Jeni's Splendid Customer Service

I've blathered a million times on this blog and in other forums about how much I love Columbus-based Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. They use local ingredients, make interesting varieties in small batches, and do everything more or less very well. I am proud that they are an Ohio business and anxiously await the day they open a location in Cleveland (Shaker Square would be perfect, hint, hint).

Recently, Jeni's introduced their fall line of flavors, including Blackstrap Molasses Praline, Ohio Heirloom Pumpkin 5-Spice, Saigon Cinnamon, and more.

My buddy the Bachelor and I were chatting about ice cream the other day, agreed the new Jeni's flavors sounded awesome, and decided to take a whirlwind road trip to Columbus. You know, to procure ice cream. Also to shop for records and check out, ever so briefly, the sights and sounds of our state capital. Or something.

Anyway, we hit the Short North location at the very beginning of what promised to be a busy night; the district's gallery hop was getting underway, and as Bachelor and I sampled various flavors, a long line started to form behind us. We chose our pints, Bachelor bought some dry ice and I picked up a cooler. The slightly frazzled guys behind the counter packed stuff up, I ran to the restroom, Bachelor took pictures of the place with his iPhone, and when all was said and done, we headed off on our merry way, with Bachelor trying to convince me that it would be a great idea for us to get matching unicorn tattoos. You know, unicorns sitting cross-legged, eating grilled cheese sandwiches, so that we could join Melt's tattoo club. Please don't ask me how we get off on these tangents.

When we returned to Cleveland and started to divide our spoils, I realized that our cooler was only half-full. All of Bachelor's pints were tucked safely inside, but mine were nowhere to be found. Oops. In the chaos of Gallery Hop traffic, the dudes at Jeni's accidentally forgot to pack up my precious ice cream!

I called the store, and was connected to a frazzled-sounding manager, Regis. "We're insane right now, but give me your info and I promise I'll call you on Monday to arrange for shipping." Sweet. I gave him my number and waited for him to call me.

Flash forward to today. By 2, no call. I got a little worried, so I called again, explained the situation to the guy, not Regis, who answered the call, who promised Regis would call as soon as he got into work at 3:30.

Regis did not call.

I started to get real worried.

I called again a few minutes ago, Regis answered, remembered me, and took my address and the flavors I'd ordered. "We were swamped again today," he explained, "since it's so warm. But we'll ship 'em out to you tomorrow," he said. "And we'll throw in another pint for your trouble." SWEET!

Awesome customer service, Jeni's! Thanks, Regis! I can't wait until my ice cream arrives.

Links I Liked 11/01 - 11/07/2009

The theme for this week was soup.

The Denver Post proclaimed it the beginning of soup season! Of course they have had like twelve blizzards in Denver already, but I think many of the rest of us are feeling it too.

Access Atlanta gives us some pointers on how not to fuck up homemade soup. (Hint: it's not that hard, stoopid).

Here's a recipe for Polish cream of cauliflower soup (Bitten).

Also, Campbell's gets all braggy about the length of its noodles (best subtitle ever: "What About the Girth?") (Consumerist).

Food Porn

Radish and celery root salad (Cookbook Catchall)

Lemon curd s'mores (the Atlantic)

Black pepper and molasses pulled chicken sandwiches (Noble Pig)  

Now We Get to Endlessly Speculate About What Killed Gourmet

The L.A. Times posits that it was niche publishing.

On Meat and Whether We Should Eat It

Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals" reviewed; the joy of eating animals mercilessly picked apart (The New Yorker). 

Organic farmer Carol Anne Sayle tells us why she eats meat (The Atlantic).

Sorry, but when it comes to food, farmer > Jonathan Safran Foer.

On that note, OH HAI IT'S THE WORLD'S LARGEST MEATBALL.

Nutty

Marshall Efron cooks Sardine Rarebit, something no one wants to eat. (The Atlantic). 

 

Good Advice

Nigella says you should indulge yourself this winter. Yes, ma'am (NPR). 

 

Cookbook's Christmas Wish List

Look if you spend enough cash you can win a chance to kick it Martha Stewart-style, and by that, I mean eat dinner or lunch with her and tour her farm. Bid high and bid often. Do it for me, your old pal Cookbook. (Eat Me Daily).

 

Parting Shot of the Week

Drew from Toothpaste for Dinner eloquently sums up how I felt about the Casino issue in Ohio.

