Worst Halloween treat ever

When I was a kid, a woman living on our street gave out plastic bags of Chex mix on Halloween. Even though we knew that it would be Chex mix, we stopped at the house every year for the same reason that some people slow down when driving by car accidents.

Bearing witness to the horror is sometimes unavoidable.  

I did a lot of egging of houses and people in my childhood, but surprisingly, I never egged that lady's house. Perhaps even back then, I was judging people's actions based upon intent instead of results. 

However, if she had given us chocolate covered Brussel sprout, which Mark Sparrow will be giving out this Halloween, I might have burned her house down. 

But toffee-covered onions?

Hilarious. 

Unfair assumption #26: Adults who drink milk are lunatics

There's nothing wrong with an adult drinking white milk.

Nothing at all. Truly.

Still, it just seems so wrong to me. Insanity, really.

My son is ready for his next 15 minutes of fame

Earlier in the year, my kids were featured in a TurboTax ad after an advertising agency found a photo of them on this blog. They actually earned enough money from that gig to pay for a two night stay at Great Wolf Lodge, a place they have been wanting to visit for months.

If any advertising agencies are still paying attention, it would appear that my son would like another shot at the big time, perhaps as the new spokesperson for a restaurant chain or food company.

You have to admit that he has the right look.

11 Absolutely Essential Rules for Restaurateur and Waitstaff in Child-Friendly Restaurants

After seven years of bringing my kids to restaurants, here is the definitive list of things that we as parents want from restaurateurs, chefs, and servers as they preparing and serve our food.

1. This may seem obvious, but apparently it's not because it fails to happen more often than you'd think: SERVE THE CHILDREN FIRST. There is no point in delivering my entree if my children do not have food. Little children require attention before they begin eating. There is cutting and cajoling and blowing that needs to be done before anything is edible. It's a full time job. It's maddening. Give me their entree first so I can get to work. 

Even better, if their entrée is ready first, offer to bring it out early.   

2. We don't want our children's food to be piping hot. In fact, we would prefer it to be lukewarm, if not downright cold. Little kids are heathens who can't or won't eat hot food, and as a result, parents spend half the time blowing on their kids' food while their own dinner gets cold, too. If at all possible, have the kids' meals sitting on a counter somewhere in the kitchen while the rest of our order is completed. Give us a fighting chance in terms of eating our own food at the correct temperature.

3. We never want you to suggest items to our children. We know what we want our children to eat. We had a conversation with our kids long before you arrived to take our order. If we ask for milk, don't you dare ask if they want white or chocolate milk. Assume white, you goddamn savage. Don't even acknowledge the existence of a dessert menu unless we prompt you ourselves. It's hard enough to wrangle in our children's desires without you opening Pandora's Box to them. 

4. Crayons. You should have them. We have learned to bring our own, but only because some of you think crayons are optional. If you're operating a kid-friendly restaurant, they aren't.

If you are really good, you will have triangular crayons. The kind that won't roll off your wobbly, uneven tables. Get yourself some triangular crayons and some paper to color on, and we will love you forever. 

5. Extra napkins. We need them. We needed them the moment we arrived. 

6. Don't offer my child a balloon. Balloons are nothing more than heartaches waiting to happen when a child accidentally releases it in order to try to catch a butterfly or pick a nose. This is followed by wailing and weeping and general sadness for the next 3-900 minutes. We don't need this kind of uninvited tragedy in our lives. Balloons also make for lovely visual obstructions when driving home, increasing our chances for a vehicular catastrophe. I came to your restaurant for food. Not circus paraphernalia.

7. If you're still going to offer a balloon to our children after the previous admonition, at least have the decency to ask my children which color they want. If you think the color of the balloon doesn’t matter to a child, you have apparently never been a child.

