Peanut Butter in the Wine Rack: Food Memoir Part 2

Click here to read Part I

When the move came, I was fine with it. At thirteen I had about the social and emotional sense of a mushroom. I walked down the hall of junior high bragging about moving to Argentina to friends I wouldn’t see for years. In June of 1998, we took a couple long plane rides to Buenos Aires where we touched down at six A.M. on a chilly winter’s morning. After enduring my first overnight flight of insomnia, I went to my room in our new house and entered a comatose state before my head hit the pillow.

My dad woke me five hours later with a warning about sleeping the day away. I arose zombie-like and we went to Burger King, which was just six blocks from our house. It was comfort food in the alien environment.

I was too young to grasp the reality that we were in South America permanently and none of us, besides Dad, had any idea how to live there. I passed my first summer-turned-winter break being sick, watching TV, doing some sightseeing and reading the only book that Mom brought on the plane, Etiquette for Dummies. I’ve never forgotten how to set a table since!

Our Christmas traditions were completely transformed during our Argentine years. Mom bought “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” china and we each took turns reading the lines off our plates and bowls. Clam chowder, served in the new china our first year in B.A., became an annual Christmas Eve tradition. Thanks to the small American community, we were friends with the local General Authorities and mission presidents, who joined us for Christmas Eve. When they came, Mom asked us all to sign the bottom of our china plates to immortalize their company.

Later that first Christmas Eve, we were sitting around the piano singing “Silent Night” when a flurry of explosions shook the house and fireworks shone through the window. After the song we dashed to the deck to see what was the matter. From the top of our wall we watched the festive midnight pyrotechnics ring in the Nativity.

Christmas morning our stockings were filled with cans of A&W root beer, and under the tree lied brightly wrapped packages of Crisco and Miracle Whip, lifelines to save my parents from using animal lard and mayonnaise. After presents, our visiting family members spilled their suitcases full of more edible treasure on the dining room table, which became a bartering ground. Afterwards, Dad fired up the brick grill, or “parilla,” in our backyard and we hit the pool to beat the humid heat.

The root beer was the most welcome gift of all. Before the opening of each can, we would make sure we had the jealous attention of everyone in the house. Some cans would stay hidden in the refrigerator for months until anticipation overwhelmed the owner.

We were also hoarders of peanut butter. We drove to a distant Wal*Mart every few weeks to check if a shipment came in. This was, as far as we could tell, the only store in the city that sold peanut butter. We stocked up on twenty to thirty jars every time we went and stored them in our large, otherwise empty wine rack.

One American family in our branch said that once while going through customs, the official commented on how many Mormons he’d noticed hauling jars of peanut butter in their suitcases. With a straight face he asked them, “Is it some part of your religion?”

We didn’t just stick to our American food, though. We ventured out for Argentine regularly, but had to adjust to the Argentine schedule where restaurants don’t even open until nine P.M. On weekends some diners linger until five or six A.M. Waiters were uniformly heavyset and always memorized your orders as a mark of pride. When one waiter had served the rest of my family, he turned to me and said “None for you—you’re already too fat.” He was serious.

On the menu, milanesas were typical lunch fare. They are often translated as breaded veal cutlets, though the meat doesn’t come from stall-raised calves like in the U.S. The thin cutlets are often over one foot long and six inches wide and precariously positioned in a French roll half its size, leaving a fourth of the slab bulging out on all sides. Slather on some mayo, add a lettuce leaf and a couple tomato slices and you’ve got lunch.

Empanadas hold a special place in my heart. About 3mm of blockage in my right ventricle, actually. Empanadas, which are becoming more common in the U.S., are meat turnovers filled with ground beef, chicken, or ham and melted mozzarella cheese. The best empanadas came from Pizza Bonita, which means “Pretty Pizza.” I had a ritual of eating a mess of their most delicious, greasy chicken and ham and cheese empanadas and watching “The Mummy.”

Besides potatoes, pasta and bread, meat is basically all Argentines eat. Fruits and green vegetables are a once-a-month affair. They consume more beef per person than any other country in the world. Most cattle are range-fed in a natural environment and none of them are injected with hormones. As a result, the beef is as tasty as it is natural. Steaks are grilled only over wood fires and seasoned only with salt. No sauces are ever used to dress them and, after one bite, any blasphemous desire for A-1 was gone as the tender, succulent beef melted in our mouths.