Cookbook's 2009 Holiday Food Preview

The holidays are upon us -- I was going over my haphazardly-kept calendar and the time is ticking away! Literally. Only about two more weeks until I get a whole week off work for Thanksgiving, and once the ball's rolling on that, the December holidays will be over and done with and we'll be peering into the cold whiteness of January, rubbing our eyes with snowblindness. What, too soon?


I've started to think about what I'll be doing for the holidays this year, in terms of physical location, economic expenditure, and food preparation. I'll be at home with the family for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but in Cleveland for New Years, per most years. Since I'm broke like a joke this year (and not getting a year-end bonus at work) gift-giving will be interesting. If you're someone I typically exchange presents with, maybe let's talk off the blog and set a price cap for gifts.

And then there's food. The holidays are nothing without food, right? Copious amounts of it, too.

Cookies

In the past I've baked mass quantities of various types of cookies each December. Really, it's been insane. Before last year, I also did this without my trusty KitchenAid, which was especially crazy, as I broke approximately two handmixers in the process.

The last two years that I lived in my sweet little apartment at Shaker Square I hosted a big cookie swap party, and I'm thinking if I can get my ass in order at the house this year, I might do it again. I feel like I still want to do a lot of cookies, but maybe not as many different types as previous years. Seriously. There was one year when I had sugar cookies, Greek honey cookies, pecan pie cookies, thin mints, triple chocolate chip cookies, thumbprints, and gingerbread. Probably a couple varieties I'm forgetting. This year I think I'll pick two or three types of cookies and maybe try my hand at some candy too...


Candy

 The only candy I really make is bourbon balls. Which are fantastic on their own. Last year I made faux Snickers, which turned out all right -- the caramel was a bit hard, so I'd do that over if I could. This year I'd like to stick with the bourbon balls but also try caramels, one or two kinds of truffles, and maybe some more marshmallows. Ooh, and peanut butter fudge. Am I getting carried away?

 Other Baking

I have been challenged to produce a Yule Log. Fun Fact: for French class in high school one year, I made a Yule Log. It took me hours and I sucked even more at cooking than I do now, but that thing turned out amazingly. I'd like to try my hand at one with meringue mushrooms.

 Savory Items

 My Thanksgiving Day plans are still up in the air. I'll definitely be home with my family for the whole week, but the question remains whether my father will feel up to attending our normal all-family celebration at my uncle's house. Since there are a variety of little ones in the family now, all under the age of 7, I'm thinking it might be a better idea for Dad to stay home since his immunity sucks right now. And children are, of course, full of germs. If we go to the family celebration, I don't really have to worry about cooking at all, maybe just pick up a bottle of wine to share with my aunties. There is always more than enough food to feed the 30-something people that show up.

If it ends up being just me and Dad at his place, I'll probably do a scaled-down version of Thanksgiving, with a turkey breast, possibly homemade stuffing, some overcooked vegetable, rolls, and maybe frozen pie.

In either case I will obviously stop at Jeni's for some ice cream to take home.  The Saigon Cinnamon and Blackstrap Praline look appealing to me!

Christmas'll be a repeat of Thanksgiving -- Dad and I always spend it together. We do Christmas Eve at my aunt's house, and again, I don't know if my dad'll feel up to it, but I'll probably drop in to say hi and steal slices of Aunt Peg's red velvet cake, and her Crock-pot meatballs.

New Year's Eve

It's far too early to know what I'll be doing to ring in 2010. Last year was a rather subdued night at home with some friends. My pal Sandra brought the most amazing cheeseball ever. Really. And she cobbled it together in like twenty minutes out of seven different recipes, or something. No matter what I end up doing this year, I'd like to have that cheeseball again. Sandra. Ahem. Ahem. (A girl needs a New Year's kiss, after all, and it might as well be delicious and made of dairy).
 If I don't do a cookie festival, I've been mulling the idea of having guests over on New Year's Day for a little brunch. HEY HUNGOVER MINIONS HIT MY HOUSE AT 1, THERE'S SCRAMBLED EGGS AND COCKTAILS.

All that said, I'm turning this over to you guys. What are some of your holiday food traditions? What are you planning on doing this year?

Weird Cookbook Wednesday: Sniffing the Stinking Rose

I like garlic. I always have. I love its flavor, love the consistency of roasted garlic spread across crusty bread. But I've never really considered it to be a focal part of any dish. It's a seasoning, something you sautee  in loads of butter before adding tons of other ingredients with equally interesting and complex flavors to complete the dish.

But did you know that there is a whole restaurant dedicated to highlighting the garlic used in its dishes? It's true. It's called the Stinking Rose and it has locations in San Francisco and Beverly Hills. According to this article, the San Francisco location uses 3,000 pounds of garlic per month. Every month, folks!