 8. Those new computer ordering/game systems on your tables? We hate them. If we wanted a video game at the dinner table, we could've handed our kid our phone, an iPad, or any other portable gaming system. We think that actual conversation with our kids might be a good idea. You know? Socialize them at bit. Teach them to chat. Make them potentially datable in the future. At least when they are coloring, they are still talking to us. Making us pictures. Sharing crayons. Displaying their creations. You know who wants these electronic monsters on their tables? Socially inept cretins who played with Nintendo Gameboys at the dinner table as kids and never learned the value of good conversation.  

9. A footstool in the restroom is a delight. Have you ever tried to hold a child in one arm while adjusting water temperature to the single degree with the other? This might be the primary reason that Americans end up in traction. Help us out. 

10. If we ask for a "tiny amount of ice cream" for our child, give us a tiny amount, damn it. Not a little less than normal. Not three quarters of what you'd normally serve. We want less than half. We want an amount that would insult an adult. It's not because we are terrible people. We simply want to clear out sometime within the next three hours, and we know how slowly our kid eats ice cream. 

11. If we inform you that our child has a food allergy, or if our child informs you of this fact, we would like you to widen your eyes a bit, nod vigorously, and treat this news as seriously as a heart attack. Even if there is nary a peanut in your establishment, make a note of this important fact. Tell us that you understand how critical it is. Assure us that that the chef will be informed. We don't need to hear that the hot dog doesn't have peanuts in it. Just let us know that you understand the gravity of the situation and put our minds at ease.

We're not crazy. We just don't want our kid to die today.

This simple bit of grocery store advice will spare you a lifetime of regret. Give you back hours in your week. Bring sanity back to your everyday life.

I met a woman from Denmark last week. She’s been living in the United States for about a year. I asked her what she liked best about our country.

Her response (paraphrased as best as I remember) was immediate:

You're not going to believe it, but it's Stop & Shop. And all the grocery stores like it. In Denmark, we spend half of our weekend shopping for food. Bread from the baker. Meat from the butcher. Produce from the grocer. It's ridiculous. You Americans put it all under one roof. I can finish my shopping in less than an hour. It's an amazing innovation, but I still watch my American friends drive everywhere for their food. This at Whole Foods. That at Trader Joes. Stew Leonard’s. Stop & Shop. Farmer's Markets. It's ridiculous. 

I couldn't believe it. I finally found someone who agreed with me on this grocery store shopping insanity happening all around me.  

I watch my friends and family members drive all over town – seemingly everyday – for their groceries. 

Meat from Whole Foods
Produce from Stop & Shop
Coffee from the artisanal coffee roaster
Paper goods and cleaning supplies from Costco
Prepared foods from Trader Joes
Pet supplies from Petco

This is not an exaggeration. At a dinner party recently, a friend lamented that more than half of her marriage has been spent with she or her husband shopping for food.

Why?

People tell me that it's outstanding quality and low prices that they seek. This place has the best meat. That place has the best fruit. This place has the best prices on paper towels.

It's insanity. And it’s a mistake. A terrible, nonsensical mistake, for two reasons:

1. If I conducted a double-blind taste test of food quality between these stores, no person could reliably tell the difference. If I prepared a dinner of roasted chicken, asparagus sprouts, wild rice, and an apple pie for dessert using food purchased from Whole Foods, Stop & Shop, and Stew Leonard’s and asked you to tell me which one came from which store, there is no way you or anyone else could consistently tell me the difference.

It feels good to think that you are improving the quality of your family's food, but it's an improvement that exists almost entirely in your mind. 

2. More importantly, even if there was a discernible difference in quality or taste between stores, this marginal difference is not worth the time spent shuffling off to each of the stores for what my friend described as half of her married life.

This is what the woman from Denmark understands but Americans have forgotten:

Time is our most precious commodity. It should be guarded at all costs. Valued above all else. Spent with enormous care. 

There was a time when America was dotted with bakers and butchers and fishmongers and green grocers. Like Denmark, there was a time when the bulk of Saturday was spent going from shop to shop, purchasing food for the next week.

