Kansas City Food Blog

Milk Men - A Mad Men Parody
If you yearn to know what it was like back when cold bottles arrived on doorsteps every morning, Milk Men provides a peek inside the routes of the men and women who delivered the dairy.

The trailer -- a clever parody of AMC's Mad Men, which just wrapped up its third season -- covers the intrigue and excitement of door-to-door milk deliveries set in the turbulent and trendy 1960s. The parody is the work of Sidecar Comedy, a sketch and improv group from Brooklyn, New York, whose members are Justin Tyler, Alden Ford and Matt Fisher. 

Milk Men is enjoyable on several levels, not the least of which is watching people in suits down milk like it's fine scotch going out of style. But the true joy likes in watching the Don Draper/Milk Man character wax poetically about what he is trying to sell you:

"I don't want to sell you milk. You pour it on your cereal and then it's gone. This ... this is ... breakfast in bed. It's hot cocoa after an evening spent ice skating. This didn't fall from the udders of a cow, it sprang from the imagination of a child. This isn't milk ... it's ... it's innocence."

Watch it -- it will help you get through this morning.

​The world of pranks has come to jelly beans with Bean Boozled Jelly Beans -- the latest product from the Jelly Belly Candy Company.

It's a clever repackaging of the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans -- a licensed Harry Potter candy that featured ear wax, vomit and bacon flavors. (The bacon was kind of tasty in an artificially bacon sort of way.) But with Harry Potter leaving movie theaters shortly and the books having ceased publication in 2007, Jelly Belly needed to find a use for its collection of nasty flavors.

Booger is still included, thank goodness, in the customizable tins that pair two identically colored but very differently flavored jelly beans (such as black jelly beans that taste like either skunk spray or licorice). In case you were getting tired of barf or baby-wipes flavors, you can enjoy centipede and canned dog food in the second edition.

It's about time the prank candy market was updated. We've been dealing with gum that turns your mouth black, blue or red since my childhood. Or the hard candy that once the outer coating dissolves is suddenly a fish-flavored lozenge. And dirty-worded fortune cookies should have been retired long ago.  

Now we can have the sophisticated joy of the bait-and-switch and watch our loved ones suffer through pencil shavings and moldy cheese flavors. But this kind of humor comes with a steep price -- a half-ounce customized tin is $3.49. 

[Image via Flickr: goobimama]

​It was a wicker basket, roughly the size of a birthday sheet cake. The bags of bulk candy were placed next to it, awaiting the traditional layout to maximize space and presentation -- an effort to be neither appreciated nor acknowledged by the first group of trick-or-treaters who would tear my efforts asunder in their desire to get to the Snickers faster.

I'm talking about the candy bowl of my youth -- the basket that seemed to appear just before Halloween -- taken from a cupboard where it rested in preparation for the biggest night of the year.

It is not necessarily a fancy bowl. In many cases, it's simply the largest one you have. But the act of filling it and giving away the contents to your neighbors elevates that bowl's status. If candy has a hope chest, this is it.

Union Station celebrates the art of chocolate

​Everyone loves chocolate -- right? That's what the management of Kansas City's Union Station is counting on as it opens Chocolate The Exhibition (the show and the tour were developed by Chicago's Field Museum), a family-friendly educational experience that runs today through January 3 and will lure, hopefully, plenty of ticket-buying tourists through the holiday season. Union Station needs all the successful attractions it can get.

The exhibition is a multi-sensory experience and features the aroma of chocolate wafting through the air in various settings. A variety of tastings are scheduled through the run, including chocolate and wine pairings and chocolate and vodka tastings.

Union Station is also seeking chocolate-loving volunteers to serve as greeters, ticket-takers and exhibition attendants.  

(Image via Flickr:(c)pacificist)

 

 

If you weren't scared of the California Raisins long ago, this might do the trick. Here's a face-painting homage to the ubiquitous mascots of the 1980s. It will take a moment to figure out what's face, what's background and what's a shirtless man. Repeat watching may be necessary.  

 

Strawberry Cream ... a nice pie, if you can find one

​

Yes, Monday, September 28 is National Strawberry Cream Pie Day. There are lots of places in town to find cheesecake with strawberry sauce (including Winstead's) or baked berry pies, but strawberry cream pie? I feel fairly confident that the Village Inn Family Restaurant in Mission -- that great cream pie palace -- would have it.