When I was in college, I had a lot of friends who participated in a vegetarian co-op on campus. All the students who were members shared responsibilities like cooking, clean-up, ordering food and supplies, doling out French bread pizzas to their stoner, non-member friends at midnight on Saturdays. As we were college students, there were varying degrees of cooking prowess among the members' ranks. Many of the students who took cooking shifts decided that lots of garlic was the way to go. Therefore, my friends who participated in the co-op often smelled like garlic for days at a time: their breath, their sweat, their clothes. Those were interesting days.

I'm not sure how you would smell upon leaving the Stinking Rose, although it seems like it might not be the best place for a first, blind, or I'm-gonna-make-it-to-second-base date. I guess it depends on what you're into.

For the home cook, or for those of us who can't make it to San Francisco or Beverly Hills on a regular basis, the restaurant has published two cookbooks: The Stinking Rose Restaurant Cookbook and The Stinking Cookbook: From the Stinking Rose, A Garlic Restaurant. The latter, which was the first one to come out, is a bit more tongue-in-cheek and includes fun graphics, an autographed picture of the Smothers Brothers, and ancillary garlic lore, along with the recipes. For instance, did you know that a clove of garlic includes 5 mg of calcium? The newer cookbook is more straight-forward recipes, but is beautifully photographed and laid out. It also includes a history of the restaurant by executive chef Andrea Froncillo and a guide to picking out the best garlic at the store.

While the idea of a garlic-themed restaurant and garlic-themed cookbooks might sound kind of gross, especially if you're not fond of the flavor of straight-up garlic, the recipes are actually kind of interesting. There's simple recipes that just happen to include garlic: braised rabbit, Tuscan white bean soup. There's also recipes that are straight-up garlic-tastic, like the 40 Clove Garlic Chicken and Garlic Remoulade from the first book and Garlic-Steamed Manila Clams from the second. And then there are cocktails.

Apparently, the Stinking Rose is known for its Gartini, which is your basic vodka martini with garlic-stuffed olives or pickled garlic cloves in the mix. I'm not really a martini person, so I have no idea whether this sounds appealing or not. Anyone?

And, yes, there's dessert. Garlic ice cream, folks. The recipe for which was, inexplicably, missing from the library copy of the Stinking Cookbook that I borrowed. Was it a misprint? Was it ripped from the binding by someone who totally loved garlic ice cream? Or by a vampire who didn't want the concept to go mainstream? We'll never know. Fortunately, the Stinking Rose Restaurant Cookbook includes the recipe, which is recommended to be served with hot Mole Sauce. Hm. "Think creamy vanilla ice cream with a hint of the roasty garlic sweetness. If you didn't know that the ice cream contained garlic, you might not even guess that it was in there."

I wish I could believe that, but really, isn't the point of making food with garlic as a key component to know that the garlic is there? It's not exactly a subtle flavor!

Cookies for the Dead

Yesterday was El Día de los Muertos. All Saint's Day. This means a celebration of the dead, and of life. It means sugar skulls and celebration and memories.

It also means that today is my friend G's birthday, and as such she threw an El Día de los Muertos party last night to celebrate both events.

Last year, I made marshmallows for G.'s party. They did not go over well because pretty much everyone there when I arrived was a vegetarian and refused to eat foods containing gelatin. Oops. We offered a couple up to the dead on the altar, a couple of the lax vegetarians in the room took a nibble of the marshmallows, and I took the rest home. They were floated in hot chocolate and loved by me, a woman who is not disgusted by eating ground horse hooves.

This year, I wanted to bring something Day of the Dead-themed, pretty but not complicated. I considered making homemade sugar skulls, but did you know that people don't really eat those? They are simply offered up to the dead. It seems a waste of sugar to me. Since the party was potluck, my offering had to be edible, so instead, I made sugar skull cookies.

Seriously, I bought the cookie cutters especially for the party. Because, believe it or not, I didn't already have skull-shaped cookie cutters. Look for skulls to show up in Santa hats and Easter bunny ears for future holiday cookie baking sessions.

The cookie cutters came with a recipe for simple sugar cookies, which is what I used with some slight adjustments. I fudged a little by adding a sprinkle of cinnamon and a little bit of lemon extract, just for a hint of interesting flavor.