Then we built massive grocery stores and put everything under one roof, and for a time, we were happy. My mother would do all the grocery shopping in an hour at Shop-Rite while we clung to the cart and begged for sugary cereals. 

Then something changed. Americans decided that this was no longer good. We decided that the marginal improvement in the quality of our green beans was worth the hour spent driving across town in order to purchase them. We decided that even though all of the stores have organic produce, this store's organic produce must be more organic because it costs more. We decided that it's better to buy olive oil from a store that only sells olive oil (a real thing) and pickles from an artisanal pickle maker even though we never cared about pickles very much before. We decided that the more time we spent gathering the food for our meals, the better we could feel about ourselves.  

We constantly lament the lack of time that we have with our families. We bemoan our lack of sleep. We yearn for the time to read a book or watch a movie. We dream of the day when we can write a novel, learn to skateboard, take a nap, paint the living room, or simply lie down in the grass and stare at clouds.

You have that time. You spent it driving to Trader Joes because you like their crackers.

You spent it driving to Whole Foods for their salmon.

You spent it driving to Costco to save $2.86 on paper towels.

When you're lying on your deathbed, you won’t be wishing that you had eaten more flavorful green beans. You won’t be lamenting the lack of quality quinoa in your life. You won’t be regretting a lifetime bereft of farm fresh eggs.

You’ll regret the hours spent every week driving all over town in order to marginally (and probably indiscernibly) improve the quality of food in your home at the expense of time spent on better things.  

Stop the insanity.

Place time spent with friends and loved ones ahead of the desire to optimize every food item in your cupboard, refrigerator, and freezer. 

Prioritize the things you truly care about - hobbies, exercise, books, films, those project you never seem to have enough time to start - ahead of crunchier celery, more flavorful barbecue sauce,  or cheaper toilet paper. 

Accept the fact that a large amount of the difference between these products are marginal at best and likely only exist in your mind.

Time is the only real commodity in this world. It's the only real thing of value. The sooner you embrace this reality, the happier you will be.

The Ground Round still exists. Apparently for the hipster cocktail crowd.

I had no idea that the Ground Round still existed. 

It does. 30 locations in 13 sates, including Saco, Maine, where I found this one attached to a movie theater. 

I knew very little about this terribly named restaurant, but based upon what I read, I don't have much hope for its survival. 

“Ground Round was well known in the 1970s and 1980s for its children’s parties, showing old time silent movies and cartoons on a big screen, a mascot named Bingo the Clown, and for passing out whole peanuts where diners were not discouraged from throwing the shells on the floor, which became one of The Ground Round’s more endearing qualities that attracted families with small children; they also often gave diners popcorn with their dinner, rather than bread. The newest incarnation of Ground Round doesn’t support such behavior and markets to the adult dining and cocktails crowd, ”

"Adult dining and the cocktails crowd" at the Ground Round?

Perhaps they should consider a name change if they hope to attract anyone who cares about words. 

That ice cream shop that you think is "amazing" or the best? It's not.

I ate some bad ice cream last week. After taking in a show in Brooklyn, Elysha and I went to Milk, the "sister bakery" of the Momofuku restaurants.

Milk offers two kinds of soft serve ice cream. Both are designed to taste like the milk left over after you've eaten a sugary cereal, and the creators have nailed it. The ice cream tastes exactly like cereal-flavored milk.

Why anyone would want ice cream that tastes like cereal-flavored milk is beyond me. My only guess is that people born in the last twenty years were forced to eat cereals like Puffins, Kashi, and Grape Nuts as children.

They had never known the joy of a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, Frosted Flakes, or Apple Jacks.

I have eaten these sugary cereals in abundance and know the remaining milk for what it really is:

At best, a sad consolation prize to a bowl once filled with the best tasting cereals in the world. 

At worst, the disgusting runoff of a once splendid breakfast. The wastewater of a breakfast that will most assuredly spike your blood sugar levels for hours. 

