Fried chicken. All I wanted to do is to make some fried chicken. But I wanted it to taste good, to be just a little bit better than usual, so I pulled out the brand new Cook’s Illustrated title, “The Best Chicken Recipes,” ($35, Cooks Illustrated.)

I thumbed through the book and found a recipe that insisted it was one BEST way to prepare the chicken. First, you need to ”brine” the chicken in buttermilk mixed with hot sauce, bay leaves and salt. Done. Then you dry it for 2 hours. Sort of done.

Then you dust dust up the chicken, drag it through beaten egg and redust it. My grandma never did it that way and her chicken was perfect. Double-dust seems like overkill, so I dust it once and drop it into the hot pan. When I reach in to flip my chicken, the toasty outside peels off. What? I flip more carefully, then re-flour and fry the naked pieces. Hopeful, I put the batch in containers for our picnic the next day.

Twelve hours later, I open the container to discover a mass of chicken wrapped in mush. We ate it anyway, but I’m still mad at that chicken. How could something so simple be so difficult? Was the flour-egg-flour routine SO critical? If anyone out there has a recipe for great fried chicken that you don’t have to muck up your fingers to make, I’d love to hear about it.

I know. I admit it. I stand corrected. Eggs aren’t exactly health food. Wine isn’t a major food group. And I, sniffle, am not a super-taster. If you are laughing, stop now. At that lovely Tazo dinner I mentioned last week, I sat next to some young save-the-world non-foodie who likely considers Burger King a feast. She was lovely company, but what got me is that this woman could out-taste me without even trying.

During the blindfold dinner — yes, all guests dined blindfolded, start to finish – this upstart taster sniffed her cocktail and instantly says “gin.”  “Not a chance,”  I reply. It was gin. Minutes later, she nibbles her appetizer. “Orange,” she says quietly, not aware that I’m listening. ”Can’t be,” I think. Red tea, rose hips, something, anything but orange. Wrong again.

My daughter who’s been away at college just returned home, staking claim to the best indoor growing spot in the house. Yes, it’s her room. But the light is perfect, the room as cozy and warm as an indoor nursery.

I mention to her that I may be setting up my wheat grass growing operation in her window soon. She gives me a blank stare, pauses, then says, “No.”

“But your room gets all the sun and there’s no where else to put it,” I whine. She’s not swayed.

What she doesn’t realize is that I’ve been using her room as a nursery for months, sprouting basil, and growing tomato plants eight varieties of black heirloom tomatoes from seed sent to me by the Monterey Tomato Festival.

If you’re thinking that eight varieties of black tomatoes is overkill, consider this: Gary Ibsen at the Tomato Fest (who sent me the seeds) is growing 350 kinds of tomatoes this year. Good thing he’s planning to share his crop at the 17th annual NatureSweet Carmel TomatoFest in September. If you want to sink your teeth into some of his tomatoes, now is the time to get tickets — they’re $85 until May 16, $95 after that. Go to www.tomatofest.com or call (800) 965-4827.

The one thing I will admit is that I just may have overplanted a tad: I ended up with about 60 plants. I planted a dozen in my own yard, then begged friends and relatives to become foster parents for my plants. I now have baby tomato plants taking root in seven other gardens around the area. I have resisted the urge to go visit them, but I expect to get full reports on their well being throughout the summer.

Back to the wheatgrass. I figure I’ll wait a week then set up shop. With any luck she will be too busy enjoying her vacation to really notice or care.  

It’s owner had such high hopes for its future when she thrust the bag of bubbly white Amish Friendship Bread starter into my reluctant arms. “You love to bake? Here! It’s on Day 6.” Her trust in me was misplaced. I stared at the bag, then scanned the instructions and the recipe. Boxed pudding mix? One cup of oil? What?
I could have tweaked the recipe. I could have fed it some heartier flour. But I failed. It’s now Day 12, and I’m sorry to report that due to inept care the Amish Friendship Bread starter has met its demise. After a proper memorial, it was placed in the receptacle.

If you haven’t started thinking about it yet, it’s time. Mother’s Day is coming up at the end of this week. Of course you could go out and buy a card, but if you’re mom is online-saavy, you can save gas, tax and time — and donate to a great cause by opting to send an e-card via www.ToastToMom.com. The site is a joint fund-raising (and publicity) venture between Clos du Bois and The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease. Clos du Bois will donate $1 to the organization for every e-card sent. The site includes some great recipes from the book, and an offer to buy a Mom’s Day gift basket for $75 that includes a pair of wines and a copy of “WomenHeart’s All Heart Family Cookbook,” ($29.95, Rodale.) The book has lots of flavorful recipes that use the kind of foods we should be eating: whole wheat pasta, sweet potatoes and arugula, and broccoli-barley pilaf. You didn’t ask, but I’ll just tell you that Clos du Bois wines are always solid, and their dry rose is a good pick because it’s ultra food-friendly. If you can resist buying something while you’re on the site, sending a giant batch of e-cards will cost you nothing besides a little time.

Licking fingers is fine if you’re eating in front of the TV or sucking down fast food, but at Jardiniere in San Francisco? Lick your fingers? I think not!

Let me rephrase. I thought not until a few weeks ago, when I attended what may well be the most bizarre dinner of my life — a dinner sponsored by Tazo Tea. It was a lovely affair held in the posh dining room at Jardiniere. The chef had planned a special menu for us — about a dozen media types. But there was a catch — a catch in the form of a thick, padded blindfold. If we wanted to eat, we had to strap the thing around our heads and leave it there during the entire meal.

