Grey Cloud

Grey cloud, I am

heavy with questions

of what today is like

for those

who live in a quick, lit city

far east of here.

When it rains there

a stranger’s red umbrella puffs,

like a tulip,

and she orders hot chocolate,

reads,

pretends she wants to be alone

in a crowded café.

But me, I am an office worker,

in a painted-cardboard downtown

that feels like midnight.

And when the rain comes,

it comes in sheets,

beads cracking on the roof,

and I am frightened,

because the streets are empty

and no one walks here.

Toothbrush

You are not different from

the toothbrush I bought

because it looked timeless,

because it cost 76 cents less.

When I go to sleep,

to run my tongue across

a half moon of teeth,

I meet grit,

and get up to brush them again.

Too many missed spots.

notes from the herb garden

Welcome back. Over the summer months, I have enjoyed watching my basil, mint and lavender bloom in the garden. We planted the seedlings in May, and they are now full and growing constantly. We also have a raspberry bush and a jalapeno plant, which have both been slow to flower, but are now well on their way to producing fruit.

I am always in search of recipes that will put these herbs to use. Over the summer, I have been making a simple mint tea for an after-dinner drink, and tonight, I made two different varieties of pesto -- classic basil and basil-mint -- with the beautifully green mint and basil leaves from the garden. I've shared the recipes below. Enjoy!

basil/mint pesto

The pesto was surprisingly easy to make --

Blend approximately 30 basil leaves (or 20 basil leaves and 10 mint leaves) in a food processor along with 1/3 cup pine nuts, 1/2 cup olive oil, a touch of salt, and a cup of parmesan cheese.

Of course, the classic basil pesto is delicious, but the mint variation gives it a bit of coolness, and you can barely detect the difference between the two sauces. I'm looking forward to using the sauces to make roasted chicken tomorrow night.

**

mint tea

The mint is lovely for making fresh tea. The recipe is from my best friend, who makes the tea from sweet mint. The mint I have in the garden is a bit stockier, and therefore making the tea from the mint in my garden requires more leaves.

All you have to do is snip several handfuls of leaves (I'd say about 3-4 handfuls, until you can barely hold them all in one hand) and rinse them thoroughly. Make sure there is no dirt or outside bug-iness still on the leaves. Boil a small pot of filtered water. When the water reaches a rolling boil, add the mint leaves and let them wilt into the water, approximately one minute.

Turn off the heat and let the leaves sit in the water for a few more minutes. The liquid should be a bright chartreuse, almost neon in color. Add sugar, if you like, and enjoy.

**

lavender

The lavender is a bit trickier to use. In the beginning of the summer, it flowered beautifully, but now it is stockier and the stems are thicker and stronger. I'd like to make a dessert out of the petals, or dry them to make sachets. But for now, I am using the leaves as decoration.

vanilla ice cream taste test: the results!

Last week, I recruited some lovely ladies to be my taste testers for this month's blind taste test, vanilla ice creams.  There were nine of us girls in all, and we sat at a long dinner table outside in the garden, long after the sun had set, determined to find the best grocery store brand of vanilla ice cream available in the metropolitan Kansas City area.

The contenders, you ask? 

Blue Bell, Haagen-Dazs, Blue Bunny, Shatto, and Breyer's.

Each of the girls were asked to vote, on a scale of 1-10 (1 being just plain awful and 10 being knee-weakening good) on the taste of each vanilla ice cream sample.  Although the girls knew beforehand which brands would be represented in the taste test, they were not aware of what brand they were eating as they sampled each ice cream.

And the results?

Blue Bunny got the highest rating, an average of 7.21 out of 10, and was the favorite of a suprising majority (5 out of 9 girls ranked it as their top flavor).  They wrote that the flavor was fresh and the texture was thicker than most of the other ones they tried.  One taster, however, complained about it's "fake taste".  Overall though, a big yums up!

Haagen-Dazs, in second place, was close behind with an overall average rating of 6.36 out of 10.  The girls commented that it was light, and tasted more like natural vanilla.  However, some tasters thought that it was natural to a fault, and that it lacked flavor.