Cereal-flavored ice cream is not good.

All that said, I would also like to push back against every person who has ever told me that a particular ice cream shop serves "the best" ice cream. Or the people who say that a particular brand of ice cream is "amazing." Or those who proselytize about the dairy farm that makes its ice cream on site or the ice cream shack on the beach that is more than worth the 45 minute drive.   

I'm sorry, but if you're talking about ice cream (and you're not talking about dumbass cereal-flavored ice cream), then I don't buy it.

As "amazing" as an ice cream shop or ice cream brand may be, it's still ice cream, which is already inherently amazing. Ice cream is already one of the best foods in the world. Any improvement upon what is already gold will be marginal at best. 

If you want to tell me that a particular flavor combination is fantastic, I'll listen. But if you try to tell me that one brand of chocolate ice cream is superior to another, I don't care.

It's chocolate ice cream. It's good no matter what. And I strongly suspect that most of the difference in taste that you detect is psychosomatic.

It feels good to eat ice cream made at a dairy farm.

It feels right to eat ice cream at an independently owned ice cream shack by the beach that's been in business for 50 years.   

We expect the the ice cream made by two friends in Vermont or three sisters in Massachusetts or the farm that employs troubled inner city teens to taste better.

But it's ice cream. No matter where it is purchased or who is making it, it's already the nectar of the gods. Unless you were dumb enough to make it from cereal-flavored milk, you can't screw up ice cream.

Don;t get me wrong. I'll be happy to join you on your trek to the shoreline or your trip to the dairy farm because any ice cream is good ice cream, but please don't try to tell me that it's the best ice cream around. If I were to set up a blind taste test between your "amazing" soft serve chocolate and the soft serve chocolate served at Dairy Queen or Carvel or any other branded establishment, I suspect that you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. 

Even if you could, the difference would be marginal, because it's ice cream. It's hard to improve on near-perfection.

The world's first decent veggie burger. Not really because it's still a veggie burger, but better.

I discovered that my school serves a veggie burger with bacon.

It may sound counterintuitive, but unless you are eating a veggie burger because you are someone who doesn't eat meat for ethical reasons, this makes so much sense.

A healthier burger option, made more palatable by a slice or two of bacon. It still tastes more like a clump of mud and grass than an actual burger, but if you were looking for a healthier version of the bacon cheese burger, why not remove the beef but leave the bacon?

Brilliant. Right?

Perilous Pizza: The Cook's Cook June/July 2016 edition

I published a piece entitled Perilous Pizza in the June/July edition of The Cook's Cook. It deals with food insecurity in my childhood and how it influenced many of my choices as a boy and continues to influence my decision-making process today.

Hope you enjoy!

The worst name for a food item in all of human history

I'm obsessed with the way foods are named. 

Chilean sea bass, for example, is really Patagonian tooth fish. 
Order Patagonian tooth fish the next time you want Chilean sea bass. Please?

My list of poorly named foods is extensive. 
It includes pulled pork, bread pudding, blood oranges, and field greens. 

But I have discovered the worst name for a food in all of human history:

Formula

Think about that for a minute. The liquid that parents use in place of breast milk to provide sustenance to their infants and ensure their caloric intake is called formula.

Formula: a word that already existed and was in frequent use when formula was invented in the early twentieth century and had absolutely nothing to do with food or nutrition.

• We had mathematical formulas like for the area of a triangle: (b × h)/2 
• We had the chemical formulas for products such as strychnine, a deadly poison: C21H22N2O2 
• We had the trinitarian formula: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit
• We had Formula One racing

None of these definitions evoke the kind of thoughts you want when it comes to feeding a baby. 

Formula is a terrible name. It implies artificiality and chemical concoctions. It makes one think of laboratories and math textbooks and chemistry exams. It promotes images of magical potions and Frankenstein and rocket fuel. It's a word used to name a cleaning product (Formula 409) and a skin care line. It's a word used in devising corporate strategies and to describe novels filled with expected tropes.