Still widely discussed in the family is a particular meal in Uruguay. Just right across the Rio de la Plata from Argentina, Uruguay so culturally similar to Argentina that it is jokingly referred to as an Argentine province. The restaurant, Pulpería de los Faroles (roughly translated as “the place of tender beef among the street lamps”) is housed in a small, three-hundred-year-old brick building in the Colonia town square. Its rustic, bare brick walls hold a peculiar legend that, in 1680, a magician brewed the elixir of life there and still visits the kitchen at night to concoct his potions. The only magic we experienced was the steak, which possibly surpassed that of Argentina. The bacon wrappings made our tongues do the tango.

After we had been in Argentina for one year, the most innovative and popular restaurant in the city opened just down our street: Kansas Grill. An American entrepreneur built the grill close to the American school, where most of the Americans lived. The buzz spread like electricity throughout the community that a restaurant had opened with real American cooking.

Not only was that true, but the food surpassed our wildest fantasies with the best appetizers, salads, main dishes and desserts we had ever had. The Chicago Style Spinach Dip was creamy beyond compare. The nachos put other messes of chips and cheese to shame with succulent, homemade chili draped over the lightest chips imaginable. The Traditional Salad was a king among salads. It had a medley of vinaigrette dressing, warm crumbled bacon and hardboiled eggs. Its warm croutons were crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. All these ingredients combined to form a holy alliance of flavor.

Kansas introduced ribs and barbeque sauce to the country, which sent Americans into a hysterical consumption. The marinated steaks were also not only revolutionary but downright scrumptious. Everyone I know who has tried it believes Kansas’s Hawaiian Steak is the best marinated steak they’ve ever had. In this steak, world-class Argentine beef met the flavors of American-style preparation. Sweet pineapple, soy and ginger permeated the beautiful cut whose tenderness left knives optional.

Kansas also lays claim to the best dessert experience of my life. Their carrot cake was warm and thick as a brick. Its cream cheese icing was thick and cold, covering the warm offering like a loving blanket.

When Friday came we would get in the car and drive to Kansas Grill without saying a word about our destination. The Kansas Grill has been the pinnacle of Isaacson food lore for ever since. My father recently said that without Kansas we might not have been able to make it through our five years in Buenos Aires. Argentine food was excellent, but Kansas Grill was home.

***

The oil in my deep, 10-inch fry pan sizzles and splatters as I hurriedly cover it before it does further damage. The cleaning of the range, walls and clothes are easily worth a nostalgic slice of milanesa. The folks at the Mercado Latino are getting to recognize me thanks to my frequent purchases of empanada dough. I’ve mastered the beef and ham and cheese kinds, but my chicken has never been up to snuff.

I’ve been cooking Argentine for about a year and a half now. After five years in Argentina as an angst-ridden teenager, all I wanted to do was leave, but now I want more than ever to return. I remind myself that all my friends, like me, have long since moved to America. But the familiar city and the food that was at the heart of it all . . . perhaps that would be worth the trip.

Peanut Butter in the Wine Rack: Food Memoir Part I

My parents gathered us in the living room and told us that we were moving to Argentina. My older sisters cried, no doubt for the drastic changes this would cause in their lives. Me? I didn’t really think much of it—I just wanted to know if Argentina had TV and food.

My parents assured me that it had both.

For the next five years, my family tried to hold onto our American roots while the Argentine culture tugged us gently, and sometimes forcefully, from our comfortable soil. Our culinary roots fed off good ol’ fashioned large breakfasts, fast food, Miracle Whip and other staples of the American diet. The menu during my early years in Centerville, Utah was fairly predictable. On Sundays we ate usually had pork chops or roast with mashed potatoes, and on other days of the week we could bet on spaghetti with a big pot of Ragú Meat Sauce.

Despite the predictable culinary palette, my violent allergic reaction to milk products kept things interesting. If I touched the stuff, painful rashes would inflame my skin and I would swell up like an inflating basketball. The remedy was drinking Benadryl, a dreadful experience given my enduring gag reflex to liquid medicine.

That’s why we ordered pizza with one half without cheese. The ordering process usually involved the clarification “No, not half the cheese. Just cheese on one half.” When the pizzas showed up ignorantly covered with a full circumference of mozzarella, we picked it off. After scraping my slices, there wasn’t much left but sauce, which is probably why it’s still my favorite part.

