A Taste Of Olive

Are you the type of person that douses any vegetable in vinegar? Can drink vinegar straight? And relishes it?



If you're anything like me, you have a cabinet filled with every type of vinegar you can get at the grocery store — white, apple cider, white wine , red wine, white balsamic, balsamic, sherry, and rice vinegars.



Add ponzu (a Japanese citrus and vinegar based sauce) to the list of vinegars above, and that is my standard vinegar inventory. Well, before I was made aware of A Taste Of Olive, a specialty store featuring "the East Coast's largest selection of extra virgin olive oils, balsamic vinegars and specialty oils and vinegars 'on tap' from all over the world!"

It all started last spring when a friend gifted me with espresso balsamic vinegar (great on berries or blue cheese), peach balsamic vinegar, jalapeno olive oil (nice way to add subtle heat to almost any thing), and Persian lime olive oil from A Taste Of Olive. I was adding these infused vinegars (and olive oils, but mostly vinegar) to everything in sight.



These vinegars and olive oils from A Taste Of Olive truly improved my life. Seriously, they have been ruling my summer, finding their way into almost every meal!

Very soon, I found myself out of Taste Of Olive's infused vinegars and olive oils, so hightailed it to the West Chester store (there are also locations in Ardmore, PA, and Haddonfield, NJ, as well as an online store) to pick out a few new vinegars and olive oils from their in-store inventory of over 50 varieties. A Taste Of Olive also sells flavored salts, salt slabs, chocolates, and pretty jars of gourmet condiments, so makes a nice store for any-occasion gifts or self-indulgences.More stainless steel drums of vinegar and olive oils than you can joyously imagine line shelves and tables of the cute, but spacious, downtown West Chester store, where you are encouraged to sample before you buy. I happily drank about a cup's worth of various vinegar before I settled on the babies that were going home with me (grapefruit, honey ginger, and pumpkin spice), as well as bottle of a Tuscan herb extra-virgin olive oil.

The friendly staff will gladly suggest vinegar and olive oil pairings, as well present you with menu sheets. They even made sure I left with a frequent buyer punch card to get a free bottle of vinegar or olive oil after the purchase of ten bottles. How did they know I was coming back soon?



A Taste Of Olive

26 South High St., West Chester, PA 19382 / 610-429-0292

22 W Lancaster Ave., Ardmore, PA 19003 / 610-642-1123

106 Kings Hwy East, Haddonfield, NJ 08033 / 856-795-0043

Dunkin' Donuts Chicken Salad Sandwich

New England is known for many things- polo shirts, PT Barnum's freak show, and summer homes, to name a few. We're not known for our selection of fast food. On a trip to Maryland a few years back, I made it my personal goal to visit no tourist attractions or interesting places, but to eat at every single new fast food restaurant within a five mile radius. The only real regional place New England can claim ownership to is Dunkin' Donuts. Hardly fast food, but a delightful morning staple or afternoon snack. I personally ate at least sixty thousand buttered bagels and croissants on my morning commute to high school. We had a Dunkin' next door. Brilliant marketing.

Had I not had a terrible aversion to mayonnaise at the time, I'm sure this sandwich would have seduced me out of my eighth period math class. My nostalgia for Dunkin' and need for a quick snack before catching a train led to my eventual purchase of the sandwich. The press release for the new chicken salad sandwich tells me that it's tasty and affordable. I should have known that the emphasis on cost would be its ultimate downfall as far as flavor goes, but with the influence of chicken salad in the fast food market lately, I figured I'd give it the old high school try and eat it while soaring through Connecticut.

Wuddup, Darien?

I was initially skeptical about eating the sandwich on a croissant. Greasy filling and buttery bread did not sound like a palatable combination. And chicken salad on a bagel just seemed inherently wrong, like something I'd make at home in a pathetic, mismatched attempt to avoid buying groceries. You know the type- hot dogs on tortillas, random condiments on Triscuits. The sandwich was average in all respects. You'd think that with the competition from Arby's and Subway, they'd try to do something to jazz it up, but this salad's provenance is clearly from the ever-generic ChickTron 92A. It is industrial and plain, a mere step above Elmer's glue and three steps below school lunches.

The filling was loose and goopy with small pieces of chicken no larger than a penny. There were no vegetables, fruits, or nuts, and while I generally advocate for a meat and condiment only sandwich, chicken salad really needs that extra somethin' somethin' to break up the banality of shredded chicken and mayonnaise. Apparently, that somethin' somethin' was vinegar, and lots of it. It made the sandwich filling ooze in a gloppy paste out of the croissant, which, with its center hole, looked a lot like a pustulating wound. The vinegar was all I could taste in the sandwich filling. Combined with the butteriness of the croissant, a mediocre specimen yet guilty pleasure of mine, it was astringent and overly salted.