It's a word that separates the breast milk replacement product from anything maternal or natural or nurturing. 

And there were so many better options. My plan was to list a bunch here, both amusing and realistic, but my wife proposed the best one, making the rest look ridiculous. 

Baby juice.
It's perfect. Even much better than the Similac or Enfamil name brands which attempt to avoid the word formula altogether (and fail miserably). 

Baby juice.
It's cute. Accurate. Catchy. Natural sounding. Fun to say.
Try to say "baby juice" without smiling. It's hard. 

And yes, the name is already being used on an existing product (further reinforcing the excellence of the name), but I don't care. It's the perfect replacement name for the worst name for a food in all of human history. 

There was a lot wrong with the 1970's, but these two things might have made up for it.

The 1970′s may have been bathed in second hand smoke and disco, and the dominant political figure of the decade may have been Richard Nixon, but people didn't speak about hummus like it was a religion, and travel soccer did not exist.

So maybe not so bad after all.

Three Things I Eat Oddly

Peanut butter and tunafish sandwich

I despise mayonnaise. It's a terrible, evil substance. But as a boy, my mother still fed me tunafish sandwiches, despite my hatred for the mayonnaise typically used on such a sandwich. Without mayonnaise, the tunafish was dry and constantly fell from between the two slices of Wonder bread, making me crazy.

One day I decided to find an alternative for mayonnaise. Something to bind the tunafish to itself and the bread. In the process of experimentation, I heated peanut butter ever so slightly in the microwave and mixed it with the tuna. Not only did it work beautifully in terms of binding the tunafish to the sandwich, but it tasted good, too.

Think I'm crazy?  

A few years ago, one of the stations in my A-Mattzing Race (a race inspired by and designed like The Amazing Race) forced contestants to eat foods that only I enjoy. Peanut butter and tunafish sandwiches was one of these foods. 

Not everyone enjoyed this combination, but two guys liked it so much that they continued to eat these sandwiches well after the race.  

Try it. You might like it.  

Raw potatoes and raw potato skins

As a child, I ate raw potatoes like apples. My mother would wash and peel and send me on my way. 

I still love them to this day. 

I would also stand beside my mom as she peeled the potatoes and eat the raw skins as they came off the slicer. I still love these as well, and it turns out that the skin is the most nutritious part of the potato.

Raw hamburger

As a kid, I ate raw hamburger.

I have no idea why I would ever do this, but as a kid, I liked it.

I haven't tried raw hamburger since I was a boy, but I can't imagine that I would still like it today. Also, it will most assuredly make you sick. I'm apparently lucky not to be dead.

Rugged good looks. Beautiful wives. No java.

I used to think that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and I only had our rugged good looks and coincidentally beautiful wives in common.

Not true. 

According to Yahoo sports:  

“Don’t expect to see Tom Brady at his local coffee shop anytime soon.

The 38-year-old star quarterback for the New England Patriots told radio station WEEI’s “The Dennis and Callahan Show” in Boston that he has never drank coffee in his life. Never even tasted it.

”I never had any coffee or anything like that,” Brady said. “I just never tried it.”

Brady admitted to indulging in “burgers or ice cream” when asked about his food weaknesses.”

— https://gma.yahoo.com/tom-brady-claims-never-tried-coffee-203649743--abc-news-celebrities.html

Not only are burgers and ice cream two of my favorite foods, but as you may know, I have also never tried coffee or anything like it. 

Great minds think alike. 

Fruit Loop freak

My daughter ate Fruit Loops for the first time last week. One color at a time.

In other words, not like a normal person.

My daughter was annoyed with Mrs. Claus - and let her have it.

I took my daughter on the Essex Steam Train's North Pole Express last night.

