The Origins of Coleslaw

German immigrant Henrik Kohl arrived in the United States in 1864, settling in southern New Jersey. He and his seven sons were moderately successful farmers expanding their total acreage over the next decade. Mostly they grew cabbage that they shipped to markets in Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore. In the post civil war boom, commodities like vegetables proved quite profitable.

In the economic collapse of 1873, known later as the Panic of 1873, the Kohls along with many other farmers faced personal economic collapse. The Kohls had plenty of cabbage to sell, but few buyers had money to buy food. In an effort to delineate the Kohl family vegetables from the competition, Henrik Kohl had the novel idea of preparing the cabbage for consumption before selling the vegetable; he shredded his cabbages adding vinegar and oil, marketing the mixture as Kohl's Salad. Due to Henrik's thick accent, Kohl's Salad quickly came to be known as Kohl's Slaw.

As word of Kohl's Slaw spread, the name was Americanized translating Kohl to the Anglican "Cole." Cole's Slaw soon became coleslaw, as regional dialects dropped the apostrophe, and further south, the cabbage salad became simply slaw.

In the northern cities, Italian immigrants began adding Radicchio, a leafy red vegetable developed in 1860, and Dutch immigrants in New York began adding carrot shavings.

For more on the origins of Coleslaw, see this explanation.

Tea

I've always been into tea. When I was nine or ten I insisted on having a tea party, though this was more about being an Anglophile and wanting to have fancy chocolates and cucumber sandwiches than the tea. And for a while in high school, tea was the drink of choice. But by college, I hardened into a full fledged coffee addict and the whole tea thing sort of went away.

I think part of the problem in college was that the tea, like the meat, in the dinning hall was shit. I gave up both after a few weeks. Further adding to this was the coffee house culture prevalent in college. It was easy to sit and have three or for cups of coffee-- free refills-- but drinking tea meant buying another tea bag. Even once I moved off campus, drinking tea had a number of obstacles, namely, the kitchen. Shared between seven guys, the kitchen was never exactly in the sort of condition that would pass a health inspection, which really meant making tea was completely out of the question.

I rediscovered tea a few years ago after graduating from college. Don't get me wrong, I was and still am a coffee addict. If I could inject coffee, I probably would. But once I was into a somewhat cleaner post-college living situation, the idea of boiling a kettle of water for tea was a whole lot more reasonable. I bought a kettle and tea pot. I stocked up on Earl Grey and a Twinnings mixed pack that had Prince of Whales, English and Irish Breakfast, and Lady Grey.

Growing up, my mother, being something of an old hippie, stocked a whole collection of Celestial Seasonings herbal teas in all sorts of various flavors. For a long while, that's all I thought tea was. Then I discovered Earl Grey and there was no going back. I've gone through all sorts of phases, adding honey or lemon or sugar or milk or drinking it black. But at the end of the day, Earl Grey is really my tea of choice. Then came the green tea.

I started mixing things up a bit with a cup of green tea every about a year ago. Green tea is somewhat lighter in flavor and certainly lacks the floral bouquet that comes with a cup of Earl Grey. It is also, if you believe the mythology that some marketing executive came up with, healthy and rejuvenating. There is also the legend that the finest green tea was once picked by virgins wearing silk gloves and snipping with gold scissors. Which myth is motivating me? Anyway, I drink the Tazo gourmet green tea or an Asian brand with packaging covered in Chinese characters, and it was good. But then along came White Tea.

I picked up a package of white tea the other day. White tea is a lot like Green tea, though a little bit lighter and not quite as dry. Coincidentally, I also recently discovered that the office water cooler dispenses hot water at the perfect temperature for brewing bag tea. Bag tea should not be brewed in boiling water, but rather a few degrees below boiling to avoid bitter flavors.

Before my discovery that the hot water tap actually works, I had been drinking tea strictly at home, usually in the evening. Now though, I start the day with a cup of coffee, or two, and continue with tea throughout the day. Then at home for the evening, I'll have another round of tea or alternately, an espresso.

Though not a substitute for a proper cup of coffee, tea has earned its place on my table. And my desk. And anywhere else I can find warm water and teabag.

Lemon Chicken

For lunch we had leftovers from last nights dinner: Lemon Chicken with angel hair and ceci peas.

Lemon Chicken
Two chicken breasts
Garlic
Two lemons
1 can Ceci peas
1/4 stick butter
Salt, Pepper, Parsley, dill
We started with two cloves of garlic, finely diced and threw that in with some melted butter. We wanted to add chicken broth but forgot that we were out. So instead we poured in the ceci peas including their juices, and then added a can of water. We seasoned with parsley, dill, salt and pepper.

