Blueberry Sauce

What do you do when you encounter large amounts of fruit at rock bottom prices, but you're on vacation and can't carry it around with you?  Turn it into a delicious ice cream topping of course, and pawn it off on your family and friends.  Don't worry, they will be forever grateful.

I've made this sauce a few times in the past couple weeks and am working on a way to somehow integrate this sauce into a cake.  Of course that would require me not eating the entire batch, so needless to say it is a work in progress.  It's excellent on pancakes, waffles, ice cream, yogurt, cocktails,  a spoon, anything.  

Blueberry Sauce
This sauce is a lot more tart than those you encounter at IHOP, so adjust the sugar accordingly if you like.

Makes 4-5 cups
Total time: 25 minutes + cooling (Active time <5 minutes)

• 1 quart (4 cups/600g) blueberries
• 1/2 cup (120mL) orange juice
• 1/4 cup (60mL) lemon juice
• 1/2-3/4 cup (100-150g) sugar (or to taste)

Combine all ingredients in a medium pot and stir to combine over medium-high heat.  Bring mixture to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook for 15-20 minutes until thickened to your liking.  Stir every few minutes to help break down the blueberries.  Cool to room temperature and refrigerate for a few hours before using.

Variations
For instant gratification warm sauce:  Mix 2 teaspoons of cornstarch with a splash of water and add to the pot during the last few minutes of cooking.  The sauce will thicken up instantly, but might be a little too thick for pouring after refrigerating.
For a bit of added spice:  Add a cinnamon stick to the pot while cooking and/or a dash of nutmeg.
For a rich sauce indeed:  Stir in 2 tablespoons of butter towards the end of cooking with a pinch of salt.  Excellent with biscuits and cream.

5 Ways to Drop a Lot of Dough at Smorgasburg and Walk Away Happy

Smorgasburg: gratuitous chalk board and beagle shot

 Remember my friend Jill, of The Rum House fame?  She and I are kind of extreme around each other when it comes to all kinds of activities.  To the point where I'm glad that she lives 4 hours away since I think I might otherwise be 50 lbs fatter, have a 50% less functioning liver, and spend all of my money on dressing fabulously and exotic Bikram yoga retreats.

Since our friendship goes back 20+ years now (!), I knew to prepare myself for our visit to the Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg by stretching, budgeting, and dieting ahead of time.  We each allowed ourselves $80 for the day (a historically modest sum for the two of us), and with the exception of a small wall hanging and one round of drinks on the way home, the entirety was spent at Smorgasburg.

Ah, Smorgasburg.  The seasonal food-centric outpost of the Brooklyn Flea on the Williamsburg waterfront is a fantastic destination unto itself.  As expected, we flitted around for hours and hours like giddy children overwhelmed by all of the tasty treats and appealing chalkboard signs until we were too full to flit anymore and had to roll ourselves back over the bridge.

Here are five tips for visitors of the future:

How to Drop a Lot of Dough at Smorgasburg and Walk Away Happy

1.  Keep your fluid intake up.

Smorgasburg is located in an unsheltered parking lot during the height of summer with no shade in sight and zero breeze; you will require lots of drinks, and must embrace this.  If I had to estimate, I would say there are 6 gabillion different beverages to choose from.  Some overpriced, some not, all delicious.

Rhubarb shaved ice ($2.50) from People's Pops

Blood orange iced tea ($3) with miscellaneous tapioca ball from Thirstea

Rhubarb limeade ($3) from The Stand, SO GOOD

Kyoto style iced coffee ($4) from Blue Bottle - yes this is a lot for iced coffee but YOWZA it was strong.

2.  Go early.  Smaller vendors sell out quick, and desserty things can suffer from hours in the heat.

While this didn't slow us down a bit, it did result in facial frosting coverage on more than one occasion.  We also did no research beforehand and mostly stuck to stalls with limited lines, but if you have a particular item in mind, the earlier the better.  I'm told they open at 9am, and hipsters don't get up that early anyway, right?