For those of you unfamiliar, The Essex Steam Train is a 100 year-old functioning steam train and museum run out of Essex, Connecticut. During the year, you can take a ride the train, celebrate your birthday or your wedding on the train, take the special Thomas the Tank Engine tour, and even take the train to their steamboat, where you can cruise the Connecticut River on their old fashioned steam boat.

There are dozens of special rides and events produced all year long, but their most popular option is the North Pole Express, a ride upriver to the North Pole, where Santa, Mrs. Claus, and their elves board the train. Santa hands each child a toy, the elves deliver cookies and hot chocolate, and Mrs. Claus stops by for photos and chit-chat. The train car is decked out in festive lights and garland, and the ride is hosted by an uproarious elf who leads the train car in song, games, and more.

For a child who believes in Santa Claus (as mine do), it is an amazing ride. And the thousands of tickets to these rides - which run from Thanksgiving through December 29 - sell out almost instantly.  

We were supposed to take the ride last week, but the stomach bug hit my daughter hard, forcing us to sell our tickets and reschedule our ride for yesterday,

As fate would have it, the stomach bug then hit my son even harder, providing both him and his parents one of the worst nights of our lives. Unable to reschedule our ride again, we sold Elysha and Charlie's tickets (easily), and with heavy hearts, Clara and I went for the ride on our own.

The ride was spectacular as always. The train car was filled with music and laughter. Children peered into the night with the hope of catching a view of Santa in his sleigh. After about 30 minutes, we arrived at the North Pole, a beautifully decorated location along the track (the steamboat port) where we stopped to allow Santa and his crew to board the train.

All was well until the elves arrived with the cookies. Clara is allergic to peanuts, so before I could even ask, she had grabbed an elf and inquired about the peanut status of the cookie. The elf informed Clara that although the cookie contained no peanuts, it was made in a factory that produced peanut products.

As a result, no cookie for Clara. She was disappointed to say the least. And yes, it was just one cookie, but watching a train filled with children eat cookies baked by Mrs. Claus and handed out by elves while you had none wasn't easy.

The best part came when Mrs. Claus boarded the train for photos. When she reached us, Clara leaned in close and said, "Why aren't your cookies made peanut safe for kids like me?"

Mrs. Claus was a bit flustered but recovered quickly saying, "I'm sorry. I just can't guarantee that they weren't made in a peanut-free environment."

Clara's response: "Why not?"

When Mrs. Claus didn't respond, Clara added, "You should fix this for next year. And what's an environment?"

Mrs. Claus did not answer Clara's question. She smiled and moved on. She probably didn't answer the question because there is no good answer. While I don't think that businesses are required to cater to my daughter's allergy or any food allergy, an attraction like the Polar Express, designed specifically for children, should probably seek to be peanut-free given the surprising prevalence of this allergy. 

Right? 

There are plenty of peanut-free cookies on the market, and they don't cost any more than the cookies produced with or alongside peanuts. Why not try to mitigate a food allergy that has become sadly and inexplicably common in today's world?

I explained to Clara what an environment is, and I promised to write a letter to the Essex Steam Train asking them to consider providing peanut-safe cookies next year.

She thought this was a great idea.

I also promised to bring cookies of our own next year in case they decided to ignore my letter.

Another winning proposal in Clara's estimation.

And on the way home, I bought her a donut at Dunkin' Donuts - a business that can ensure that their products are peanut free and have therefore earned my business.

Though she was still annoyed about the cookie, she felt that a chocolate glazed donut was an acceptable substitute for the sugar cookies that the elves were handing out on the train.

How to be uninteresting with fruits and vegetables

Did you know that watermelon is considered a fruit but also a vegetable since it belongs to the gourd family?

Did you also know that people who insist on proliferating this type of fruit/vegetable classification information are probably some of the most boring people on the planet?

This is the best thing you have to talk about?
Fruit and vegetable taxonomy?
Of all the things you could've said, you chose this?