When I first had macaroni and cheese instead of macaroni and margarine I was about fifteen. At school, bagged lunches satiated me since school lunch was infested with demonic creamy products like butter and, shudder, whey. Mom gave my teachers Starbursts to dole out to me when someone brought cupcakes or something else for the class.

To my everlasting appreciation, Baskin Robbins’ daiquiri ice flavor and the Starkiss popsicles at Dairy Queen saved me from further dessert embarrassment. When it came to Arctic Circle, however, I was out of luck. No ice-based confections there. Trying to include me, Dad finished one drive-through order with the statement “and one cone.” “Did you want ice-cream in that?” asked the crackly voice. “No,” Dad replied, “just the cone.”

When people hear about my allergy they look at me like they would rather be strapped to a raft, have a sweaty gym sock stuffed in their mouth and set off to sea than endure it themselves. Actually, I don’t remember feeling socially excluded or even wanting to eat milk products. I couldn’t miss tasting what I never had. But even after a decade of being allergy-free, I still can’t bring myself to drink plain milk or have it in cereal. The sight of it still makes my stomach turn and brings back memories of choking down Benedryl.

It seemed that Mom and I went to Arctic Circle for lunch every day, though she assures me that this was not the case and she made plenty of lunches. Nevertheless, our visits were so frequent it may not be coincidence that it closed just a few months after we moved. Arctic Circle had horse saddle chairs for kids where I sat as I consumed tens of thousands of calories in fries alone. The Galaxy Diner was another burger joint that shuttered soon after we left, and I still reminisce about it like an old friend. A friend with crispy battered fries and fluorescent green lime Sprites.

Eat-a-Burger knew how to cater to the younger crowd, too. Their kids’ meals came in small cardboard classic cars! I would take them home afterward and drive them around our house. When my family hosted girls from the Hong Kong Children’s Choir, we stopped in Eat-a-Burger to give them a taste of American cuisine. We ordered a monstrous amount of fries that came in what seemed to be a twenty-gallon bucket. Wanting to complete their American experience, we urged the Chinese teens to order root beer. To our surprise their faces became fraught with worry. They haven’t heard of root beer? Realizing they probably mistook it for actual beer, we took turns explaining that it’s not alcoholic, but the young Asians wouldn’t consent. “It’s like sarsaparilla,” Mom finally said. “Ah!” they exclaimed, “Sarsaparilla!” Their faces lit up and we ordered root beers for all.

One of our family’s longest standing food traditions going to the Chuck-a-Rama Buffet on Grandma Humphrey’s birthdays (she always said she didn’t want to live to one hundred, and her wish was granted with just three months to spare). While everyone was gorging themselves at their tables, my cousin Jeff and I would sneak off to the steaming, golden pile of scones. With no witnesses we poked a hole in each of them and filled the hollow morsels completely with honey before consuming them. Squeeze after squeeze we launched our taste buds into heaven and our teeth into the dentist’s chair.

But all was not fast food gluttony. As my parents would passionately interject, to this day they cultivate organic gardens and fruit trees. Perhaps my most transcendent childhood food experience was on a late summer’s morning long forgotten by everyone else. I awoke, earlier than my family, and went out to our twin peach trees. I plucked a plump offering and returned with my bounty to the kitchen. I poured Corn Flakes in a bowl and sliced the succulent orange-colored fruit into it. The abundance of juice from the just-picked peach was more than enough to cover the cereal—milk be danged! The crispy flakes and decadent peach chunks danced merrily across my tongue and etched the experience in my memory.

Click here to continue to Part II

Bible Food

I learned quite a bit writing this paper. Who knew there is an entire scholarly book about the diet of John the Baptist? And how about a company who sells Bible Bars? Come with me, fair reader, as I share some very interesting discoveries in Cooking Religiously: Biblical Food in Antiquity and Today [.doc].

Food in Advertising Research Paper

Are you lying to me, Carl?

We all know that food in ads is quite different than what ends up on our plates. So is this embellishment ethical or even legal? This paper, "The Law and Practice of Advertising Food," explores these questions. Make sure to check out the side by side comparisons at the end.

Click here to read the paper.