Alexandersmap

    Category: food

    • Grilled Corn and Breaking Routines

      For all the new experiences I seek in this world, for all the exotic foods I’ll willingly try at restaurants around the globe, I tend to stick with the greatest hits when cooking at home. Call it frugal, or boring, or maybe simply safe, but I mostly cook foods the way I know they’ll be tasty without straying too far into the abyss.

      And so it was that corn on the cob was always shucked and steamed or boiled, and the grill was used for meats and other vegetables. Similar to my previous hesitation with pizza, there was a distinct separation of church and state when it came to taking perfectly good corn and sticking it on a grill. But like that pizza, I eventually recognized that the risk versus reward equation leaned heavily in my favor.

      There are three ways to grill corn, and two of them involve completely shucking the corn husks off. You can oil and season the corn and throw it right on the grill for a nice char and flavor, which is great if you remain at the grill and fully attentive to avoid burning it. Alternatively, you can wrap it in aluminum foil, which steams it while lightly charring it. Both of these methods seemed appropriate for the first attempt at grilling, but I wanted to go all in with the third method: grilling corn with the husk still on.

      Ironically, grilling with the husk on is the most labor-intensive grilling experience. You’ve got to roll back the husks, remove the silk and roll the husk back on, then soak the corn for 30 minutes so it doesn’t just burn away when you grill it. Not nearly as simple as throwing the shucked corn into a pot of steaming water, but what worthwhile endeavors in life are easy?

      I chose to use a charcoal grill with some hickory chips tossed in to maximize the flavor, waited for the grill to cool down to 400 degrees and placed it directly on the grill. Every five minutes I rotated the corn a quarter turn for about 25 minutes, then removed it, cleaned the grill and let it rest while I grilled the meat.

      And the result? Perfectly cooked corn with a mild grilled flavor. Nothing revolutionary here, but a departure from the norm. It was a good reminder to push the comfort zone with my own cooking. Next up? Direct charring on the grill. Can’t let this adventurous momentum stall just yet. After all, summer and fresh corn won’t last forever.

    • Finding Soulfulness in Inefficient Places

      “Everything that feels soulful in life is inefficient. All the vacations that we find very soulful are inefficient places. The food that we really, really like and find soulful are inefficient to cook… maybe soulfulness is a function of chaos and inefficiency... It is impossible to imagine scaling in life without standardizing. And standardizing is the enemy of soulfulness.” — Kunal Shah, Interviewed on The Knowledge Project

      Don’t you feel the weight of truth in Shah’s words? Don’t we feel the lack of soulfulness in a “corporate” vacation destination versus the times we march to our own beat? Who seeks out a national restaurant chain for soulfulness and individual expression by the chef? No, we go to places like Disney World and Applebees for the predictability—good product delivered as expected. No need for translation or a Google search, it’s. just. as. expected. <yawn>.

      We all seek predictable when we can. Heck, I stayed at a Hilton in Vienna instead of a boutique hotel because I could use points and I knew there would be an iron and ironing board in the closet—because there is always an iron and ironing board in the closet of every Hilton property I’ve ever stayed in anywhere in the world. Sometimes you don’t need soulfulness, you just need to iron a damned shirt yourself.

      Contrast this my hotel in Castelrotto, Italy, where our room didn’t have a window but a skylight, no air conditioning or fan, uneven floors and a reception desk in another building down the street. The bell in the tower right above our heads through that open skylight would begin ringing at 06:00 sharp. And you know what? I loved it. The building was older than the United States, that bell was ringing long before I entered this world and the breakfast was a lovely spread of soulful local expression I’d never have found in a hotel chain. There’s something to be said for inefficiency too.

      So how do we create soulfulness in our own work? We don’t do it by parroting whatever business book we just read in our next meeting with coworkers or customers. And we don’t do it by following the corporate handbook to the letter (but don’t you dare stray a step too far). No, we create soulfulness when we find our unique voice in the process of turning chaos into order and eliminating inefficiencies. Ironic, isn’t it? But meaningful work isn’t chaotic, it’s expressive yet contributive. We don’t add to the Great Conversation by shouting over the crowd, nor do we help a company meet its quarterly objectives without following an informed policy or two.