Earl grey dark chocolate doughnut ($2, deal of the day!) from Dough, invoking Jill's omgthisissogood face and associated frosting trail

Doughnut remnants

Mini cupcakes from Kumquat Cupcakery, including the most excellent banana with peanut butter frosting and bacon ($2)

Salted caramel macaroon ($2) from Danny Maccaroon

3.  Bring a friend. Try more things.

This is just basic economics.  A friend creates twice as many purchased tasting opportunities with half of the stomach space occupied.  Example: this delicious-despite-the-photo chicken biscuit sandwich from King's Crumb cost $10 (ouch!) but was the size of a softball (score!).  Add a friend, and a costly gut-bomb instantly becomes an affordable tapas plate.  More or less.

Moist fried chicken breast, flaky biscuit, herby pickle mayo sauce, red onion, there is nothing not to like here.

Or go alone, and you can easily subsist on the free samples.  This is my plan for my next visit, so keep your eyes peeled for the girl wearing dark sunglasses and making several sneaky passes by the brownie and pecan stands.

4.  But don't waste your time with the most of the Greenmarket vendors (with two notable exceptions).

I guess Smorgasburg is technically a farmer's market under the Greenmarket umbrella, and offers about 5 sad little stalls with overpriced produce and a poor selection.  But why would you bother with the fresh stuff?  You came here for cupcakes and sesame noodles after all.  On Saturdays, there are any number of other markets that are cheaper and closer to home so you're not left carting around that bunch of radishes for hours around the city

Of course I still managed to find things to buy in this section, and walked away with a delicious wedge of ultra-stinky cheese from Ronnybrook Farm Dairy and cheap local honey.  But do avoid those radishes.

Spring wildflower honey ($5) from Nature's Way Farm

5.  Think delayed gratification.  You can take it home!  Or find it elsewhere.

It's overwhelming.  So many delicious things everywhere you look.  But you don't have to eat yourself sick!  I've also seen several of the prepared foods I first had at Smorgasburg at area Whole Foods stores offered for the same price.  My personal favorites were the grapefruit and smoked salt marmalade and rhubarb and hibiscus jam ($5 for 4oz) I picked up from Anarchy in a Jar.  Whoever decided to pair them at a table with Roberta's bread.. genius.

Another take-home was a pound of Barry's Organic soy, oat and barley tempeh ($9).  This was a rather pricey novelty gift for a tempeh-lover, as I generally think it tastes like crumbly rancid feet.  But it fried up nicely, no foot odor to be seen.  Not a convert yet though.

I consider myself somewhat of a ginger-beverage connoisseur, and daresay that Q ginger ale ($5 for 750mL), lightly sweetened with agave nectar and spiked with cayenne pepper is the best I've ever had.  This is not an exaggeration.  If the bottle wasn't fancy frosted glass, I would probably carry it around with me at all times.


So prepare yourself.  Or you could end up like this.  She still thinks it was worth it.

Creative Booze: Tim's Chocolate Vodka

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Tim, the at-least-this-one-time-hopefully-more-often newest contributor to The Trash Salad.  Specializing in cheap and creative booze projects, I think he'll fit in quite well and provide some excellent lifestyle tips to our dear readers. 

Hi.  I'm Tim. 

I'm a friend of Abbey's.  Irrelevantly and specifically, I used to date Abbey's best friend ~5 years ago for ~6 months.  I was a bit of a jerk to her before we broke up.  Sorry!  I'm actively trying to be less of a jerk these days, I hope it shows! (Editor's note: We'll accept this and future guest posts as penance paid).

More relevantly, I fancy myself a bit of a writer, although the finest examples of my writing can be found in my "emails to self" folder.  I'm likely an extremely mediocre writer - I suck at being concise, I avoid commas at all opportunities, I swear unnecessarily and I abuse the fuck out of adverbs and hyphens - I suppose I'll try to be a blogger (Ed: Worked for me!).

Most relevantly, I'm a big fan of The Trash Salad - it resonates strongly with me because it accurately captures the way I cook.  I hate recipes but I love recipe ideas.  I hate grocery lists, so I don't make them - I simply buy whatever looks good to me at the time.  I also don't grocery shop often, because I despise doing it.  As a result I'm faced with a refrigerator that lives in varying states of empty.  I'm currently embarked on a be-less-fat life project, so my challenge is to make delicious, healthy meals from whatever I have lying around.  I manage!  Successfully! (55lbs down in 4 months! Doctor-approved nutrition! </bragging>)

I'm also a bit of a boozebag.  Not as much as I used to be, and not in the bad way, but I enjoy a cocktail or three from time to time.  For the same reason that my refrigerator is often mostly devoid of food, it's also mostly devoid of mixers.  This is part of the reason why I'm such a big fan of scotch - all you need to make a good scotch drink is an ice cube - and most times that's not even necessary - all you need is a glass. Sometimes, even that's not even necessary - all you need is the scotch.  I like that.