And yes, we also know that a tomato is actually a fruit. You and your uninteresting, pedantic, soulless brethren have already made this abundantly clear.

We just don't give a damn. 

Tableside preparation of guacamole is stupid. For many reasons.

I don't like avocados. As a result, I also don't like guacamole. So perhaps the following statements are tinged with bias.

Or perhaps I am more objective about this matter than your average guacamole enthusiast. 

Either way, I am hear to report that the recent trend in restaurants for waitstaff - armed with mortar and pestle - to make the guacamole right at the table (table-side seems to be the trendy word used to describe this service) is stupid. 

For reasons that I will never understand, people seem to love watching men and women smash avocados in a faux-volcanic mortar while they watch. They think of this as a special treat. An added bit of service. A pulling back of the curtain to get a view of the work normally done in the kitchen. They consider this a guarantee of freshness. A kissing cousin of the farm-to-table movement. 

It's none of these things. 

The way to determine if your guacamole is fresh is to taste it. If it tastes fresh, isn't that the only relevant data point to consider? If the guacamole made at your table tasted less-than-fresh but the nine day old frozen guacamole tasted fresh and delicious, which would you prefer?

In the end, it's it our tastebuds that make the determination of freshness?

And if you're concerned that the restaurant might serve you less-than-fresh guacamole, why did you choose the restaurant in the first place? Do you normally eat in restaurants that you don't trust? 

And what about the rest of the food, being prepared somewhere in the depths of the kitchen? How are you guaranteeing its freshness?

In addition, the making of guacamole table-side is actually detrimental to your dining experience, for two reasons:

1. While the person makes the guacamole at your table, conversation often comes to a grinding halt. Your attention is drawn to the mortar and pestle, and it's suddenly like watching the Food Network instead of spending time in conversation with friends.

I hate it. 

2. The poor restaurant worker turned performance artist who must stand at your table and make your guacamole could be more productive if he or she were in the kitchen, making a larger batch of guacamole for everyone who has ordered the foul substance. Instead, the restaurant either hires multiple guacamole makers (requiring them to raise prices), temporarily strips the kitchen of a chef (slowing down food preparation), or forces you to wait for guacamole until the waitstaff is finished making guacamole for tables 7 and 9.

Stupid. 

Years ago, I went to dinner with a girlfriend and her friends. Between courses, the waiter wiped the tablecloth clean with a small, white scraper. When he left, one of the women leaned in and whispered, "That's what makes this place fancy."

Forget the tastiness of the food or the promptness of service. It was the use of a small bit of plastic - a bauble - that impressed her. 

Table-side guacamole is a bauble. It's unnecessary and purposeless ostentation. It's an unneeded and unappreciated interruption. it's the illusion of special or fancy.

It's stupid. Make the food in the kitchen. Bring it to the table when it's ready. I'll be busy chatting with friends. 

The oddities of becoming a somewhat (but not famous) public figure

I am not a famous person, regardless of what a couple of my friends may insist. I am not even close to being famous.

I am not even fame-ish.

I've had the honor of occupying the same space and even spending time with famous people this past year.

A long backstage chat with Dr. Ruth.
A backstage discussion with The Daily Show's Samantha Bee.
A conversation with the magician David Blaine.
An elbow rub with Louis CK at an event where we shared the same stage. 
An email exchange with Kevin Hart.

These are famous people. I am not because none of them knew who the hell I was. 

Nor does anyone else.    

But thanks to my books and storytelling and public speaking, I am a bit of a public figure, and that means that every now and then, my name pops up in strange places, oftentimes unbeknownst to me until someone else points it out.  

Elysha recently found my name attached to a lemonade recipe, apparently inspired by my latest novel, The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs. Characters drink lemonade on two separate occasions, which was enough for someone named Ingrid to create her own lemonade recipe and share it with the world. 

Earlier this week, this splash card was forwarded to me by a friend on Facebook. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but it's always odd to see my name attached to something as seemingly random as this. 

