Review Time

Cheeses, books, exotic fruits- you want 'em, you get 'em here!

A new grocery store opened near the train station by Teresa's house, and since Utah is such a happening place when it rains every single day for a month, not that I am bitter, we could not wait to go check it out one foggy midnight. It turned into quiet the adventure when wild blowfish fruits attacked us, though we subdued the voracious beasts, and distracted a dragon while we stole her fruity eggs, oh and also we plucked down a star from the sky, and it turns out they are only ripe when they glow bright gold.

On the whole, exotic fruits are probably something you should seek out while traveling, if you know they are safe. I have read you can build whole vacations around fruit tourism in Hawaii, the safe weird fruit capitol of the world. Our horned melon was lime-jellyish, and every part of it is edible, so I ate all the seeds. Spitting them out would be very time consuming, as they are everywhere. The dragon fruit was flavorless, except for a few bites in the center, which were located randomly, and frankly, I cannot blame the poor expensive little guy, as he travelled pretty far to sit there for two days until we gasped at the sight of him. Our star fruit was tough but smelled delicious. I wish we could have chewed it. We will try again some other dull midnight on a Saturday. Like when I want to hit the in-produce Chinese buffet while I peruse fruits air lifted from Tanzania and Malaysia.

We did have our first pot de creme though, and I could pronounce it perfectly, which impressed our servor. I only meant to bake one and eat it hot out of the oven for a year, so a chilled deli section one was the next best thing. Raspberry fused and breathtaking for the first bite. Its that semi-crust almost firm on top like a bit of hard brownie and then the thick near pudding inside that gets you. A pot de creme is a mix of textures that don't seem like they should be possible together. I guess that's why they are so much work.

There is a spectacular cheese section at this grocery too. I could have spent three figures on cheese had I not had my designated accountant with me to claw at her eyes as I gasped and picked wedges of cappuccino-dusted white, and cranberry stilton, and bright green pesto cheese, and every other sort from around the world. I settled on only two this trip:

12 month aged Mimolette from France is dark orange, very hard and with a thick tough rind slightly paler and rougher, looks very much like a slice of an orange fruit. It tastes like a super-sharp chedder, but with thicker, smokier undertones. It has a rolling flavor like seemingly everything from France, but must be eaten quickly after opening as it goes stale quickly, though if you don't mind sucking your cheese until it is soft, you can savor every sliver. The rind is not edible so far as I can tell, though you will certainly keep trying to eat it when you remember you paid $28.99 per pound for a cheese that a cheap sharp cheddar could match 85% head to head. Do I have regrets? Actually, not at all. I did after the first taste, but this is a great cheese! That little difference from plain cheddar is like the difference in DNA between a monkey and Tom Hanks- its the last .00000001 % that wins the Oscar.

Goat Cocoa Cardonna from Wisconsin is a more conflicting case. At $23.99, this is not exactly a bargain, but on the sliding scale of gourmet cheeses, it is near the bottom of the slope. The body of the cheese is elegant and smooth beyond satin. It is like a waltz in pale moonlight, with your melting dream girl of ice. (Beat that magazine writers) The flavor is exquisite and delicate and light, unlike most goat products which are like biting into or sipping a petting farm's armpit. However, the speckled auroreal coating of black pepper and cocoa powder does nothing to meld with the body of the cheese. It is like a sheer mesh top on a tattooed girl. It hides nothing and adds nothing at the same time. The cheese is sweet and delicious, but it is without the cocoa. Perhaps this cheese artisan found his or her soft creamy cheese with undertones of shaved ice so cool and perfect that they could not bear to think of it being sampled with strong wines or as an early course in a clumsy meal of hard and competing flavors, but the cocoa freak only helps with sales, not savouring. This cheese for that reason does not approach the ecstatic mathematical limit that cocoa chardonnay was for me years ago, but without the cocoa I would not have bought it, and that would have been my loss. This cheese will keep, so make it last. You paid through your teeth for it, so it keep it dancing on your tongue. (Ah I love magazine writing. Every kind of magazine just goes for broke in every sentence. You can tell we have too many over-educated people in every field. It isn't just the forwards to novels and blockbuster movies anymore that are comically over-the-top.)

Now for some books:

Literary Feasts, Sean Brand: Did I need fashion tips and hor'd'erve advice so I could throw my own Great Gatsby lawn gala? Yes, you can bet your sweet bippy I did. Do I crave to simulate the Cratchet Christmas feast as detailed for me in this little book that will cost you not much over a buck? Oh indeed. I have never laughed so loud as in reading the selections and introductions here in this volume. What a treasure, quick as a casserole, but as filling as a quiche. Learn how to eat sexxxy to arouse that special someone from Tom Jones. And how to cook on the roadtrip with Three Men in a Boat. Need some ambience? Try shouting TS Elliot by loudspeaker "borrowed" from your school's rowing team, to satisfy the Philistines. 11 thumbs up.

The Fruit Hunters, Adam Leith Gollner: I bought copies for myself and two friends who will remain nameless after listening to the audio book. Not just interesting or entertaining, it provides tips on selecting that perfect dragon fruit, and mangostein. Though it only helps if you have it on hand when you come across one of those unexpected beasties. Learn why every college student or Clinton intern should keep some miracle fruit tablets around. Hint: it makes sour things sweet, for you or your special someone. And why miracle fruit was banned for production in the United States. Hint: who is murderous and jealous and covered with white pixie dust? Only your friendly neighborhood crack dealer and sugar lobbyist. Talk to the two of them first. And you will learn how to go on fruit tourism trips to the Seychelles where Eve was formed not from a rib, but a big-ass lady fruit. (Type the words into google if you don't think a fruit seed could weigh over 100 pounds or look like a woman grabbing her- well I'll let you read the book).

Botany of Desire and In Defense of Food, Micheal Pollan: All his books are great actually. I think I discussed Botany of Desire once or twice. The history of the world told from the perspectives of its four most successful species, other than humans. Potatoes, apples, canubis (marijuana), and wheat (I think). Its been a while, but a great book, if you think early Cromwellian era prejudices towards Satan's tubers are fascinating. The other book is "an eater's manifesto", and provides advice on how to eat. Mainly food. He suggests avoiding foods with unpronouncable ingredients or more than 5 ingredients. Policies I am adopting, a little at a time. He also talks omega 3 fatty acids better than any professor I ever had. Our ancestors did not get them by eating huge piles of salmon, walnuts and flaxseed from the mouths of their inland mountain caves, by the way, as supplement companies would have you believe. They got them from everything they ate. Omega 3s are in all plants, or they were, until we started using fertilizers heavy on nitrogen, and feeding livestock corn and other grains they aren't used to, which we grow with fertilizes heavy on nitrogen. Those plants, such as corn, are high in omega 6 fatty acids, not bad guys, but the polar opposites of omega 3s, and those animals then have 6 fats in their flesh which we get instead of 3 fats. The ratio is probably what counts. I have read that before reading this Pollan book, so it is probably a good theory. If you eat organic, you don't need to count omega 3s. You are getting them. That makes a good case for organic butter, milk, and meat and eggs, which I have been switching to on a kind of instinct or suspicion, not really knowing why, already. Chickens are force fed flax seeds now to make the eggs full of omega 3s, but any organic or local farmer market egg will have more in it than the doped fetish products. Pollan is against nutrients and nutrition on the whole. He says eat foods, not what they contain. Lettuce is lettuce, a leaf, a plant, and good for you. Don't eat it to get this or that amount of iron. If you eat mostly foods, you will probably be fine. The book is solid, and I'll leave the rest to him.