Keepitcoming Love now uses this photo and meticulous arrangement of its subject as evidence of my obsession and insanity. She calls it Exhibit C.

As a recent convert to chicken salad, I'm certain that if this had been my formal introduction to all things mayonnaise I'd have run screaming for the hills and not come back until I'd donned a paper SARS mask and latex gloves. Its blandness and oily, sour flavor doesn't quite make it offensive, but if I hadn't been incredibly hungry I'd have had no problem tossing it after a few bites.

Red Velvet and Bacon Chocolate Bars at Dylan's Candy Bar, New York, NY

One of the things I'm least proud of when it comes to food writing is that I am an absolute sucker for hype and tourist traps. It's the yenta drag queen in Eileen Fisher in me rearing her perfectly coiffed head and dragging me to places like Serendipity 3 and Katz's Deli before catching a matinee of fucking Spiderman on Broadway. Luckily, our trip to New York was slightly tempered down, and we managed to entertain ourselves with a minimum of pure, unadulterated tourism. But sadly, my puerile curiosity for the bizarre forced us into Dylan's Candy Bar on 3rd and 59th, the slutty little sister trailing a noxious odor of sugar and sweat behind stately Bloomie's.

For all the veterans of combat who read this website, please accept my sincere respect and admiration for what you do. Only yesterday did I get a true taste of what it is to be in an honest-to-goodness war zone, replacing foreign enemies with tiny terrorists from boroughs far and wide. Never in my life did I imagine I'd witness the mental breakdown of an eleven year old girl who has just witnessed the largest Hershey bar in the world, but damn it, I never imagined I'd be playing the role of Pvt. Augustus Gloop on private assignment, either. I skirted throngs of peeved nannies and dodged manchildren to reach my goal: the red velvet chocolate bar. The listless employees, desensitized to the shrill screams of nascent shitheads and blaring juxtaposition of Aaron Carter and Shirley Temple, merely blinked when I shouted my DTs and prepared my foo gas for the Lower Zone.

I found my man, plus a limited edition bacon bonus bar. But only when I witnessed Keepitcoming Love shriek at a cute candy-studded tank top and leap into a bathtub full of dirty gumballs did I realize, too late, that we'd gone too far. The jelly bean eyes of Dylan Lauren herself bored holes into our backs as we beat a hasty retreat. Dylan's Candy Bar is a self-contained, biohazardous circle of Hell. Once we scraped the memories of sticky floors and $13/lb gummies out of our heads, we tried the chocolates. I have no qualms paying $5-$10 for a good chocolate bar because I am generally confident that the premium is an example of the quality of the bar itself. At the risk of losing my escort demographic as a result of using two hooker jokes in one night, the chocolates of Mistress Dylan are unequivocally the prostitutes who leave you with a hole in your pocket and a burning sensation when you pee. They may just be the worst chocolates I have ever consumed.

The red velvet cake bar, one of three in the dessert bar series, had a strange combination of ingredients that resembled a basket on Chopped with the red velvet cake as the end interpretation. Artificial cookie dough flavor and miniature marshmallows have no place in a red velvet cake, but as far as Dylan Lauren is concerned, the brightly colored, dyed sky is the limit.

The bar apparently contains premium Belgian milk chocolate, but apparently the neutral Belgian variety from the Phony War. The end result on the chocolate front was a waxy, strangely greasy crumble with a bright red menstrual smear carrying the unmistakable reek and pre-engineered, factory canned flavor of a Yankee Candle. The dye lingered on the finish and left a bitter, chalky, strangely fruity aftertaste. Runts and Yankee Candle is what your $2.95 buys you. Dylan's demonic laugh echoed in the back of my head and I had to go take a walk around the block to clear my head and vomit.

Add a "U" for "Ummy" where the apostrophe is!



At the time, I thought my second purchase was a bonus that I'd simply not seen on the website, a limited edition offering dropped from heaven itself. But when I looked closer, I realized the cruelty in the typeface. The bar wasn't bacon. It was bacon-flavored to accommodate Schuyler's allergies and probiotic diet, and thusly contained Bac-O's. I forged on. As I slipped a morsel of the chocolate into my mouth, my brain's primordial instincts kicked in in one last valiant attempt to prevent me from expelling this from my mouth on impact. By telling me that I was simply eating a Krackel Bar, which accounted for the crispy texture, I was able to finish the bite. That is, until the liquid smoke and sugar came in. The unmistakable flavor of Bac-O's flooded my mouth along with the mediocre, overly sweet chocolate, and I could no longer go on.

Note the angry jutting of an elbow in the upper left sector as some poor bystander loses an eye.

Dylan's Candy Bar bested me. I was defeated. I was scared. I was swayed by the promise of exoticism and for that, I have paid with the ultimate price: my soul. It was horrifying. If I were to go back, it would only to be to torch the wretched mess and never look back. I've paid my dues.

