Photo Essay: Peruvian Picnic at the Canoe Club

Outstanding food from:

Chicken Latino, Pittsburgh (PA)


Bonus Shot: Someone spotted this bee snacking on a mayfly and I managed to get a photo.



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A Perfect Night (in Photos)

(photo by Dan)



(photo by Dan)



(photo by Dan)










(photo by Dan)

Sunday, BBQ Sunday

Diana's BBQ featured spicy macaroni and cheese (the jalapeño in there was a nice idea) and potato salad (my favorite ingredient: capers), many meats and meat-substitutes (I went for the turkey dog Vincent offered to cook for me), and a bevy of chip-type snackfoods.



For one thing, someone had procured several small bags of British crisps. My favorite? These Tayto Pickled Onion, which mostly (but enjoyably) tasted of vinegar.



I brought a bag of Popcorn, Indiana (named after a real place, though the brand is a NYC creation) Smoked Cheddar Kettlecorn. The mixture of truly smokey cheese with the sweetness of kettle corn was pleasing, but I would have liked a little spice in the mix. I'd certainly eat this again, but I'll be looking for other flavors to try.

And I will eat them in the rain...

It's "Poetry Tuesday" on Snackreligious! For this week's installment, we're butchering us some Elizabeth Barrett Browning (even to the point of employing slant rhyme not in the original) because this delicious British snack made us a little crazy with delight.


How do I love thee, Jaffa Cakes?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
Of your orange, your Chocklate out of sight.
With all your cookies I'd stuff my Face.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most tasty snack, your sponge squishy and light.
I love thy flavor, but shared, as is Right.
I love to bite thee, and my mouth Obeys.
I love thee with a passion put to use
For most rare snacks, and love your box's faith
In "sports nutritionists," who love you, too,
So says the text*, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God's cool,
I may just eat thee even after death.






* Perhaps my favorite packaging claims yet:
1. "Now even more orangey!"
2. "Each McVitie's Jaffa Cake contains lots of energy, and only 1.0g of fat per cake. That is why they are recommended by sports nutritionists." (emphasis mine)





Seriously. Yow! These are great! Thanks, Anastasia!

The Silent Snackstress

While browsing vintage cookbooks on Ebay (trying to look-but-not-buy), I ran across one from the early 1930s titled, The Silent Hostess. Produced by General Electric, I expect that the "silent" to this book is the silence of G.E. appliances, and that it's not a treatise on why the woman throwing the party should keep quiet, but the title made me wonder what I might serve at a "silence" themed dinner party. I mean that the food would need to be silent, not the guests (or the host/ess). Nothing crunchy or crispy or that needs to be sawed into with knives and forks. Still, you'd want enough variation in flavor and texture that dinner guests don't feel like they're eating an institutional dinner for the infirm. And I'd hope everyone would wear muted colors and soft-soled shoes.

As a silent snack, the marshmallow is a revelation, if not particularly healthy. I like a jumbo Jet-Puffed with a smear of peanut butter on top. But if you're more of a jelly lover than a p.b. fan, why not go with these?



There's jelly in them thar marshmallows. Grape jelly.



I like that they're individually wrapped because it increases portability (and because of this they don't stick together in lumps or go stale like other bags of marshmallows can). They have a pleasant, powdery sweetness that soothes the palate and neither too much nor too little of the jelly filling. The marshmallows used in these treats might even taste better (leaving aside the probably artificial grapeness inside) than the plain, bagged variety available everywhere. I'd buy these unfilled, too, if that were an option, and put them in dark chocolate cocoa.

Want to go wild? PBJ marshmallow (one of these with a little peanut butter on top). Or two held together with peanut butter spread in between. Why not?!

Our Sandwich

As far as I'm concerned, Dan invented this open-faced beauty. And I became a believer when we ate dozens of them on a day's drive from Colorado to Kansas in my little used Saturn (deceased). They're good at home, in the car, while camping (you may want to swap out mustard for the mayo), while picnicking, at the beach...