We zested two lemons and added their juice to the pot. Then added two large chicken breasts and let simmer for about 30-40 minutes. We had some left over angel hair, which we added in the last five minutes to reheat. We served the chicken with a dolup of riccotta cheese alongside the angel hair with lemon sauce and ceci peas.

Steamed Brocoli
Brocoli
Garlic

Meanwhile, we chopped two more cloves of garlic to steam with the brocoli along with some olive oil and salt. Steam to desired tenderness.

Yellow Squash
Yellow Squash
Onion
We sauted the onion with a little olive oil for about 10 minutes, or until the onion was clear. Then we added yellow squash with a pinch of salt and pepper, covered for about 20 minutes.

Cooking Alone

Our better half was walking in New York last night during a corporate walkfornoreason-athon. So we set out to make some dinner and lunches. First there was turkey meatballs.

1lb ground turkey
a few mushrooms
garlic
half an onion
bread crumbs
1 egg
chicken stock

Diced up some garlic, the onion, and mushrooms. Dumped in the meat, and mixed it up. Added salt, pepper, basil. Mixed again adding bread crumbs. Added the egg. Mixed again until the mixture was even. Formed gumball size meat spheres. That sounds dirty, yes. Then the meatballs were coated with a final layer of breadcrumsbs so they would stick.

On medium heat, filled a large sauce pan with oil and pat of butter. Just after the butter melted, placed neatly the meat spheres in the pan and covered for about ten minutes, or until the bottom of the meat spheres begin to get crispy. Then flipped them over and added a half can of chicken stock, covered again. Took the lid off, added another small pat of butter and topped with some extra bread crumbs; should have used panko bread crumbs to top, and should have baked for about 5 minutes to crisp them, but did not.

1 can ceci peas
1 can kidney beans
1 can navy beans
1 potatoe
1/2lb Ditilini pasta
handfull of grape tamatos
garlic
half of onion
a few mushrooms
chicken stock

The potatoe, onion, garlic, and oil simmered in a large stock pot for a few minutes until the onion began getting clear. Added sliced grape tomatos and large slices of mushrooms, covered for another five minutes. Then added the three cans of beans including juices, left covered for another 5 minutes. Then added can and a half of chicken stock and pasta, covered until it came to a slow boil. Uncovered and let cook until pasta was ready.

Served with a meat sphere and parmesean cheese. Ate alone. Packed the rest up for lunches.

A Taste of London

Last night we met up with some folks at A Salt and Battery, a Fish and Chips place. We were at first expecting something fancy and boutiquey. We were pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't. And we thought there was going to be a line, since we were going to a place with a fun name and fancy logo and the kind of food we dream about: Deep Fried. It wasn't that busy.

But it was everything we wanted and more. We had Fried Cod and Chips and a Pint of new Castle, in a bottle. But if we wanted there was also Bangers and Mash and beans on Toast. As Rachel Ray would say, Yum-O. Coincidentally, the original A Salt and Battery was on FoodTV at some point, we just don't remember when or where.

Finally, if all that imported food wasn't enough, all the folks behind the counter had accents. If they were real, which maybe they were, maybe they weren't, they had us fooled.

Annyhow, we can't wait to go back.

First Supper

Tonight we prepared the first dinner in the new apartment.

Chicken:

Marinate thin sliced boneless, skinless chicken for an hour in Orange Juice, garlic, pepper and salt.

Heat on mediam burner a pan with splash of olive oil. Cook for three minutes on each side or until done.


Orzo With Mixed Vegetables:




Slice portobello mushrooms. Toss into a low heat pan with splash of olive oil, salt, garlic, and pepper. Cover. Toss in finely chopped onions.

Boil chicken or vegetable broth in a seperate pot. Add orzo when the water broth comes to a boil.

Slice grape tomatos in half. Add to mushrooms and heat for an additional two minutes. Turn off heat or risk soggy tomatos.

Combine orzo and vegetables. When cooled, add slices of mozzerrella or your favorite cheese.

The Lasts: Fat Moon

Last night we enjoyed what may be our last Fat Moon, and what might also conclude our series of Last Things To Do In New Brunswick. The Fat Moon is like many of the Fat Sandwhiches served up at Rutgers University's Grease Trucks: a long roll filled with the sorts of greasy goodies one might order at a diner.

Fat sandwhiches have existed at Rutgers since the early 1990s. The Grease Trucks that serve them originally were literally trucks that drove around selling greasy food. Later they found a permanent home in a Rutger's Parking lot just off the College Avenue campus. Two years ago, the health department attempted to close the trucks citing numerous violations that required the "obvious" tag. Instead, the Grease truck venders erected an even larger truck, including a bathroom for employees-- the main concern of the health department.