A simple test to determine if a food is objectively tasty

My friends, Kim and Andrew, were kind enough to include a dish of canned jellied cranberry sauce on their Thanksgiving table for me.

I love canned jellied cranberry sauce.

I also brought canned jellied cranberry sauce to my class's annual Thanksgiving feast and was shocked to learn that 13 of the 18 students present had never seen the stuff. They were fascinated by the sloughing sound the cranberry sauce made as it left the can, as well as the way to retained the can's shape, right down to the ridges.

Despite their fascination, only a handful of kids tried my cranberry sauce. Most thought it looked disgusting. One kid said it looked "processed and fake." None liked it very much.

But I understand why:

Canned jellied cranberry sauce not very good. I think it's delicious, but I know objectively that it's not. I have a nostalgic affection for the food, but in reality, there are far better cranberry sauces in the world.

How do I know it's not good? I apply the test that I apply to all foods to determine if they are actually tasty or only nostalgically or culturally tasty:

How difficult would it be for me to find this food in a restaurant?

Restaurants are the perfect labs for determining the tastiness of a food. If consumers objectively love a food, I will find it on a menu somewhere, and with relative ease. Restaurants want to make money, and they make money by satisfying their customers. The best foods will eventually land on menus.  

I can't find canned jellied cranberry sauce anywhere. Therefore, it ain't good.

The same can be applied to many nostalgically or culturally appreciated foods. My wife, for example, is Jewish. Foods like kugel and gefilte fish are beloved by her people. 

I happen to know that neither of these foods are particularly tasty, however, because you cannot find either of them in restaurants. No one wants to eat kugel or gefilte fish unless they have been eating them on religious holidays or family gatherings all of their lives, because these foods are nostalgically tasty. 

Not actually tasty.

Actually, in my experience, most Jews don't like gefilte fish either, but perhaps my sample size is small.

The opposite is true for a food like challah, a bread traditionally eaten by Jews. I can find challah on many menus. It is served as French toast in chain restaurants as ubiquitous as IHOP. It's used for sandwiches in many diners and sandwich shops. Challah is an objectively delicious food, and I know this because it has found its way off the Jewish holiday table and into the mainstream diet because it actually tastes good. 

Matzo ball soup is similar. It's little more than chicken soup with a matzo ball in it, but still, I see it on menus. It's a food that non-Jewish people love.

I have a friend who likes to bring green bean casserole to potluck gatherings. She says it's delicious. When probed, I quickly determined that she has been eating green bean casserole all her life. It's her grandmother's recipe. Of course she likes green bean casserole. I's nostalgically delicious. 

But is it actually good?

I have never seen green bean casserole on a restaurant menu. So no. It's not actually tasty. It's only nostalgically tasty. 

Besides, of all the things you could put in a casserole, why green beans?

By the way, if you look into the history of green bean casserole, you'll discover that it was invented by the Campbell's Soup Company in 1955.

Convenient since cream of mushroom soup is one of the primary ingredients.  

The inspiration for the dish was "to create a quick and easy recipe around two things most Americans always had on hand in the 1950s: green beans and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup."

So the bar was pretty low when green bean casserole was invented:

Find two things that most Americans have in the pantry and mix them together.

Not exactly the makings of a delicious dish.

There will be people who push back against my test for objectively delicious food. They will argue that food need not be in restaurants to be objectively tasty. I understand why they feel this way. It's difficult to come to terms with the idea that the noodle pudding or green bean casserole that you and your family adore is not very tasty. 

I get it. I feel the same way about canned cranberry sauce. It's what my mother and her mother served at Thanksgiving every year, and it's fantastic. I love it. My whole family loves it. I told my wife that I want to eat it more often.

It's delicious.  

Nostalgically delicious. But that's okay. It doesn't make me like it any less, and on Thanksgiving, there is always more than enough for me.

This thing exists.

And not in an ironic way. It's a real, earnest thing.