Otherwise, I'd love to know where else in town I might be able to get one -- today!

(Image via Flickr: tracer.ca) 

​It's nice to know you're not alone when it comes to the irrational fear of waking up next to The King -- the ever-smiling mascot for Burger King.

In the recent blog post "Creepy Kings," Kansas City Star/Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski gets at the heart of why The King's mirth is so anxiety-inducing:

The reason you don't want to go to bed before him is because he will be in your eerily darkened room when you are mostly naked and he will blow an airhorn in the middle of the night or team up with someone to dump feathers on your head while he blows a leaf blower at you. And then the King will laugh and laugh and laugh without moving his mouth.

In essence, he is a pranking boogeyman to Posnanski -- and that sounds about right for a mascot with a frozen smile.

I was always scared of the earlier campaign that encouraged people to "wake up with The King." The deep-voiced repetition of meat and cheese to describe the Double Croissanwich while a man shared an awkward hand-contact moment with The King was simply unsettling.

But there's good news for Posnanski and others who are dreading the return of The King's Halloween masks. He might not be a marketing presence for much longer.

Burger King's Chief Marketing Officer, Russ Klein, recently announced that he was taking a leave of absence. A change of direction on the marketing and advertising side could mean a big break from The King. If the King is dethroned, perhaps we'll all sleep better at night.

​With the cupcake trend in full swing, one writer believes that all of the different iterations and new storefronts are leading to the bursting of the cupcake bubble. On Slate, Daniel Gross argues that cupcakes are a luxury item and all of the new options are reactionary, retro-fitted onto a pastry that is meant to be simple.

"Indeed, they are being pitched as affordable luxuries. In an age when discretionary, feel-good spending is at a nadir, cupcake bakeries are trying to persuade people to trade up from cheaper sugar-delivery vehicles (such as, say, a doughnut)."

He feels that most Americans are not in a mood to upgrade. Yet, America is all about affordable luxury. That's why Starbucks exists today and Walmart advertises its genuine Steak House Steaks as something you can afford without a special occasion. In a culture of individuals, we want our food purchases to make us feel unique -- and a fancy cupcake sits perfectly in that niche.

​A recent post about sodas gone by the wayside led me to the soda aisle to see what colored and flavored offshoots are surprisingly still around. Green Tea Ginger Ale is apparently still going strong in its first year -- or is on the way out: a single two-liter bottle was all that remained on the shelves of Target.

When I came across Mountain Dew Voltage, I figured I owed the drink a chance. This would be my first mistake. Introduced in 2008 as the winning flavor in a  "dewmocracy competition," the blue-hued soda is described as "Dew charged with raspberry citrus flavoring and Ginseng."

Creativeone, a user on YouTube, has a series of videos in which he tries Mountain Dew products. His experience tackling Mountain Dew Voltage should have been telling:

 "I like it, I really do...My eyes are watering...I can kinda feel it going down my throat...feels like a sizzly feeling."

​The Missouri State Fair is in full swing (the last day is August 23), but driving to Sedalia isn't on the top of your list.

So get inspired by The Kitchn's State Fair Food Week, and take that gas money and apply it towards a deep fat fryer. It's time to recreate the state fair experience in your kitchen. The beauty of the recipes below is that even when you screw up, the fat content is so high they are still likely to taste pretty good.

​We love frozen custard in Fat City and recently did a "battle of the frozen custards" using samples from the best-known national frozen custard chains: Culver's and Sheridan's. We also explained the difference between frozen custard and soft-serve.

Since today is supposed to be gruelingly hot, I'm going to make a devotional pilgrimage to one of the local frozen custard vendors for a cup of something cold and creamy.

(Image via Flickr: Red Oak Kid)

​Bookworms unite! A new Facebook group "People for a library-themed Ben & Jerry's flavor!" boasts more than 6,400 members.

Among those who want to see book-inspired ice cream flavors, the top entries so far are the "Gooey Decimal System" (dark fudge alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream), "In the Stacks" (butter pecan with fudge swirl), and "Library Loan Shark" (butter rum with little butter-flavored sharks).