I love to play "Invent-a-drink." I try to make the scotch ethos carry over into most other drinks I create.  I jokingly say that I like to make "man-strength girly drinks."  I consider them "girly" drinks because they taste delicious, and I consider them "man" strength because I always aim for a 70+ proof final product.  My drinks are not nearly as sexist as I seem to be in this paragraph, but they are equally enigmatic. 

So I present my latest experiment: Chocolate Vodka.  Being on my stop-being-a-fatass plan, I try to not imbibe anything that's shitty for you.  To clarify: I consider non-alcoholic quantities of vodka good for you.  I also consider non-chocoholic quantities of 90% dark chocolate good for you..  Luckily, with Tim's Chocolate Vodka, you only need a little.  I poured about 750mL of Smirnoff vodka into a 1L flippity top bottle, and finely shaved about 2 tablespoons of really really dark chocolate.  Be sure not to fill the bottle all the way, as this will decrease the effectiveness of the necessary shaking. I put the shavings into the flippity top bottle and flipped the top closed.  I shook the shit out of the bottle every time I remembered for the next few hours and threw it in my liquor cabinet for a week. 

A week later, I had a milky, shit-colored gross-looking brown liquid with visible shavings of chocolate in it.  It was strangely appealing.  I tried it over ice and decided the ice needed to go, so I sent it to the freezer for a night. 

The next night, a Tuesday, my frosty-cold Chocolate Vodka was unveiled to the world, or at least to the five people in my neighbors' apartment.  The reviews were overwhelmingly positive – the result is a delicious, sweet-tooth-satisfying drink that's sipped like a fine scotch.  I also learned that it (unsurprisingly) functions very well as a shot.

In summary: infuse vodka with things other than fruit.  It can be done, since many flavor-molecules are soluble in ethanol. Experiment! Taste! Keep me posted!

Thanks for reading, and double thanks for telling me how great I am or how much I suck.  Both (or anything in between) are equally appreciated.

-Tim

I'm skeptical, yet whipping up a batch of this tonight in the interest of research.  Feedback forthcoming!



Tim's Chocolate Vodka
Makes ~750mL 
Total time: A few days - 1 week (Active time <5 minutes)

• 1 bottle (750mL) cheapish but not awful vodka* (Ed: I like Svedka for infusions)
• 1 oz (30g) >70% dark chocolate

 Shave dark chocolate as fine as you can with a sharp knife or grater - you should have about two tablespoons.  Add to vodka bottle (or a flippity top container), give it an aggressive shaking, and store at room temperature for a few days.  Serve ice-cold, straight-up.

* I want to take a minute to rant about vodka and vodka marketing:  Vodka is simply a chemical - ethanol, mixed with water.  The “goodness” of vodka is determined by the relative lack of impurities.  All vodka above the “plastic bottle grade” is basically the same, and is indistinguishable in blinded taste tests.  When I choose vodka, I choose the cheapest big brand name with industrial-scale manufacturing, because that’s best set up to remove impurities.  If you’re paying $40-$60 for a fancy bottle of vodka, just know that you’re paying for the sandblasted bottle, because the vodka is the same.  I don’t want to hear your “oh I had a worse hangover with cheap vodka” stories, but I certainly do want to hear if you choose to do a blind taste test with some statistical power.  If you had a worse hangover with Svedka than with Grey Goose, that’s because you’re too much of a cheapass to binge drink the good stuff, but are happy to do so with the hooch.  </rant>

Garlic Scape Salsa Verde

I love a good food challenge, and if I had a more stable existence that allowed me to cook for multiple people every night, a CSA-share would be perfect.  I actually signed up for a 6-week one a few years ago which unfortunately coincided with being sent to work in Buffalo for a month.  I remember flying back and forth on the weekends with carry-ons full of beets and radishes, and the effort of trying not to waste anything was rather stressful.