Momofuku Milk Bar, New York, NY

In my mind, I've had an ever-expanding bucket list of restaurants and products I've been dying to try or purchase. It spans from the 500 bottle EuroCave, complete with a 30 year Donnhoff and Yquem vertical for my tasting, to a dinner for two at wd-50 or French Laundry to a MetroKane Rabbit. One of the more attainable goals on my list was to check out David Chang's Momofuku Milk Bar, one of five of his restaurants around New York City. Milk Bar is most known for its rotating selection of unusually flavored soft serve ice creams, the skill of its founding pastry chef, Christina Tosi, and David Chang's hatred of bloggers. I was hoping that Milk Bar would impress me so that I would not end up on this seemingly persnickety shit list. Unfortunately, I was not dazzled by the hype.

Tucked cozily into the front of Ma Peche, customers must navigate like lab hamsters through the walls of low-lit pastries and chalkboard-written specials to find their lunch, but those looking for Milk Bar will find the decor and layout fairly easy to understand. Specialties include the Compost Cookie and Crack Pie, which former addicts will be pleased to know, does not contain actual crack, and the cereal milk milkshake. We tried all three, plus a pack of cake truffles and a few more cookies.

The best treat of the day was undoubtedly the cereal milk milkshake, and not simply because we were parched from the heat and screeches of teenage girls at Prada for the first time. While $6 buys you a squat, small cup and the promise of organic whole milk, the result is incredibly refreshing and not too sweet. The cereal milk manifests itself in a slurry of Corn Flakes and gelatin, strained out into a smooth milk and frozen. The result is a malty, neutral flavor with a cool, smooth texture that didn't require the fellation of the straw to extract the goods. On a hot day, it was perfectly sweet with no sugar high and eventual crash.

I expected the cake truffles to be luscious, and they were. The pistachio truffle was well prepared with large chunks of pistachio nuts, a moist texture, and a nice hint of lemon zest in the white chocolate coating. It was slightly saccharine on the way down, but I chalked it up to the frosting glaze.

Next, we tried the cookies. Of the five cookies offered on the menu, we sampled three. After tasting those, I did not regret passing on the other two. The first selection, the corn cookie, seemed like it would be a pleasant follow-up to the neutrality of the milkshake. The vegetal flavors were well incorporated into the composition of the cookie. It tasted like an ear of fresh corn with butter and salt, but its excessive sweetness and flaccid break literally left a bad taste in my mouth. The texture was especially noticeable as a result of its flat, pancake shape. I found it disorienting to have such a light, fresh flavor combined with such a heavy mouthfeel. It had a texture absolutely saturated with oil, to the point where it made an audibly gooey squelch with each bite, and there was too much sugar to compliment the Willy Wonka-esque combination of vegetable and dessert. The texture was uniform with no corn pieces or salt crystals, and in the glow of natural light, the oil seeped out and glistened on our fingers.

This was not an aberration from the norm at Milk Bar. This super-sweet, unctuous quality was present in each dessert we tried, including the infamous Crack Pie. We wanted the Crack Pie to be our ironic saving grace, our narcotic Jesus in a world of greasy slickness, but it fell short of its name's promise. (If I weren't committed to keeping this website classy, I'd comment that I could have stayed home and eaten better crack pie free of charge).

The blueberry and cream cookie came across as a slightly-luxe version of the cloying $4 per dozen supermarket cookie. There was nothing outstanding about it that made me want to eat more, or frankly, eat it at all. The compost cookie had a uniform crunch with little balance between salty and sweet. The chunks of whole pretzels and nuts were reduced to a fine grain and the flavor was predominantly nutty and chocolatey.

Trying Milk Bar as a David Chang test-run doesn't make me want to pony up for a full dinner, especially considering the sketchy, pretentious reservation system and ban on photography. Badass doesn't have to mean bad-tempered, and in this case, Chang's "do it or shut the fuck up" method comes across in the mediocrity of the cuisine.

How I Used My CSA: Week 14

Week 14: red romaine lettuce, red butterhead lettuce, green bell peppers, red onions, eggplant, white Japanese eggplant, Yukon Gold potatoes, cherry tomatoes, red tomatoes, and carrots.



For this week's Lancaster Farm Fresh CSA delivery, we swapped out jalapenos and basil (we grow both in our tiny raised patio bed) for red tomatoes and an extra eggplant. There are three Bartlett pear trees I take care of that prematurely drop fruit (deer, squirrels and raccoons assist in the "dropping"), so for the past few weeks I've been collecting a couple dozen unripe pears each week. This week I made a huge batch of pear chutney, and canned it. The red onions from the CSA went into the chutney. Not one to waste, I took the syrup and bits from the bottom of the pear chutney cooking pot that didn't fit into the last jar, and used it as a base for a sauce to a Chinese-ish stir fried eggplant dish.