The New Yorker has come up with several flavors to add to the list including: "Twilit" (pale-white lemon sorbet with red shoestring licorice and the hair of Robert Pattinson) and "Chick Lit" (fat-free peach-mango swirl with pieces of Chicklets chewing gum).

If you're feeling inspired, you can submit your flavor suggestion to Ben & Jerry's directly or request that the company resurrect a flavor from the flavor graveyard.

You'll also finally have a chance to enjoy ice cream at the library when the The Wimpy Kid Ice Cream Truck Tour rolls into the Kansas City Public Library's Waldo Branch (201 East 75th Street) on August 14. The event, which runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., features free ice cream treats to promote cartoonist Jeff Kinney's Diary of Wimpy Kid: Dog Days. Just tell your boss it's market research.  

​There is always some new pastry on the block attempting to dethrone cupcakes. Now, The New York Times is certain that the next best hand-held dessert is nearly as old as the tiny cakes we've been enjoying since grade school. Ever had a whoopie pie?

The standard version is two round cakes, resembling hamburger buns, around a white icing that's typically vanilla. Whoopie pies share some flavor similarities with black-and-white cookies. The icing can be tooth-achingly sweet and the cake portion can be dry and crumbly.

While believed to have originated in the South, whoopie pies have become synonymous with two East Coast regions -- Pennyslvania Dutch Country and Maine. If you want tradition, Labadie's Bakery in Lewiston, Maine, has been making the pies since 1925. 

​In the right hands, cheese can go from a humble cube to an astronaut sculpture made of cheddar. Popped Culture argues that those hands belong to sculptor Sarah Kaufmann, who has provided the centerpiece for everything from tailgates to a likeness of Miss Rodeo New Mexico.

Kaufmann is naturally from Wisconsin, where she has turned a commercial art degree and a marketing business into a promotional cheese-carving career.

Her structures are semi-permanent, provided they can be stored at the proper temperature. But a recent Kaufmann exhibit to commemorate the first moon landing met the same fate as fondue: Visitors to the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wakoponeta, Ohio, "were audibly and visibly disappointed" when they encountered the base -- all that remained after the air conditioning unit shut off automatically overnight.

In addition to cooling concerns, Kaufmann also has competition from fellow carver Troy Landwehr, who seems to relish building oversized sculptures including a 700-pound Mt. Rushmore and a 1,200-pound Statue of Liberty. Why can't guys just stick to a sensible, table-top centerpiece?

If this is the first time you've heard of anything besides butter sculptures, you're missing out on a whole world of food-based art. There are artists who work in biscuits, potato chips, melons and chocolate. Should you need something more permanent, there are always wire sculptures made to look like cheese. 

Trying to get a large group of people to decide where to have lunch is like trying to win at the Lobster claw crane game -- a Big Choice machine filled with live lobsters: You take a long time trying to figure out how to go about it but you're likely disappointed in the end.

Well, it's time to add a bit of chance to your lunch hour and please your co-workers. Introducing the Wheel of Lunch -- the best food-based wheel since the Wheel of Fish. You just enter your zip code and then virtually spin the wheel. The site combines Yahoo! review with geographic data to offer up recommendations.

The first three spins w/ the Pitch's zipcode, 64108, advised us to head to Lidia's Restaurant, Manny's of Kansas City, and Taqueria Mexico. Since it was best two-out-of-three, looks like it's Mexican today. 

Glasswear such as tumblers or martini glasses also make good holders for this dish

Danica Pollard is the pastry chef at Lidia's. She recently returned from New York, where she won over some of the biggest names in the food industry at the James Beard Awards.

Fat City asked her for a recipe that combines her love of baking with an ingredient close to her heart. Pollard delivered with strawberries, saying she absolutely loves them. "The color, taste and especially the smell remind me that it is warm and lovely outside. Every spring I wait for them, and the ideas of what I might like to make with them begin rolling around inside of my head."

She has kindly shared two recipes in one. A strawberry mint panna cotta topped with strawberry-prosecco gelee. (Though you can make either one independent of the other.) Pollard describes this dish as "light, cool and perfectly suited to eating with friends outside after a nice meal."