So in lieu of this and more in line with my erratic lifestyle during farmers market season, I like to play a game where I buy something that I'm completely unfamiliar with and figure out how to make something delicious out of it.  And this week's subject was garlic scapes at the bargain price of 8 for a dollar.  You know that little green shoot that happens when your garlic is too old?  If it's growing in say, soil for a few months instead of your pantry, you'll have a garlic scape.  Kind of similar to a skinny, twisty green onion but harder and more pungent.

And when combined with summer herbs and a dose of heat, garlic scapes make a fantastic salsa verde. It's garlicky (but not overly so), it's bright and spicy, it's awesome.  I adapted a recipe from for the love of yum who suggests grilling the stems for 15 minutes to get a nice char beforehand, but I was hungry and lazy and didn't want to heat up my kitchen more than necessary so skipped this step.  I also left it a little chunky because it adds an element of risk to possibly have something stuck between your teeth which I enjoy.  I served the salsa on seared tilapia fillets with an asparagus, cucumber, tomato, and feta salad, but I think the sauce would be equally good as a topping for tacos or scrambled eggs.

Garlic Scape Salsa Verde on Seared Tilapia
Inspired by for the love of yum


Makes 1 1/2 cups (350mL)
Total time: 20-30 minutes (all active)

For the salsa:

• 8 garlic scapes
• 1/2 a bunch of cilantro, leaves and stems
• 1/2 a bunch of basil, leaves and stems (this was a smaller bunch)
• 1 jalapeno with the stem removed
• juice of 1 lemon
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/3-1/2 cup (80-120mL) olive oil 
• water to loosen (maybe 1/4 cup)
• 2 teaspoons honey (optional)

For the fish:

• butter
• a few fillets of tilapia (or other white fish)
• salt and pepper to taste
• garlic scape salsa verde

Salsa Verde:  Roughly chop the scapes, herbs, and jalapeno (including the seeds if you're bold) and add to a food processor with the lemon juice and a big pinch of salt and pepper.  Pulse a few times to break things down, then add the olive oil while the processor is running.  Process for a few minutes, adding splashes of water to loosen if necessary until everything is broken down into a saucy consistency.  Taste and add more lemon juice, salt, or pepper if needed (I used a particularly spicy jalapeno so used 2 teaspoons of honey to mellow things out).

Fish:  Melt a small knob of butter in a heavy pan over medium heat.  Rinse tilapia and pat dry with a towel.  Season both sides with salt and pepper.  When the butter has started to brown, add the fish to the pan and cook for 1-3 minutes (depending on how thick your fillet is) until browned on one side.  Flip and sear for 1-3 minutes until browned on the other side.  Top each fillet with about 2 tablespoons of garlic scape salsa verde.

NYC Cocktail Week at The Rum House

I'm not the biggest fan of Restaurant Week in New York, mostly because I'm cheap and would spend less than $35 on food for myself in an entire week if left to my own devices.  But equally because I enjoy a drink with dinner and that can get very expensive very quickly.

But sometimes special occasions present themselves, like a friend's birthday excursion to see a show in the Theater District.  And isn't it always better to be drinking when you have to go through Times Square on a Friday night?

With this in mind, we ventured to The Rum House at the Hotel Edison - the only remotely midtown-area bar participating in the grand NYC Cocktail Week.  The bar is a recently revived old-timey lounge and piano bar, and the scene was a fascinating people-watching mixture of 50/50 wandering tourists and destination minded hipster cocktail snobs (I like to think that we fell into the grey ether being a bit of both).  Thankfully, it wasn't too busy even during the post-work happy hour time that usually floods the downtown bars.

The Cocktail Week deal continues until this Wednesday and for $20.11, you get two full-sized cocktails with an appetizer.  I'm told it is "very New York" to consider this a bargain, but keep in mind: 1) well-crafted cocktails in these bars normally go for $12-$15, 2) this is the Theater District where it's tough to find a beer for less than $9, 3) you can split the deal!

And thank goodness for point number three, since apparently this can't be done at all participating bars.  You get a choice of four cocktails and either spiced almonds or hard-boiled eggs with smoked salt (okay, not the most spectacular appetizer choices, but they don't serve food here normally).  The almonds were surprisingly good and seasoned with a flaky sea salt/smoked paprika/cayenne mixture which was a really nice change from the shellacked sugary coating that I was expecting.