      Here’s the twist: we find soulfulness in our work through routine. This isn’t standardization, this is disciplined dues-paying to reach a place where we might transcend the average. We write a million average phrases to turn one clever, soulful phrase that resonates. We refine widgets over and over again until something perfect emerges. Soulfulness is developed through routine but released through individual, and thus inefficient, expression.

    • Delusions of a Hopeful Gardener

      “The thing is you could eat someone’s entire backyard garden and it would be less than 300 calories so what are we doing here?” — @HelloJessicaFox

      A handful of blueberries, picked before they fully ripened, was the extent of the harvest this season. The catbirds and chipmunks got the rest. But at least the tomatoes are showing some progress (until the groundhog determines they’re ripe enough to sample). Sure, gardening is a joyful pursuit, but it’s also folly.

      For most of us gardening isn’t as much about feeding the family as it maintaining a connection to the soil. We grow up watching our grandparents and parents harvesting a bounty of fruits and vegetables and somehow we feel compelled to keep the dream alive. Really, who are we fooling? My garden will produce a few good tomatoes, a summer’s worth of basil and mint and not a whole lot more. If I were a settler 250 years ago I’d have starved to death.

      Yet we press ahead, planting our gardens full of hope, only to have them dashed by Mother Nature and her cast of flying monkeys gobbling up every last blueberry. We dare not complain should she toss in a swarm of locust for good measure. Live with that handful of produce and count your blessings. There’s always the farm stand down the street.

      Still, there’s always hope, and this season I pushed through the challenge of being away most of June and kept almost all of the edibles on track. The season is still early, and there’s still a chance for a bounty of delicious fruits and vegetables… Do you see? The delusions of a hopeful gardener on display.

    • Breakfast of Champions

      There’s a classic Saturday Night Live sketch where John Belushi portrays a dominant track athletic at his peak. His secret? Little chocolate donuts. It spoofs every performance food ad of the time and really, since. And it raises the question—what exactly are we eating for optimal performance in our days?

      Travel opens our eyes to what constitutes breakfast from place-to-place, and forces us to examine what exactly we consume to start our day. What exactly fuels us as we begin our days? As we learn more about what is good for us and what simply fills us up, shouldn’t our expectations for what we consume is evolve?

      Eating breakfast in places around the world, you immediately pick up on the differences. Americans are heavy on portion size. We like our eggs and bacon and pancakes with a healthy pile of home fries or grits, depending on how you feel about snow. Austrians and Germans seem to favor cheese and cold cuts with a hard-boiled egg and bread. Other countries favor fish, olives, figs, dates and yogurt.

      Who’s right? We are what we eat, but the Mediterranean diet seems to be the consensus pick for healthiest. Still, it might be a tough transition from corn flakes or biscuits to smoked fish and a handful of figs. Ultimately, we have to decide what we’re going to eat. We ought to lean in on fuel and shy from fill. But who doesn’t love a chocolate donut now and then?

      I suppose the answer is to standardize on the healthy diet, and splurge occasionally on the things that taste good in the moment but aren’t especially good fuel for our bodies. It’s a pay me now or pay me later scenario, but the now is a very immediate rush of satisfaction and a fairly short window before the debt is owed. If we can resist the immediate temptation until we’re satiated on the good stuff, maybe we can avoid the bad stuff altogether.

      Part of the breakfast offering in Israel

    • You Are What You Eat

      “The longer your food lasts, the shorter you will.” — David Sinclair

      Simple tweet from Sinclair that elegantly sums up the mission: eat fresh, natural food without preservatives. Eliminate the sketchy processed foods from our diets. Stop piling on junk atop junk for our bodies to stress over. We all know it intuitively yet make exceptions for what we chew on. We forget the long game for the savory moment.

      When you read a statement like that, are you inclined to dismiss it? Challenge it? Or accept it as a wisdom nugget? Do you change the way you eat or defer action to another day? If we are what we eat what exactly are we becoming?

      The shorter the truth nugget, the longer it lingers in the mind.