Breyer's, with an average rating of 5.86 out of 10, came in third place.  It was the favorite of two of the girls, and got points for fresh, natural flavor, creaminess and the visible vanilla bean specks.  However, it lost points with some of the tasters for being too bland.

Shatto, came in fourth with an average rating of 5.08 out of 10.  Tasters complained that it lacked flavor, but they enjoyed its beautiful, pale white color.

Blue Bell, in fifth place, managed to wrangle an average rating of 4.29 out of 10.  Although some tasters enjoyed its rich, creamy texture, some complained that it was overly sweetened, eggy, fake tasting, and plagued with icy bits.

The point of these taste tests is to make sure we really know what we like, and that we're not just buying something for the brand or the packaging.  I was surprised to discover myself that Blue Bunny was my personal favorite.  It's a brand that I never would have expected to make the top of my list.

Until next time, enjoy your newly scrutinized vanilla ice cream brands, and don't forget to question your own brand loyalties every now and again.

  

Taste Test

We've rescheduled the taste test for Wednesday, May 27th at 4 pm.  We're on the quest to find the best grocery store brand of vanilla ice cream! Join us!

Just wanted to say...

...happy spring!

Thanks again to all of you who support Hungry Bird. You can look forward to many more food-related adventures in the near future.

Discovering Baby Cupcakes

This week I am posting a few pictures I took after my adventure to 3 Women and an Oven, located in Overland Park at 148th and Metcalf.  Although the space is small, the bakery makes up for it with its friendly service and its bold and fiercely feminine (think lots of pink) decor.  I spoke for a while with one of the saleswomen, who seemed knowledgeable and passionate about the cakes.  The smell inside of the bakery alone was enough to sell me, and after talking to the saleswoman for a while, I decided to let her do my choosing: she put together a sample box of their signature baby cupcakes, and I took them home to a hungry stomach and a cold glass of milk. Pictured above, clockwise from the top right corner are the following flavors: pink champagne, tuxedo, red velvet, carrot, and kahlua.

Even though I haven't yet had the chance to sample all of the flavors that the bakery offers (I'm ready to go back just for the German chocolate), I was impressed by the red velvet, but most of all by the carrot -- I highly recommend. 

The pink champagne and tuxedo cakes were fun additions, if not for any other reason but their looks. The pink champagne cake sparkles like a princess with its glitter dust, and the tuxedo cake is a little gentleman.  I'm still on the fence about their taste though: I'm still not sure if I believe that champagne can work as a cupcake flavor, and the tuxedo cake, while full of chocolate, seemed a bit too dry for me.

I enjoyed the kahlua cake: it was sort of like eating a spiked chocolate pudding.

Overall, thumbs up to 3 Women and an Oven for their beautiful presentation, killer carrot cake and sweet service.  Thanks for the tip, Lauren!

Shamrock Shake Located, Disappointment Ensues

On our epic roadtrip from Kansas City to Boston and back, Papa and I managed to locate the Shamrock Shake twice.  The first time was at 2 am in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but the machine was closed for cleaning and we did not get our mint-fix on. 

No, the Shamrock Shake was conquered at a road-side rest-stop somewhere between New Haven and NYC. Maybe it was the fact that the ladies operating the machine didn't know how to properly mix the green dream minty mix with the vanilla base, or maybe it was the fact that it was 10 am, but it was not my day to have a Shamrock Shake -- big disappointment people. 

They are not as good as I remember them being. 

To put it in Papa's wise words:  "It tastes like we're brushing our teeth."

Keep dreaming kids, that childhood Shamrock Shake is somewhere out there, waiting to be appreciated.

Fill in the Blanks: "March makes me think of Shamrock Shakes."

This month for Fill in the Blanks, our sentence, "____ makes me think of _____," is being filled with the words, "March" and "Shamrock Shakes," to make "March makes me think of Shamrock Shakes."  

For most of my childhood, I looked forward to March as not only the beginning of spring, Kansas thunderstorms, and college basketball finals, but as the month when McDonald's brought back its Shamrock Shake.  