Ironically, lettuce does not grow well during the hottest months of summer when you want a salad the most. I was happy to see the return of lettuce, and get on to eating some salads again. This one involved the red romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and grated carrots from the CSA, as well as Soy Curls.Here we have a classic Greek salad with feta, cucumbers (from the previous week's CSA), butterhead lettuce, red onion, tomatoes, and bell peppers (from this week's haul).

The boy made Thai curry rice-stuffed peppers (two green from the CSA, one yellow from the store), and it wasn't bland like most stuffed pepper recipes. Yay!



How did you use your CSA or farmers' market haul?

Cawy Watermelon Soda

Outside of food writing, I wouldn't say that I indulge in the most normal of hobbies. I'm an amateur moped tinkerer, an ex-guitarist, French history buff, and occasional organic chef. I take my wines in quality over quantity and I drink my scotch neat. My ultimate goals for life are to proceed living in a hedonistic, yet annoyingly successful manner similar to Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Cameron from Modern Family, and the butt of all lawyer jokes. As I'm writing this opening paragraph cum witty personal ad, perhaps the one hobby I've kept most under wraps over the last few years is my propensity for collecting weird sodas and potato chips. My favorites include freaky international flavors, and wacky racial stereotypes.

That's right. The photo we didn't take.

Looks like Hatermelon, son.



Back in February, Rusty at Tampa Bay Food Monster sent a whole box of awesome foods, beverages, alligator jerkies, and a large-ass cigar of unknown provenance. One of the enclosed sodas was this watermelon monstrosity by Cawy, a company based out of Miami producing flavors like Quinabeer, fruity cola, Champ's cola, and the depressingly named Coco Solo to go with your chili for one. The watermelon soda smells like a potent combination of watermelon-flavored Jolly Ranchers and Calgon bubble bath. Not so oddly enough, it tastes like that, too. It's predominantly soapy in flavor, with a weird, bitter creaminess. The aftertaste lingers on the tongue like soap, though thankfully without leaving a slick sheen on the inside of the mouth. That doesn't save it from tasting like absolute ass, though. You'd think 200 calories and 50 grams of sugar would be able to help it along, but no dice. The sweetness was muted in the mixture of chemical flavors and colors. This soda is gross and creepy.

You'll be pleased to know, though, that in addition to making a fine piece of wall art in your home, the soda can offers a plethora of educational activities along its circumference, much like a cereal box or tattooed penis. For instance, one side of the can will teach you the French translation for "watermelon ass soda," and the top of the can offers an edifying opportunity to have a real life e-web internet World Wide pen pal by simply emailing cawy@cawy.net! Perfect for little sheltered kids and lonely housewives. There's even a coloring section provided you choose the non-racial androgynous boy label. Fun for the whole family. I'm done, I can't do this any more. This soda has literally stabbed me in the throat and watched me bleed. Literally.

Vosges Black Salt Caramel Bar

Looking back at my recent (and infrequent - sorry about that) reviews, it seems I've been into chocolate bars lately. Trying different chocolate brands and types is one of my favorite things about running this blog; I love looking for little differences in flavor and texture.



Vosges is not a brand I buy often, simply because it's expensive. This bar, for example, was $5.99. Despite the price, when I went on a recent chocolate buying spree (seems like this happens a lot these days), the Black Salt Caramel bar called out to me. The Bapchi's Caramel Toffee bar I tried last year was so delicious, I thought another caramel bar from Vosges would be a sure bet.





If you were wondering, the unbroken bar looks like this, but it was important for me to show you how this bar broke, because it completely dominated my overall impression of the bar. It was such a mess, even by caramel standards! The bar just wouldn't break at the "perforations" for me. The chocolate just kept cracking, leaving an oozy, sticky pile of caramel I had to lick off the wrapper (I'm not ashamed). Maybe it's just because I'm very neat, but this really bothered me.



The bar didn't have a strong scent, just a mild hint of cocoa. The 70% cocoa chocolate was slightly bitter, but it had a dreamily smooth melt. The runny liquid caramel was intensely sweet, but it did carry a hint of salt along with a toasty, slightly earthy flavor. The caramel really needed the dark chocolate to balance the bite, but since the caramel kept leaking out, that goal was hard to accomplish. When I did manage to keep it together, the bites along the borders of the pre-formed squares were more appealing; bites from the middle were just too sweet because there wasn't enough chocolate to offset the caramel.



Vosges does dark chocolate very well, but I could have done with less caramel. Don't eat this bar in the car, or at least try to have a moist towelette on hand if you do. This review is based on the entire consumption experience - if the bar hadn't been so messy, I would have rated it higher based on flavor alone, but as much as it pains me, I've got to account for my frustration. I still love you, Vosges!



Please read other reviews at The Candy Enthusiast and The District Chocoholic for some different perspectives on this bar.



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Vosges website