    • Live in the Open-Mindedness

      I live in the open mindedness
      of not knowing enough
      about anything.
      — Mary Oliver, Luna

      There’s a liberation in knowing your limitations in this world. Understanding what you don’t know offers a fork in the road to either learn more or move on and embrace your ignorance. Which we choose is determined by who we want to be, or who we must be.

      I was presented a wine list by a waiter during a team dinner at a high end restaurant. Scanning the list, I quickly found the familiar wines. And hundreds of wines I’d never heard of before, each categorized in general groupings based on the region of the world they came from. Determined to try something new, I welcomed the sommelier who quickly rattled off a few questions that brought us to a bottle. The sommelier and I each met that fork in the road at different points in time. Sometime in his past he embraced learning about each of those hundreds of bottles. When I reached that same fork he was right there to guide me. And every other name and region on that extensive list faded away from my mind.

      Not knowing enough about anything and knowing just enough about something aren’t so different. Being open-minded about experiencing what the world brings you offers opportunity. Experience develops the confidence to accept what you’ll never know.

    • What You Drift Away From

      My spouse recently deprioritized potato chips and Diet Coke from her life. For me, I could pass the rest of my days without ever consuming either of them, but for her these were a big part of her eating ritual. You make a sandwich for lunch, you need something crunchy and salty with it. And of course something to wash it down with. Dropping each was hard for her but she’s finding her stride.

      I’ve got my own demons. A love of great cheese, pasta, rice and beer — wonderful foods that I’ve largely eradicated from my life in 2022. In previous years I used to have cheat days where I’d eat all of this stuff in a binge of epic proportions. Now I let things drift away. I’ll have an occasional beer with friends, and I’ll sprinkle a bit of grated cheese on a meal now and then, but surprisingly I don’t miss it much.

      Food in this way is like old friends you don’t see anymore, you just fill the void with other things that bring you delight. Jennifer Senior wrote an article called It’s your Friends Who Break Your Heart in the latest edition of The Atlantic that speaks to the drifting away of friends in your life. We’ve all experienced it: In school or in your career you collect friendships. When you’re a parent of active children you tend to collect fellow collaborators who become friends. It’s only when the nest empties and a pandemic grabs a couple of years of your life that you look around and find that only a small core group remains. The great reckoning of what’s really important in your life is a harsh judge.

      I have long work relationships that fell away like a bag of chips with lunch. I have some people in my life that I haven’t talked to since it became clear how different our worldviews were on science and politics. Friendships of convenience always drift away with physical or emotional distance. The ones that stand the test of time are honed on common interests, deep roots and a shared commitment to keeping it going.

      Lately I’ve been struggling with my daily rituals. The morning has always been about writing, but work increasingly pulls at me, prompting me to cut short my writing and jump into the fray. The workouts and long walks became a casualty too frequently. This won’t do. We become what we prioritize, and you must fold positive habits into your daily life or you’ll eventually find yourself overweight, unproductive, uneducated and void of meaningful relationships.

      We are what we repeatedly do.

      You are what you eat.

      We are the sum of the five people we hang around with the most.

      There’s truth in these statements, which is why we all know them by heart. So why don’t we do more to prioritize the positive actions, food and people in our daily lives? I believe it’s because we all live in a whirlwind, and sometimes it just feels easier to turn on the television and distract yourself with other people’s problems than to deal with your own. Grab a bag of chips and beer while you’re at it. Habits and rituals work both ways. We’re either improving our lot or slipping sideways down the cliff. You just don’t notice it right away until there’s some tangible negative momentum in your slide.

      Maybe the answer really is all things in moderation. But you know even saying that that it isn’t really true. The real truth is some things in moderation, some things not at all. Some things in abundance, and nothing in excess. We ought to stop drifting through the whirlwind of life and decide what brings you closer to who you want to become. In doing so, we must allow some things to drift silently away from us. And hold on to other things for dear life.