The Fat Cat is perhaps the most popular of the fat sandwhiches including cheesburgers and french fries. Yes, french fries, on the sandwhich. The most famous fat sandwhich may very well be the Fat Darrell. The Darrell made some headlines last year when Maxim rated it The Best in the country.

We once favored the Fat Darrell because it included chicken fingers rather than cheeseburgers. The Fat Moon later became our favorite because it is essentially a Darell with eggs and bacon, minus the marinara sauce.

Legend holds that the Grease Truck owners will rename a sandwich after a patron who can consume four of a kind in one sitting. Of course, you still have to buy all four sandwhiches. And as far as we know, no one has ever accomplished such a feat.

The grease trucks though are not the only places that sell Fat Sandwhiches. Most of the local pizzarias also offer them. Nothing beats a sandwhich right from a grease truck, either because often you are drunk while eating it or because the Pizzaria's use ingrediants that are far too fresh to truly capture the essence of a fat sandwhich.

We once actually assembled our own fat sandwhich as several roommates from 135 Easton Ave looked on in horror. It was amazing. And we were sober, too.

Other incarnations include The Fat Koko and The Fat Bitch, which feminists from Rutger's Douglass College have frequently taken to protesting against.

Secrets Revealed: Fat Moon

Chicken fingers
Mozzarella sticks
French fries
Egg
Bacon
Mayo
Lettuce
Tomato

The Lasts: 34 Prosper

Last night we had a last slice of Pizza City pizza, and strolled around the corner to take a look at 135 Easton and 34 prosper. Outside we saw engineering Lauren and Jackie. Since Lauren still lives there with engineers, we were given a tour.

Things have changed. The whole house is decorated much like our own room: messy with a hint of odor. But all in all, it was good times.

The best 34 prosper: Shawn being bitten by Jackie.

Even better: Rachel getting upset because someone cooked cheese and meet on her George Foreman Grill.

The Best: Gin and juice in the snow.

Recent Reading

Over the weekend, a quick stop at the Strand yielded a treastured find: I'm Just Here For the Food: Cooking by Alton Brown. Alton is my favorite FoodTV personality; his exciting and fun cooking show Good Eats never fails to entertain.

Anyway, the book reads just like his show. That is to say, its fun reading and easy to learn about cooking while offering tons of tidbits I can't get enough of. Like the fact that salt is the most mentioned food in the bible. But don't be fooled, there is tons of other actually useful stuff too. The whole book is about heat and its application to food, so there is some real science there.

Meanwhile though, I haven't been able to stop reading, except for occasional "work" and "shower" [books after all, don't hold up in water].

But now I want to finish reading it and get the other books Alton has on Baking and Kitchen Gear.

Relevant:
AltonBrown.com

Oscar Dinner, Lunch Today.

Last night I made Bake Macoroni and Cheese based on Alton Brown's Good Eats. It was amazing. I also stuffed chicken with some vegetables: Asparagus, red bell pepper, yellow squash, green beans, and carrots. Also, Ricotta and Brie were stuff in the breasts before going in the oven for 45 minutes. Mandee made sweet potatoes. It was delicious.

Fun With Food

Last week we went out and bought Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking [Apparently, there are Two Volumes]. We don't have plans to do anything crazy like cooking all 536 recipes in a single year [this blog was once credited with being "hip" for blogging. We all know blogging is for dorks. So is cooking].

In either case, today we were messing around on Alton Brown's website; he's the host of Good Eats, one of the best Food Network shows. In either case, besides exploring things like The Bad Bug Book, the CDC's explanation of food born illness, we also came across the Gallery of Regrettable Food. Its a book. It chronicles the mistakes of food making in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

If you don't want to buy the book, there are a few samples on the website. Our Favorites:

Peas and Gellatin
White Bread Party Loaf
Weird Star Trek Meatballs


And finally, in what is entirely unrelated, while searching for the Julia Child blog, we came across Blog Of Death. So it has nothing to do with food, but it needed to be mentioned anyway.

Chopsticks Are Fun

We spent our formative years unable to use chopsticks. It never seemed to be much of a problem since we didn't really like take-out chinese food, [and even if we had liked chinese take-out, we probably would not have been allowed to eat it].

By the time college rolled around, we had found Asian Porn fascinating. About the same time, our college roomate was dating a Korean girl. Suddenly the need to learn to use chopsticks became apparent: if we were ever going to date an Asian girl, we'd need to know.

As luck would have it, the College student center had a cheap Chinese food counter. We learned over the course of a semester to wield our chopsticks over bowls of General Tso's chicken. We became addicted. Soon we were having the General over to eat several times a day. [Combined with drinking cheap beer, you can imagine what our bowels thought of all this].

