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One of the great desserts available in the city of New York is the banana, sticky rice and black bean dumplings that come wrapped in a banana leaf at Sripraphai. What's Sripraphai? Well, only the best Thai restaurant in North America, located in Woodside, Queens. Don't take my word for it. The brilliance of the dessert is how the sticky, chewy texture of the rice dances with the sweet, tangy mush of the banana and the inexplicable otherness of the black beans, all the while electrified by hint of...salt! It is the most unexpected of pleasures, far greater than the sum of its parts, and something worth traveling for (especially since everything else on the menu at Sri is so astounding). You can imagine my skepticism upon discovering, in the Asian food aisle at Hannaford, our local supermarket, "Frozen Banana Dumpling" in a bright red bag from the esteemed company "Foodhut." Actually Alex found them, and I was so disinclined to believe they could be even one quarter as good as the ones we knew that I urged her to put them back. Boy was I mistaken. They're godly. I want to say they're better than Sripraphai's, that must be my memory playing tricks on me. The genuine article, made in Thailand but for export only, these things are tranportative and divine, and require only 3 minutes in the nuker. Oh, and not really for you if you're a boring eater. Sorry. Here's what the bag looks like. Go find some.

I bet you all imagine that this how life is in Maine - you know, the way life should be. Every afternoon around 4 saunter down to the Harbor Fish Market, pick out a couple of soft-shell lobsters, $4.99 a pound for 1.25 pounders, then take out the giant lobster pot from LL Bean, and without batting an eye, commit the double murders that will yield your evening's sustenance. Well, maybe not every afternoon. Okay, maybe about once a year. But more often would certainly be possible. There was a time when I grew squeamish at the prospect of preparing this meal. There's even a video out there somewhere of me screaming and cringing in a previous execution. But now I'm cold blooded and methodical. If you're going to eat meat, might as well face up to the task of taking the life yourself, you know? Anyway, these were delicious - lobsters purchased in Maine and cooked in the home somehow taste like nothing else in this world.

Okay, I may have a really short fuse when it comes to olive bars (this being the third olive bar photo on the blog in about as many weeks) - but puhleeeze! This picture - of the aforementioned Hannaford olive bar, which is in most respects delightful - almost speaks for itself, no? The sign just sets my imagination running. "Excuse me. Yes, I'd like to speak with a cheese associate. Ah, yes, Mr. Associate, or is it Mr. Cheese, I'd like to taste one nicoise olive. Can we set up an appointment?" No, you can't forbid olive tasting - that's just so 1980s. Hannaford, get with the times. Accept the fact that people are going to snarf some olives - it's probably ultimately good for sales - and get a big bucket, or even a spittoon, for the pits. That'll be scads better for your public image, believe me. (And when you do, I promise to place a photo of the improved situation right here, in this very spot).

Let this not be quite a position paper. Just a sketch of general principles, as they evolve, as they materialize in the mind of a young scientist. The product of experiments past, but grist too for the testing mill of the future. A smoothie dogma, if you will. Dogma 06.

Rule #1: Use 1 very sweet fruit (bananas, grapes, or pineapples are the best).
Rule #2: Use 1 or several kinds of packaged frozen fruit (berries of all sorts, peaches). There is little discernible difference between fresh and frozen berries in the end product - better to save the fresh berries for your granola, or yogurt, or ice cream, or just little bites. If you insist on using fresh berries, make sure that you freeze either the berries or the "very sweet fruit" for smoothie consistency (but don't be a fool and freeze pineapple). Don't use ice.
Rule #3: Use no sweeteners of any kind. Sweetener use is an admission of fruit miscalculation.
Rule #4: Feel good about yourself by avoiding dairy. Use soy milk (Eden Soy preferably).
Rule #5: Put the unfrozen fruit on the bottom, frozen on top, then trickle in the soy milk.
Rule #6: Even still, you'll probably need a wooden spoon a few times if your blender sucks as bad as mine.
Rule #7: Ends here:

Let's face it - this is flat out disingenuous. Why give the price for half a pound? Is that a standard unit of measurement in our society? Do you ever wonder what the half pound rate of coffee, or lobster, or cherries, or pistachios is? Of course not. In fact, you're so used to seeing things priced by the pound that your assumption would be that any price on a sign would be per pound. Especially for a bulk item such as olives, that have sufficient heft and scrumptiousness to easily tempt you towards and beyond those standard sixteen ounces (unlike, say, chamomile flowers). The idea here is that Wild Oats, the criminal organization responsible for this noxious little placard, knows full well that $11.98 is an obscene amount to charge for olives, no matter how good they are. (Go to Zabar's in NYC and the olives are 5 or 6 bucks a pound. And sorry, they're better too. And even go around the corner to Hannaford's, whose perfectly delicious olives and pickled goodies are $6.99 A POUND). Wild Oats can't bring themselves to print the awful truth, so they soften the blow by giving you an irrelevant measure (which they obviously hope you'll confuse for the proper one). Why don't they just put up the price per 4.8 oz. or per bushel, or per stone? Hoodlums. And still I return. Why? Well, to paraphrase Beethoven, "that is the way with men. They are esteemed because they have not committed still greater faults."

