an empty GT’s bottle could save her homemade kombucha from amateurism.

In boom times, comfort food is always perversely popular (cue the Spotted Pig). Now, be it the dreary economy or my own personal poverty, nothing appeals more than pricey purchasables.

Fake it ‘til you make it.

—Alice

Something that's easy without being too easy

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:58:58 -0400

These noodles are the exact texture of “guts” in a blind haunted house. They are also reminiscent of a 1970s hippie potluck, or parents (like mine) who presumably attended such potlucks and memorized the best recipes.

You don’t really need much to make them except what’s in your pantry, and if you lack anything there will be a decent substitute within reach. Just make sure you have some lubrication, some acid, some salt, some fat, and some sugar.

Cold Sesame Noodles

1 package of noodles or spaghetti
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 cup tahini or peanut butter
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp rice or wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Optional but not at all necessary: chopped cucumber, scallion, almonds, peanuts, chicken, tofu and/or or cabbage.

Cook the noodles and rinse them in cold water. Toss with sesame oil. Mix the other ingredients together. You might need to thin the dressing with a little hot water.

Mix it all together. Chill for a few hours, then eat.

-Molly

Before I was in California, I was in Houston, Texas. That was crazy. The very first meal I had in...

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:15:06 -0400

Before I was in California, I was in Houston, Texas. That was crazy. The very first meal I had in the U.S. was Froot Loops, and I was like, ‘What is this? We do not eat colorful circles for breakfast.’ I was used to pancakes with meat stuffed in them. Everything was different.

— Dasha Zhukova, Interview, August 2009