Posted by Anita on 10.02.06 6:04 PM
The Los Angeles Times — a serious newspaper, by all accounts — ran a story recently, profiling Charlie Boghosian, a purveyor of deep-fried everything. The wrapper of the story is a recap of all the fried goodies (and I use that term loosely) available for sale at the Los Angeles County Fair, including “deep-fried Twinkies, deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried avocados, deep-fried pickles, deep-fried olives … deep-fried macaroni and cheese, deep-fried spaghetti and deep-fried cosmopolitans…”
But Mr. Boghosian — a Christmas tree wholesaler when he’s not hardening arteries in the summertime — has a heart-stopping item that’s the real star of the piece.
This year, Boghosian’s new item is the Krispy Kreme Chicken and Swiss sandwich with a side of honey. Imagine a jelly doughnut hollowed out, cut in half and garnished with a fried chicken patty and slice of gooey Swiss cheese.
Boghosian says he came up with the idea one night while buying a dozen doughnuts for his staff at a Krispy Kreme with his manager, Jerald Smith, who said he had a hankering for a chicken sandwich instead.
“And then a light went on,” Smith said.
The reaction has exceeded Boghosian’s expectations. He sold nearly 1,000 of them his first weekend at the L.A. County Fair at $5.95 apiece.
The even scarier part? They tot up the calories on this puppy, and it’s about the same as a Big Mac, and about 200 below the Jumbo Jack with cheese.
levity, SoCal
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Posted by Anita on 09.12.06 1:52 PM
Seems like today’s a big food-news day, and I couldn’t resist sharing some of the headlines.
Another hilarious coffee-related news article from Seattle: Baristas having a cow over dairy “thefts”.
The AP latches onto a blogosphere favorite: Waiters get miffed about the unfairness of tipping.
Do we need smart linen? The Chron reports on a new high-tech, E. coli-detecting napkin.
And apparently they’re eating raw crabs in The OC… and getting really sick.
coffee & tea, geekery, news, restaurants, Seattle, SoCal
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Posted by Anita on 02.06.06 1:50 PM
(originally published as part of eGullet’s Culinary Memories of your Grandparents thread)
My paternal grandparents died when I was very young, so I have no memories of them. To hear my father tell it, though, I probably wasn’t missing much, culinarily speaking. They did live on a chicken farm on the outskirts of Monrovia, CA (near Pasadena), though, and that I would have liked to have seen.
My mother’s parents are a source of many food memories. They lived in Glendale, CA (northern L.A. county, near Burbank), so we got to see them quite a lot. My most vibrant food memory of G&G was their pantry, which consisted of 2-x-4s that Gramps had hammered in between the wall studs of the basement stairs. The wall was perfectly deep enough to hold a single row of cans and jars… it was great fun to explore!
My grams, a first-generation Italian-american was a good home cook; I still use her chicken stuffing recipe, and a few others that fit into the day-to-day, down-home American genre. I don’t have any of her Italian recipes, but I do have a few letters that her mother wrote to her when she was first married, nearly all of which end with a recipe for something she thought the newlyweds would enjoy. They’re written in a lovely phonetic Italian-English hybrid that never fails to bring me a chuckle.
Gramps was always something of a gourmet at heart. He loved Julia Child — I have his copies of Mastering the Art of French Cooking — and shopped at Trader Joe’s back when it was a single store with a funky selection of cheeses and wines. I also remember the aunts (including my mom) chuckling with amusement as he showed off the unglazed paving stones he’d used to line his oven for bread baking — this in the early 70s, when pizza stones weren’t yet something you could buy. After Grams passed away, my mom sent me to stay with Gramps for a week, probably over spring break. He made me tomato soup for lunch, from scratch… I’m ashamed to admit that I turned up my nose at the stuff, since it was nothing like the Campbell’s I was used to at home. (In my defense, I think I was about 6 or 7.)
Family holidays always started with hors d’oeuvres, known in our clan as “befores”… and Gramps usually brought them. The usual creamy dip with crudites (always including black olives for me), some cheeses, and ‘funny’ crackers.
Gramps was a bourbon drinker, and his kisses always tasted like Kentucky. It’s taken me a long time since his death to be able to bear the taste of bourbon — it’s just too closely tied to my memory of him.
cookbooks, family, food boards, Italian, SoCal
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