We've never dated an Asian girl, but we feel secure enough in our use of chopsticks that we could if we had to. And as it turns out, the propensity of our coworkers ordering Sushi has engaged our skills almost daily.

All thats left for us is to use our chopsticks to Snatch a Housefly.

Once, We Ate Tofu. Again, We Do.

Our mother was a former flower child turned yuppie and so when we were five, we were fed Tofu, bean sprouts, and other all natural alternatives.

Years later, when we were a disgruntled teen, we refused to eat things like Tofu and bean sprouts. This was about the time when the ban on commercial television was unilaterally lifted in the household. We were told, "You used to eat Tofu".

As a child, cold cearal was banned with exceptions made for Cheerios and Corn Flakes. This is why we're better than you.

About the time we were eating Tofu and Cheerios, we had amassed a large collection of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars [We Prefer Matchbox]. Then, it was easy to Christmas shop for us; another Matchox car please.

But anyway, we'd take our cars and line them up in giant traffic james extending from one end of the room to another. Inevitably, we'd have our emergency vehicles race to the scene of a terrible traffic accident.

Of course, now we sit in traffic james. And we eat Tofu and Of course, now we can't stop consuming the latest marshmellow filled movie tie-in. "Shreks" are delicious.

Naan

We're obsessed with Naan, the Indian flat bread. So we decided we should finda recipe, which we did at Barnes and Noble. But we neither copied the recpie nor but the bought expecting to find a similar recipe online. We bought the ingrediants, and went home to foodtv.com.

Unfortunately, none of the recipes were particularly similar. Certain people we cook for accidentally put baking powder instead of baking soda into the mixture. In fairness, the recipe we found at Barnes and Noble called for both.

In either case, when cooking up our faux Naan, instead of getting light and puffy, we got essentially, a flat bread biscuit. It wasn't so bad, but would have been better with jam and butter than as a compliment to our meal. Oh well.

Food of Tomorrow

Jones Soda, that liquid candy we think is actually too sweet, has surpassed even themselves. Last year they had Turkey and Gravy soda that sold out. Now they have A Whole Thanksgiving Feast.

We're a little disturbed by the idea of Turkey & Gravy flavored soda, and are more than skeptical about drinking Green Been Caserole.

But we think we're beginning to see a trend: liquid food. Besides the thanksgiving flavored food, everytime we eat fast food, we're bombarded with a new dipping flavor for our chicken. Wendy's has five. McDonalds at least as many. This isn't just the standard Honey Mustard or Sweet & Sour sauce either. We think soon our society's entire culinary pallette will devolve into sauce and liquid.

While this trend might be something we would be excited about if we were say 87 and had no teeth [or if we were from Kentucky], we are not particularly thrilled by the prospect now.

What's next?

Martha Stewart's Guide to Making Everyday Food into Juice

Ice Cream and Bananas

Gas isn't the only thing costing more. Apparently, icecream is skyrocketing up too. But what I find interesting is that the article cites that the average person eats 26 servings of ice cream a year. In a seperate article a week ago, I read that Americans eat on average 87 bananas a year.

Guess why I don't fit this pattern?

Boston Tea Party

Tonight I was hoping to enjoy fresh baked atlantic cod from Boston Market. I sampled the delicious fish last Friday and felt that today would be another perfect dinner. Unfortunately, the manager had other plans.

Apparently, the Atlantic Cod is a "special" and absolutely must come served with New potatoes and String beans. I instead wanted macaroni with cheese and creamed spinach. The reasons are obvious; boston market macaroni with cheese is amazingly cheesy and creamed spinach is a pretend healthy alternative to mashed potatoes. On the other hand, boston market new potatoes are slimey, dripping in nasty oil. The string beans are not fresh, and often hard or soggy, but never crisp. (And this evening, the green beans were cold; another patron asked the manager to reheat her green beans since they had already gone cold).

So in either case, I order the Atlantic Cod with Macaronia and Spinach. The manager says I can't have that since the speacial comes with new potatoes and green beans. I ask if I can get the fish without any sides and order my two small indivual sides-- this is apparently an impossibilty. When I ask to substitute the macaroni and spinach for the new patotoes and green beans, this too seems equally impossible. I leave and eat at McDonalds.

I'm not sure what offends me more: I am a reguarly customer who spends 15 - 30 dollars a week at this particular boston market or the fact that McDonalds seems more willing to compromise about the food selection than the pricier alternative (ask for no pickles, thats what you get. Don't want fries with that? No problem!)

Anyway, I am presently so incensed that I've decided to write a letter to Boston Market Corporate.