Way Down in the Hole

Today we went to the Missouri History Museum to see Wendell Pierce give a presentation on food deserts. I had hoped for a presentation on food desserts.

Wendell is an actor who featured in my favorite show of all time: The Wire. These days he's in HBO's Treme which is pretty solid as well.

Acorns For Dinner

I was strolling around Soulard last night when I had the tragic idea that it would be cool to try to cook some large acorns hanging from an old nearby oak tree. I had just recently seen a painting of Andrew Jackson heroically sharing his acorn dinner with one of his soldiers on some war campaign. In my book the only two criteria for becoming a badass mountain-man are a dislike of shaving (check) and the ability to just eat whatever is growing within arms reach.

So I picked a handful of them, making sure not to get any with visible holes in them, which would indicate bugs.

While consulting a couple of online articles I found on the subject, I hit the acorns with a hammer to split them and remove the shells. That turned out be the easy part.

The thing with acorns is they contain an apparently weapons grade level of tannins in them. The same substance makes wine taste dry. It is also used to tan animal hide into leather. One online source warned that íf I just ate the acorns raw I wouldn't die but may wish I had with: a mouth that tastes and feels like felt, nausea, and a multiple day long case of constipation.

So, not eating them raw. The easiest way was to leach the acorn meat of the substance by putting them in a pot of water and bringing it to a boil. The instructions said to keep them at a boil for 15 minutes, dump the water, and then repeat the process. Each time the water would turn a brownish color, which was kind of cool because it was clear that something was happening. It was a little less cool the second time. After about an hour of moving the acorn meat between two continuously boiling pots of water, the process was decidedly uncool. The water just kept getting dark brown with evil tannins. At this point I was ready to eat them and face the consequences.

I put them in the oven and just baked them as is. They came out looking not bad, and some of the smaller pieces had become satisfyingly crunchy. While all of that boiling had failed to completely remove the tannin taste, it had successfully removed any other taste the acorns may have originally had. Adding salt really just made them taste like salty batteries.

Tannins are the damn devil and I hate them. The End.

Salmon on the Grill

I made a really good meal a couple of days ago. I've been getting into cooking a bit more lately. This super expensive sockeye salmon was on sale at the supermarket, which is what got me wanting to experiment in the first place. The dish actually called for cooking the fish on the grill (purchase a weber q120 bbq), but apartment living makes that a bit impractical. I just cooked it on the stove. The heart of the recipe was a marinade that consisted of soy sauce, brown sugar, lemon juice, and a few other ingredients (full recipe here). The recipe also wanted me to marinade the fish for two hours, but I didn't have time so cut that corner as well. I realized that the marinade would just roll off of the fish if I just dunked it on, so I poured a bit of it into the pan when I cooked the fish. It cooked down and formed a nice sort of glaze on the fish. It was still really good. I'm starting to feel like I have enough comfort with cooking that I can deviate from recipes and nothing will blow up. I rounded out the meal with some canned diced tomatoes with peppers and a can of black beans mixed together and just heated up on the stove. It turned out pretty awesome.


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Free Nelly, You Jelly

One fun thing about St. Louis is they do public free shows downtown at Soldiers Memorial in July during Celebrate St. Louis Summer Concerts. A gentleman by the name of Nelly was the act tonight.

Apparently the locals have heard of this Nelly character because the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that over 40,000 fans showed up. I was so far away that I couldn't tell which of the many people on stage was Nelly. I do recall it was cool because everyone knew all the songs and was singing along. There's a sort of soulful chant at the beginning of "Shake Ya Tailfeather" and hearing all those people sing it in unison gave me chills.

At one point in the show they started to perform "Air Force Ones", abruptly stopped, then said "we don't rock that shit no more". I rock it! Please let's rock it at least for tonight.

Zoe and her friend Stephanie we also in attendance.

Eating in Manchester

As I mentioned, my computer was removed from my apartment by a stranger in a "borrowed forever" sort of arrangement. They did not take the power cord though, which gives me a small amount of satisfaction.

Well after a darn good laugh with Mike and Clarence in the southern part of the country, I took a train up to Manchester to visit my good pal Zishan, whom I also met during my days of teaching English in Japan.

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Of course without my damn pictures I don't have much of a reference to remember what the hell I did in Manchester. Blah. I remember food seeming even more of a central topic here than it normally is when I travel. A big reason for that was that I had chosen to travel to see Zishan during the month of Ramadan.


I hadn't thought about it before, but Zishan may be the single Muslim person I know. So Ramadan was an unfolding mystery to me. The rule is that you can't eat(among other satisfying activities) from dawn to dusk.  This seemed like it would present a serious problem in some neighborhoods, where the businesses and customers are all observing an entire month of fasting, it seems like owning a convenience store would be pretty slow going.  That could be considered a drawback in my Manchester visit timing I suppose, with a lot less activity on the streets, but I think I learned more about a new culture as a result.  Good trade I'd say.  Now, there were a few situations where I tortured Zishan by eating in front of him, but I did it all in the name of science.

The whole staying inside during the day and only eating at night situation called for plenty of vampire jokes, which Zishan pretended weren't funny but I think we all know the truth. There was a particularly amusing scene in a buffet restaurant where I seemed to be the only non-muslim customer. Everyone just sat and talked, ignoring the food laid out for them. When the clock struck the exact minute that the sun was officially "down", there was a mad rush to the food line. It was fun.

I remember the architecture was much more industrial seeming here than it London. I assume London got the worst of the WWII bombings, so perhaps that's the reason for the difference. There were smaller public disturbances set off in Manchester around the same time as the London riots. I remember seeing a burned out store front or two in the main shopping areas. And there you have it. Manchester.