The idea, the Tazo reps explained, was to force us to focus not on the looks of our food, but on its aromas, textures and flavors. Interesting concept. As I anchored my blindfold in place, I was uneasy. I had no idea what they were going to serve. Worse, how would I get it from plate to mouth? What if I tipped over my drink?

First up was a tender piece of fish in the middle of a large plate. Not exactly easy to spear, I have to tell you. The second course was easier to eat if you didn’t mind shoving huge pieces of poultry into your mouth — although we had knives, I wasn’t about to start sawing on things I couldn’t even see. The dessert? We had to tap our forks across the plate until it hit something soft.

Half-way through this meal, I got the giggles. Here I was in one of the top restaurants in San Francisco, slurping my drink, sticking my fingers in my plate — and licking them. I dropped food all over the table and the floor. I took gigantic bites (how could I know the size without seeing?), and shoved the dangling tidbits into my mouth like a cavewoman. But I had my napkin in my lap and I said a lot of “Please” and “Thank you’s.”

Just in case you’re wondering, the food really was finger-lickin’ good. And it turns out that it was gorgeous as well — they brought plates out to show us what we ate afterwards. I’m not sure my senses were enhanced by “Dining in the Dark” as Tazo called it, but I have to admit it was interesting.

Can’t blame you for wondering, and to tell you the truth, we weren’t sure ourselves for a while. What with layoffs, office closures, resignations, desk moves, and a new computer system that’s about as intuitive as making baklava… from scratch… without a recipe… we are happy to to report that that we’re still kicking — and cooking.

That being the case, I figure it’s about time I got back to slinging food in this forgotten little blogspot.

Just to get the conversation rolling, did you hear the one about Wagyu beef?
According to some fellow named Russ Supplee at Greg Norman Australian Prime (a beef company) a hunk of Wagyu beef is “good” for you — even better than a chicken breast. He says it’s a great source of omega-3 fatty acids and that the fat it contains is lower in cholesterol than chicken fat.

“Wagyu beef… is shown to have potent anti-carcinogenic properties, reduce heart disease, diabetes, asthma, body fat gain and increase immune system response, as well as being an anti inflammatory agent.”

Ya think? A hunk of fatty beef is health food? Delicious, yes. But good for me? At 25 percent fat, I don’t think so. I say since we aren’t dead yet, let’s just keep it that way for a while.

All right. That’s it. I’ve had it with the butter-bashers out there. Go ahead, call it fattening. Call it 100 percent artery clogging, cholesterol-laden, heart-attack-on-toast diet suicide. But do not tell me that by holding the butter you are holding the trans-fats.

There is NO relationship between butter and trans fats. I want to be sure you understand this, so I repeat: There is no relationship between butter and trans fats. Do not trust any package label that claims otherwise. Clearly, the writers haven’t done their homework.

Butter is a saturated fat. Trans fats may well be saturated, but they are man-made fats, made saturated or solid by a hydrogenation process that is a mystery to me. I have no plans to fully undersand that process, I only know that it results in a fat that raises my bad cholesterol and lowers my good, which is all bad. Butter, on the other hand, merely raises my cholesterol. Given the choice between a food that contains trans-fats or hydrogenated anything and butter, I choose butter.

And one more thing. Given the choice between a baked good made with butter and one made with oil, I can tell you that the one made with butter will most likely taste better. I won’t always choose it for health reasons, but I’d be willing to bet that the buttery sweet would win in a blind tasting.

OK, I’m done. I feel better now. I think I’ll go have a giant butter cookie.

– Jolene Thym
photo by Bob Fila/Chicago Tribune

No, not that kind of stalker, this kind:

Diet Detective has this logo, along with lots of other cute food-related designs, printed on shirts, onesies aprons and tote bags including:

If, like me, you have a penchant for funny T-shirts, and for vegetables, you’ll want to visit their site and check out all the FoodTees.

Will I ever learn? I knew it was going to be a crash and burn before I even started, but our Colombian exchange student had requested it. For the good-bye potluck, she wanted creamy noodles with chicken. How could I refuse?

Of course, anyone with any sense would have boiled some noodles, slathered them with a jar of alfredo sauce and called it done. Not me. Oh no. I saute some chicken, then add a little black forest ham to the pan for extra flavor. I mince an onion to create a flavor base for my cream sauce, then add garlic for a bit of kick. I make a roux, then stir in freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano until the flavor of the sauce is nearly perfect. I dust the sauce with white pepper and declare it perfect.

Just before time to leave, I cook up the noodles and top them with the (now too thick) sauce. Result: A gloppy mass of inedibility; a dish so unappealing that I nearly laugh out loud. Desperate to un-glop the noodles, I chop up the noodles. It’s hopeless. It still resembles a mountain of silicone. I pour milk into the noodles and frantically stir. The cheese is too cold. I try stuffing the dish in the microwave. It doesn’t fit.

I throw my hands up in the air, cover it and pretend it’s food. I sneak it into the buffet, making sure no one sees the dish in question. As I eat and share conversation with a lovely woman, I can’t help but notice that she’s eaten every other bite of food on her plate — except my silicone noodles. I offer to take her plate to the trash, and make a note: Creamy noodles don’t keep and they don’t travel. They are not, repeat NOT, potluck food.