And with one touch of the button, my 12 June blog entries get banished to the archive. A fresh start - a blank page. Good news. Also bad, though - the bad is this: the camera, about which you haven't heard much recently, is really, and thoroughly dead. For a while it was doing this odd thing, where with freshly charged batteries you could get it to come on by pushing the power button about twenty times. The first ten times you get nothing...and then a little flash of green, a momentary extension of the lens, and then suddenly the whole thing bursts to life as if it was all in your head to begin with. But gradually those 10 non starters turned to 20, and 30, and now, well - it's sorta all that's left. Just the empy, non responsive button push. So the following comments won't have the benefit of illustrations. We'll all survive.

1st - you wanna make babaganouj? This is what you need: an eggplant, some tahini, garlic, lemon, salt, and preferably some parsley. Oh yeah, and a gas burner.

Take the eggplant and just stick it on the gas burner and fire that puppy up to high. I start on the end, then do the sides. It's an act of great patience, and in a weird way, decadence. You can't overdo it, you know, so just leave the eggplant on the flame, shifting it every so often, until it's a leaky, mushy, liquid mess, and you've soiled your stovetop to oblivion. (you begin to see why the camera might have been useful for this entry, no?)

Then, take the eggplant off the stove, cut it in half on a cutting surface, and scoop out all the wonderful innards. Alex actually runs the whole thing under cold water so the skin just falls away - but I don't see how you can do this if you've really thoroughly obliterated the poor thing as you should have.

Then you're basically done. Mix in some lemon juice, salt to taste, parsley if you've got it, a clove of garlic, and tahini (I don't like much - maybe two or three spoons). It's good! Remember: you can't cook the eggplant too long (at least I've never done it), but you can cook it too short, and if you do, might as well just toss that sucka.

AND, bonus recipe peeps. Why, oh why, does anyone ever, ever buy jarred tomato sauce? (This is a long running feud between Alex and me).

All you need for great sauce in 20 minutes:

1 28 oz. can of good tomatoes (Muir Glen, Red Pack in a pinch). If your tomatoes suck you're hosed.
2 or 3 shallots, diced fine.
3-4 tbspns of Olive oil.
Course salt (if you've got it, otherwise any).

Sautee the shallots w/ salt and then add the tomatoes. Cook over medium until it reduces and gets saucy. Very, very occasionally, if the tomatoes are ultra-acidic, I might add a touch of honey. This is almost never necessary, though.

That's it. Your sauce. Better than anything you'll find in any jar or I'll give you a dollar.

Well friends, no need to ever return to New York! I've finally found these suckers on line. Even cheaper than at Zabar's. At Capri Flavors you can order twelve 2 oz. tins for under $24 - I'm not sure about shipping costs. I like to support local business, but the one supplier I've found in Portland, Micucci's, hasn't been able to get any from their distributor. You can buy larger containers and glass jars, but I don't recommend it. Anchovies have always seemed to me to get nasty once spending time in the fridge. These should be eaten out of the can, or used in recipes, in one fell swoop. I repeat what I said somewhere below - you think you don't like anchovies only because you haven't tried Agostino Recca. (The other good way to have them is to buy, from an Italian specialty store, the salt packed variety, and then rinse and filet them yourself - a tremendous amount of work, and not appreciably better than these guys). You might be able to track them down in select stores in NYC. In Astoria, our Korean grocer had them, and he stocked them for me and one other patron, who would buy them by the armload. He thought we were both nuts.

Since I moved here I've lamented the fact that despite appearances to the contrary, Portland is a pretty lousy ice cream town (I say this having moved from that other pretty lousy ice cream town, New York City). But all that's changed now that Maple's Organic Ice Cream has opened up out on Forest avenue. This is genuine small batch ice cream made with care, love even. Flavors are simple, but pure and delicious. Although they make wonderful cones by hand, I've decided it is a mistake to have this stuff in anything but a cup. The flavors are delicate and multi-layered, and there's just no reason to drown them out w/ what is essentially high quality filler. The flavor pictured here is Maine Maple, although the store is actually named after Maple the dog, who is featured in the logo. The ice cream reminds me of a product that was made by a small company in upstate New York called Egg Farm Dairy (they've changed their name to Cows Outside and no longer make ice cream - only cheese). When I first met Alex, knowing that she was an ice cream fiend (that's her hand in the pic), I wooed her by sending six pints of Egg Farm Dairy ice cream, packed in dry ice and delivered next day air. I distinctly remember there was not one but two honey flavors (different types). Like that wonderful stuff, Maples' ice cream has a slightly grainy consistency, without an overwhelmingly rich (and slimy) concentration of milk fat, but definitely with a penetratingly honest and round dairy finish. I'll stop swooning. Go try the cappuccino, or the chai, or especially the ginger. You can pick some up at the Whole Grocer. And if you're out of town, like say in Brooklyn Heights, then go have a bagel instead.

Here's my fantasy meal, complete w/ sun-drenched front stoop. It's sauteed (okay, fried) fish w/ salad and garlic mayo on a bulky roll w/ a cold beer. What better way to usher in the sunshine season?