For those unfamiliar, the Shamrock Shake is a McDonald's beverage created in honor of St. Patrick's Day, a mint-flavored milkshake that is tinted light green.  Although quite popular in the 1990s, the drink started becoming less and less available in recent years.  There's even a website now, http://www.shamrockshake.com/, that unites Shamrock Shake lovers and helps them to find the drink at McDonald's' nationwide.

My mission for this month is to locate the Shamrock Shake in Kansas City and celebrate it for its creativity and beauty (that minty, sea foam green color of the shake is really gorgeous).

 I'll be sure to keep you updated on my quest, and feel free to join me in the search.

With The Local: Jerry's Woodsweather Cafe

Here's a word of advice -- don't eat all of a half-pound hamburger if you're not ready to commit. And by commit, I mean, being willing to accept all of the consequences of eating that burger, along with a plateful of fries, and a pitcher of Coke.

I was doing fine until I got done, until the ride home when I felt a headache coming on and the need to sleep all afternoon.  Apparently the food coma after a visit to Jerry's Woodsweather Cafe is worse than after even the biggest of Thanksgiving blowouts.  Let me be clear -- I had the worst food coma of my life.  It lasted about 12 hours.  Who knew that headaches could be caused by overeating, really, who knew...

Jerry's Woodsweather Cafe was my first stop on my endless road trip through Kansas City's back-corner restaurants and dives. My tour guide, or "The Locals" as I call him, is none other than Jon Hudson, accompanied by his wife, Sofia Hudson, two of the greatest people on the planet. They are really the eyes and mouths of this operation, as I rely on them to take me to the real meals of this town that I grew up in.  My experience at Jerry's was exactly what I was looking for.   

Jerry's Woodsweather Cafe sits in the northernmost part of Kansas City, at 1414 W 9th Street, just west of the River Market and the Power and Light District, and just east of the Kansas/Missouri state border.  Walking in, I felt an instant sense of comfort for some reason. Jerry's reminds me a beloved caffe that I worked at in Boston.  Maybe it's because it seems like a place that is full of regulars, mostly working men stopping in for a break or a meal.

Jerry's, open for breakfast and lunch, serves up generous plates, like my burger above.  Although their menu covers most basic diner classics, and daily specials (like frog legs and catfish on the Friday we were there), Jon suggested to try the burgers.  It was my cheeseburger the size of my face that landed me in my food coma.  Although I enjoyed my burger, it was really the fries that sealed the deal -- make sure to try them if you go.

I can't wait to go back to Jerry's.  It's an excellent place for people-watching, and it's nice to eat in a restaurant that you know isn't being franchised across the nation.  

The Creation Room: Guinness Ice Cream

This month, I decided to make something to honor the culinary brightness of Ireland, using two of my favorite things -- ice cream and Guinness.  

I first fell in love with Guinness in Dublin, on a weekend trip with my friends from London.  After a visit to the Guinness Storehouse, I grew to respect the beer for its unique qualities and thick, smooth taste.  After getting to know the beer better, I began to notice qualities of chocolate, coffee, and caramel layered in there.

It was in Boston this fall that I first tasted Guinness ice cream, called "black stout" at JP Licks, covered in caramel sauce, and realized how interesting the idea for it was.

And so, I attempted to make my own.  After getting inspiration from several sites (from Emeril's recipe on the Food Network, the Boston Globe, and an ice cream shop in Ireland called Murphy's), the ice cream I made in a home mixer came out awful. I had added a bit too much Guinness, rendering the ice cream itself bitter and inedible.  

Although the Guinness ice cream was a bit of a failure, I did learn how hard it is to make a good ice cream, and I can't wait to try again.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Hungry Bird. Thank you for taking the time to check out my new endeavor, a blog dedicated solely to the exploration, examination and celebration of the niche items that make the culinary world such an exciting place to explore. I'm currently working on the inaugural issue of Hungry Bird, which debuts on March 1st.

Please feel free to become a subscriber so that you won't miss out on a single issue in the future! All you have to do is click "Follow This Blog" in the bottom right corner of this page. Thanks again.

Best wishes,
Barbara