The variation pictured here (from last weekend's bocce picnic) is bread, spreadable cheese, Viennese mustard, and Hormel Turkey Pepperoni, but the original version (still classic and my favorite) is a Triscuit, a dab of mayonnaise, a small slice of cheese, and a slice of the turkey pepperoni on top.

Sailing the Seas of Cheese

I believe I mentioned I'd say more about the cheese curds we consumed in Seattle. I've loved cheese curds since, as a kid, we would take family trips from our home near the Mississippi River in Iowa across the border to get some "real Wisconsin cheese" across the river. If you haven't had cheese curds, or if you haven't had superior cheese curds, you should know that it's true that the good ones squeak when you chew them.

I've had curds that squeak and curds that refuse to comment, but I'd never eaten flavored cheese curds until about 2 weeks ago. These, from Beecher's Handmade Cheese, an artisan shop near Pike Place Market (where you can watch the cheese being made on site, as pictured above), come as small curds soaking in a sort of marinade. We purchased two flavors - Chipotle Pepper and Market Herb. Both were good, if a little wet and messy (and squeakless). Regular, "dry" cheese curds can be eaten with the fingers. These were best on bread (or, potentially, crackers). My favorite of the two types we tried was the Market Herb, but I prefer fresh and unflavored. Next stop - fried!

Menaced

Some gulls let us know they were jealous of our picnic lunch at the fountain near the Seattle Space Needle.



They were acting territorial about who got to stand closest to us.



Extended eye contact with an animal or bird activates my "I must feed you" instinct, but I know that's generally frowned upon. I stuck to my personal rule: "I won't feed them on purpose, but if I drop something they can have it" and then tried not to do any accidental-on-purpose littering of bread.

But, come on! Who wouldn't want some of this bread?



Ingenious! This stylish loaf was found near Pike Place Market at a lovely bakery named Le Panier.



Crusty! Chewy! Fresh! Yum (More about those cheese curds soon). Also, notice the giant drink in the penultimate photo above? That's an enormous lemonade with no less than an entire lemon (cut in half) floating inside. From this place:




We sat and ate (bread, cheese curds, donut nectarines) and were snuck up on by seagulls and watched children playing in the giant fountain (which varied its stream and patterns, sometimes playing music). Pretty cheery day.





Yeah, kid. Go for it.

Scenic vistas make me hungry.

When we stopped to have a bite to eat while hiking around Deception Pass in Washington state, we enjoyed three different flavors of chocolate with grey sea salt we had picked up at Bayleaf in Coupeville. The "Aztec Chile" spicy version was my favorite. The salt grains made the experience a little transcendent and there were roasted pepitas inside.



Another flavor was burnt caramel. Delicious. The third had coconut flakes and almonds inside.



We, a thoughtful bunch, picked up all of our trash. The birds, who had previously snacked on shrimp, did not. They left behind the heads.

Japanese Picnic foods

In Seattle, Eva took us to Uwajimaya (an impressive Asian-and-more grocery/home goods market) in the International District for a pre-camping shopping trip. We also picked up some ready-to-eat items for snacking in the car on the way to (and on board) the ferry.



Inarizushi are fried tofu pouches filled with sushi rice. They are good cold -- moist and sugary, but tangy from the (rice wine?) vinegar -- but I wondered if they might be even better just fried and crispy. Then I discovered that the pouches come pre-made in cans. One merely stuffs and (some recipes say) steams them. So I guess they wouldn't be crispy that way, either.

We also tried onigiri (not pictured), triangles of rice and filling (salmon, eel, etc) with crisp seaweed around the outside. The packaging of the brand we found in the market ingeniously keeps the seaweed dry - even if one of your onigiri gets lost in the cooler and doesn't get eaten until the next day.

Ooh, and there were some kind of delicious shrimp rolls (I've forgotten the name). They were excellent - fresh and crunchy and light.



But...



Less satisfying were the Cheese Rings, which also tasted quite sugary. Though the flavor was "off," the shape was novel and they were eaten anyway. I mean, as long as one is trying new things...