    • Water and Wine, Experience and Emotion

      “The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.’ Water is experience, immediate sensation, and wine is emotion, and it is with the intellect, as distinguished from imagination, that we enlarge the bounds of experience and separate it from all but itself, from illusion, from memory, and create among other things science and good journalism. Emotion, on the other hand, grows intoxicating and delightful after it has been enriched with the memory of old emotions, with all the uncounted flavours of old experience, and it is necessarily an antiquity of thought, emotions that have been deepened by the experiences of many men of genius, that distinguishes the cultivated man.” – W.B. Yeats

      “In vino veritas, in aqua sanitas” (In wine there is truth, in water health)

      Water is best when it’s moving. There’s a reason we seek out ocean swells and waterfalls. It taps into out desire for constant change, for movement and action. Stagnant water is usually associated with contamination and sickness. Moving water is associated with vibrancy and health. We seek the fresh and new in our lives for it is life itself.

      Wine is no good at the moment it’s poured into the cask. It must age and mature, and rise to meet its potential depth of flavor. The French call this process élevage, the progression of wine between fermentation and bottling. The term élevage also means procreation. It’s clear the French saw the connection between aging wine and human life.

      Water as experience, wine as emotion. A great life is a proper mix of experience and emotion, new and old. With that in mind, shouldn’t we seek out new experiences? Shouldn’t we mine our deepest thoughts and emotions and create something from it? We need both in our lives, don’t we? Experience to encounter the world, to wrestle with it in real time and find our place in it. Emotion to reflect on what we’ve seen and grow, and ultimately realize our potential through maturity and insight.

      Turning to the Latin phrase, we see that there’s a balance between the two. To be healthy (sanus) we must refresh our bodies with nutrition and hydration and action. To be wise (sapiens), we must learn from this experience, meditate on it and grow. Balancing the two is the key to a vibrant, fulfilling life.

      Slàinte Mhath!

    • Wait Times

      Arriving at a popular restaurant without a reservation informs. It tells you a bit about the restaurant, but also a bit about yourself. For those moments when you don’t have the instant gratification of bring seated right away, there are questions that come to mind during your time in restaurant purgatory:

      Just how popular is this place anyway?

      How long is the wait at that place down the street?

      And of course, Just how many minutes are acceptable? 20? 40? 60+?

      When you’ve heard the answer about wait time and you know roughly what you’re about to experience, the calculus begins:

      Is this the kind of place I want to spend that amount of time waiting?

      How far away from the restaurant can you wander without jeopardizing your spot in line?

      If going to a restaurant is an experience, then a bit of anticipation shouldn’t be a strike against the place. If anything, it enhances the experience. At least it should! What will make this experience memorable? It probably won’t be the wait time. But what if a restaurant made it memorable and fun? The ones that do tend to jump out at you as places to try again and again.

      That, I imagine, is one reason they have wait times in the first place.

    • All Things in Moderation (Especially Ice Cream)

      I indulged in an ice cream cone after dinner last night. It was everything you’d expect an ice cream cone on a warm August night to be; delicious, gooey and drippy, with big chunks of cherry and chocolate chip offering flavor bursts and texture. An amazing experience that I paid for with a night of Tums and water propped up on the bed to keep acid reflux at bay. That one ice cream will keep me from having another for the rest of summer. Perfect.

      Portion control is nice, but avoiding certain foods works better for me. If I don’t go out and get an ice cream cone I won’t eat it. If I don’t stock the bowl in the kitchen with M & M’s I won’t mindlessly grab a handful every time I walk by it. Out of sight, out of mind.

      On the flip side, if I buy the blueberries and leafy greens I’ll feel compelled to eat them while they’re fresh. If I keep the workout clothes near the bed, or the backpack packed and ready to go I’ll eliminate any lazy excuse for not getting up and doing what I promised myself I’d do. This is the Yin and Yang of fitness and nutrition. Surf the edge, just don’t drift too far over it.

      That classic summer experience of eating an ice cream cone now and then is perfectly fine. Still, the lines are far longer at the ice cream stand than they are at the farm stand. Probably better to reverse the frequency at each, isn’t it? The reckoning will come, whether it’s overnight or over time. Making good food choices and eating in moderation are key to a vibrant, resilient life.

      Yes, the overnight ice cream chaos could have been avoided with a smaller portion. A lot smaller. All things in moderation and a lesson re-learned. Until next summer anyway.