I ordered the Pathallus Molly (which I'm appreciating even more now due to the word play),  a gin-based slightly salty sinus-clearer served with spicy pickled green beans. 


Belated birthday girl Jill had a variation on a Negroni which was slightly sweetened with added whiskey.  Both drinks were rather perfect for our tastes, and accordingly, very very strong.  A single sipper cocktail to last you an entire evening?  I consider that a bargain, even if it is a bit "New York."

Fact or Fiction: Aluminum and Alzheimers

Yesterday I had the very weird experience of being told that I was drinking my way to dementia.  At work.

I'll back up a bit.  It shouldn't be news to anyone who has read more than one post here that I have a rather severe sweet tooth as well as constant internal conflict trying to control it.  My usual 5-fold strategy to deal with this in my cubicle is as follows:

1. Chew a piece of gum.
2. Eat a small sesame crunch candy.
3. Eat a piece of fruit.
4. Drink a diet soda.
5. Eat a delicious yet vastly more caloric treat.

Lately I've been trying to cut back on the gum/the convenience store downstairs hasn't stocked my favorite kind in awhile, I haven't yet replenished my stores of candy, and fruit seems to attract flies in the heat.  So that leaves the diet soda, which isn't exactly the healthier option if recent news articles are to be believed.  But aside from the dubious science, I'm really just trying to avoid caffeine in the afternoons.  The solution that a fantastic Stop N Shop special (2 12-packs for $5!) revealed to me is seltzer water.  I seem to have a pavlovian response to the can pop noise, and it seems like any form of carbonation will do the sugar-curbing trick of stopping my descent past the critical step 4.

So needless to say I've been drinking the stuff like gangbusters.  Anyway, I'm dropping an empty can in the recycling bin yesterday evening, and a woman I don't even know says: "you know you're going to get Alzheimers by drinking that."  What??

Follow-up: "Yeah, you know, the aluminum from the can affects your brain tissue and makes you senile.  You can actually see the shiny particles when you pour a can out in the sink, and if you use a straw, it just goes straight into your brain."

The ridiculousness of the shiny particle/straw thing aside, I wanted to investigate this further for my own piece of mind.  I really do drink a lot of seltzer.

Image via Amazon

Does aluminum leach into canned beverages?
Based on at least 30 minutes of scholarly research and limited access to full-text articles, I can say YES - but only a toxicologically negligible amount (<0.3 mg/day) when compared to normal dietary intake.  Bare aluminum containers (e.g. old canteens) DO have the potential to significantly leach when filled with a more acidic beverage like lemonade and left to sit for a few days, however all aluminum packaging containers are now internally lacquered.

Lacquer? Yes, all food/beverage cans are coated with a polymer on the inside to insulate the product from the packaging material, and cans actually have to go through a de-lacquering kiln during the recycling process.  And this barrier polymer directly in contact with 100 billion Al beverage cans consumed by North Americans each year is loaded with, yep, BPA.  In fact, canned foods are actually thought to be the primary route of BPA exposure, but let's leave that for the moment..

Okay, so the lacquer prevents Al from significantly leaching in cans.  But the average adult still consumes approximately 2-5 mg/day of Al from antacids, cosmetics, food additives like baking soda, naturally occuring sources like fruits and vegetables, and even minor leaching from Al cookware.  Also, there currently is no enforceable maximum contaminant level (MCL, for those in the industry) for Al in drinking water.  Is this something to worry about?

What's deal with aluminum exposure and Alzheimers?
In the 1970's, a connection between aluminum bioaccumulation and dementia was discovered from studies of long-term hemodialysis patients.  Dialysis encephalopathy is a syndrome specific to those with chronic renal failure on dialysis; phosphate-binding aluminum gels are used during treatment, and Al can accumulate in the brain due to the patients' inability to excrete it, causing degenerative neurological impairment.

But that doesn't seem to mean much for the general population with functioning kidneys and regular dietary exposure.  The link between Al and Alzheimers was first proposed 40 years ago, and scientists still haven't come to a conclusion whether or not there is a relationship at all, and if so, whether it is a correlation or causation situation.