Dia de los Muertos Sugar Cookies

2/3 cup white sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 T vanilla extract
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour
2 t lemon extract
1/2 t cinnamon

Cream the butter and sugar; add egg, vanilla, lemon extract and cinnamon. Mix in flour. When well-mixed, form into a lump and refrigerate for a couple of hours. Then, on a well-floured surface, roll out the cookie dough to about 1/8-inch thick and cut into desired shapes. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. These cookies don't really rise or spread much and I didn't let them get brown at all. Depends on how crisp you like your cookies.

This is what they looked like pre-decoration:

Let them cool, then decorate to your heart's content.  Day of the Dead is typically full of bright colors and elaborate ornamentation, and skull cookies are no exception.

Let me tell you a little something about decorating these cookies.

I knew I wanted lots of different colors and I also knew that I have no real talent for decorating things. I can't even draw a straight line. Therefore, I thought maybe I could cut all the teeth and flower eyes out of fruit leather:

Teef.

Which I did for a few cookies.

Then I realized how time-consuming that task was, and also how unwieldy I am with paring knives and kitchen shears. Ahem.

So in the end, most of my eyes were piped on with sparkly red icing. And the cookies were frosted with prefab Wilton icing. Shortcuts ahoy!

 This is the one cookie I made perfectly before I gave up in favor of extra pre-party naptime.

But I did keep it real with the teeth and nose sockets. All the cookies included noses and teeth made of fruit leather and/or candied orange peel (which you may remember from Witch Week on Weird Cookbook Wednesday).

In the end, the gel icing was smeary, so the cookies looked a little wonky by the time we arrived at the party, but they were actually kind of a hit.

Links I Liked 10/25 - 10/31/09

The theme for this week was: Halloween, obviously!

 

What do you think of servers in costume? Slashfood explores.

 

Slashfood also gives us an interesting rundown of Halloween food history.  

 

Not Martha presents Meat Hand. Y'know, like meatloaf, shaped like a hand. I'd eat it.

 

Vintage Cookbooks highlights a retrotastic apple bobbing party menu.

 

Food Porn

 

Night Owl Cookies (The Baking Bird)

 

Blood Orange Sorbet (YumSugar)

 

Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle (Dineomite) 

 

Candy Blog gives us a candy tease.

 

C-Town Represent

 

Michael Symon, he's got a new cookbook coming out (Cleveland.com).

 

The Goat Family explores the joys of Coke.

 

Blackbird Bakery opens in Lakewood (Cleveland.com).

 

Celebrities + Food

 

Salon writes about Natalie Portman's vegan vendetta. Sigh.

 

Colonel Sanders: iconic, but not necessarily beloved by all (Slashfood).

 

Girls, Food, and Drink

 

I heart me some Domestic Snark: "I want him to propose so tell me how I can get that to happen via cake."

 

I tend not to like pink drinks. Chow has the scoop on ladies who like "manly" booze. 

Top Ten Sucky Halloween Treats

Christine gave me and Ms. Callahan the following assignment: think of some Cleveland-themed "treats" you'd hand out to trick-or-treaters. Examples she cited were pink slips and bottles of Harvey Pekar's tears.

I can't really think of any Cleveland snark today. Not feelin' it, just like Ms. Callahan wasn't feeling it. So as an alternative, here's a list of stuff you sh ould hand out to kids if you are just aching to have your house egged.

10. Rolls of small change, wrapped in foil. (Growing up, I had an elderly neighbor who always did this -- pennies, mostly, never adding up to the same amount. Thirteen cents, twenty-four cents. It was always a mystery what you'd get, always disappointing).

9. Popcorn balls. (Again, growing up, there was a witchy neighborhood lady who spent lots of time making homemade popcorn balls for the neighborhood kids. They were tasty and we were allowed to eat them because everyone knew the lady. However, my prime trick-or-treating years took place in the mid-1980s, when people started getting real apeshit about razor blades in apples and stuff. Remember?

Anyway, popcorn balls instantly make you suspect and they are kinda hard to eat).

8. "Healthy" stuff. Granola bars, bags of pretzels, miniature boxes of raisins. Who do you people think you are?

7. Toothbrushes. THAT IS WHAT DENTISTS ARE FOR, LADY.

6. Sugar-free candy.

5. Old people candy. I'm looking at you, butterscotches.

4. Any tchtochke from the Oriental Trading Company catalog. Plastic rings, high-bounce balls, etc. All choking hazards, all potentially deadly sources of lead or melamine.

3. Tootsie rolls. Also, Dots, which are made by the same company.

2. Off-brand candies. Like Palmer mockolate. Spring for the good stuff.

1. Scripture. Specifically, Halloween-themed Chick tracts.