In any case, the CDC has established a minumum risk level (MRL) of 1 mg/kg/day for 15-364 days for immediate duration oral exposure to aluminum.  This translates to 10 times the upper-average adult intake for a 110lb person, and much more than that if you've got any meat on your bones. 

So to summarize: unless you are actually eating the can itself, you're probably okay.  Aside from the BPA thing of course, but hey at least it's not Al-related.  If you want to be really really neurotic, studies proved that refrigeration and shortened storage time reduce leaching significantly, so drink fast and keep it cold.

And as a final piece of advice, don't listen to old ladies on the elevator.

Repurposing Leftovers: Trash Noodle Soup

This dish was inspired by a lonely little container of rice noodles leftover from a Thai food order that I discovered in the fridge.  Noodles can sometimes be incorporated into stir fry situations if they're in good condition, but these were at least a week old and had congealed into a sort of stringy brick that would definitely not have held up to a frying pan.

The solution?  A brothy soup to rehydrate the noodles into an edible form, while delivering a delicious and healthy dinner.  This isn't really a recipe so much as a rough ratio of ingredients and flavoring suggestings since I don't think I've ever made this the same way twice.  And as I write it out, it's not unlike fried rice in it's basic components and adaptability.  The version pictured is miso/hot and sour flavored with tofu, cabbage, edamame, and some rehydrated black fungus I bought in Chinatown ages ago, though this dish certainly doesn't need to have asian flavors or ingredients if that's not what you have on hand.

Here are a few winning flavor combinations:

• for bastardized minestrone: use 1 cup of white/kidney beans, 1/2 can of diced tomatoes in juice, a small chopped zucchini, fresh spinach, splash of red wine, oregano, basil, and finish with parmesean cheese
• for simple, rustic, and healthy: sautee 1/2 a thinly sliced onion and 2 cloves of garlic before heating broth, use 1 cup of cooked chickpeas, a few handful of shredded green cabbage, and finish with a drizzle of tasty/expensive olive oil
• for cheaters' thai: substitute half of the broth with a can of coconut milk, use shredded chicken or tofu chunks, mushrooms and red peppers, season with 1 teaspoon or so of green curry paste, fish sauce (start with 1/2 tablespoon), a lime wedge, and fresh cilantro
• for quick and dirty pho: simmer broth with whole star anise and a cinnamon stick, serve hot broth over noodles and thinly sliced raw beef, and garnish with basil, mint, bean sprouts, and sriracha
• for salty, hot, and sour (or the Chinatown special, a personal favorite): use rehydrated shiitake, black fungus, or seaweed, tofu chunks, frozen edamame pods, and green onions, seasoned with 2 tablespoons of miso paste mixed with an equal amount of warm water, a big squirt of Sriracha or other chile paste, and 1-2 tablespoons of vinegar

The only caveat I would add is do make this in small batches since it's best when eaten right away.  If it sits, the noodles keep absorbing more and more moisture until they completely disintegrate to turn your soup into a gelatinous mass of starch and veg.  Quick-cooking rice noodles are especially susceptible to this.  If you wanted to do a noodle soup lunch the next day, just keep the broth/meat/veg mixture separate and heat it with the noodles right before you eat it.  I know, I know, that makes two separate containers to wash and that's the worst.  But isn't it worth it for a (very nearly) free lunch?

Trash Noodle Soup

Serves 2-4
Total time: <10 minutes

• 4 cups (1L) low-sodium stock or broth
• 1 cup quick-cooking or pre-cooked protein (small chuncks of tofu, poached and shredded chicken, shrimp, and even white beans would work great)
• 1-2 cups quick-cooking or pre-cooked vegetables, chopped (edamame, scallions, small broccoli/cauliflower florets, mushrooms, tomatoes, green beans, sprouts, cabbage, greens, or rehydrated random ingredients from Chinatown)
• seasoning (see above)
• 1-2 cups dry leftover noodles

Heat broth to a boil while you chop and assemble the rest of your ingredients.  Add protein and veg to simmering broth and cook 5 minutes or until heated through.  Add seasoning to taste.

When you're ready to consume: break up the noodle mass with your hands as much as possible and add to the broth.  Heat and stir until separated and resembling noodles, and serve immediately.