Strawberry Mint Panna Cotta

1 ¼ c. cream
1/3 c. whole milk
½ vanilla bean, split lengthwise, with seeds scraped and reserved
¼ oz. fresh spearmint
½ c. sugar
4 sheets of gelatin
1 ¼ c. fresh strawberry puree, strained

-- Heat the cream and milk in a small saucepan.
-- When bubbles start appearing around the edges of the pan, turn off the heat and add the vanilla bean and seeds and spearmint.
-- Let steep for 15 minutes.
-- Place sheets of gelatin in a bowl of cold water until they are very soft and flexible.
-- Lift from the bowl and squeeze out excess water.
-- Add the gelatin and sugar into the saucepan and reheat until the gelatin has dissolved.
-- Strain mixture through a sieve, and whisk in strawberry puree.
-- Divide mixture evenly among 6 champagne flutes, and carefully place in refrigerator.
-- When panna cotta has begun to set, about 2 hours, proceed with the gelee recipe.

Ben & Jerry's has become known for the names of its ice cream as much as for the ice cream itself. And to celebrate our dearly departed president, it decided to let the public name George W. Bush's ice cream.

Not really. What is true is that after Ben & Jerry's released "Yes Pecan" for Obama, every blogger worth his or her pixels tried to outdo one another by picking an ice cream for W. Somebody had the good sense to round up the names on a list.

Here, in no particular order, are my numbers two through nine favorites:

• Grape Depression
• Heck of a Job, Brownie!
• Mission Pecanplished
• Death by Chocolate ... and Torture
• Nougalar Proliferation
• George Bush Doesn't Care About Dark Chocolate
• WireTapioca
• Iraqi Road
• Cluster Fudge

And my number one choice is:

Lisa Clark is a mother of three children, including a nine-month-old. That's enough work for anyone, but Clark is also the owner/baker/main employee of Cupcake a la Mode at 1209 West 47th Street, five blocks west of the Country Club Plaza.

I asked Clark when she sleeps, and she just laughed. She soft-opened Cupcake a la Mode 20 days ago with her husband, Daniel, but the grand opening is this Saturday. In preparation, she was trying to have an espresso machine set up while taking care of her already growing customer base.

While this is Clark's first foray into a physical storefront, she spent four years operating a word-of-mouth cake business called Over the Rainbow. "I made all these different flavors, but the cupcakes that kept selling were chocolate and vanilla, so I thought, why not open up a store and feature just chocolate and vanilla?"

That translates to 16 varieties of cupcakes, eight with chocolate as a base and eight with vanilla. There's Hawaiian Honeymoon, a vanilla cupcake that Clark ices with pineapple buttercream before finishing it off with macadamia nuts and white chocolate. On the chocolate side is the After Dinner Mint, which features a white-chocolate-peppermint buttercream icing and grated semisweet chocolate. She also plans two flavors of the month, such as this month's champagne cupcake for Valentine's Day.

So far, the most difficult thing hasn't been juggling her home and work life but just trying to figure out how many cupcakes to make. "Every day is different. I'll have a couple dozen left over one day and sell out the next. Last Saturday, I baked 13 dozen expecting to give leftovers to neighbors, and by the end of the day we only had a couple left." Meanwhile, she's seen "lots of foot traffic and lots of dog walkers."

A single cupcake is $3, and a dozen is $33 (there's also a children's size for $2.25). Cupcake a la Mode is opening Tuesdays through Thursdays from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Fridays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (closed Sunday and Monday). Its phone number is 816-960-1900 and here's its Web site.

When the James Beard Foundation hosts a Valentine's Tea at the James Beard House in New York City this Sunday, the dessert offerings will include "Goo Goo Pies" created by pastry chef Jennifer Giblin (from the Blue Smoke restaurant -- a barbecue joint in Manhattan). This confection, inspired by the famous candy clusters, will be tartlets "layered with caramel, salted peanuts, cream cheese mousse, chocolate pudding and marshmallow kisses."

It sounds delicious! I'm a longtime fan of Goo Goo Clusters -- a candy that's been around since 1912; it was invented by a 19-year-old entrepreneur named Howell Campell in Nashville, Tennessee. One theory about how the candy got its name is that it was sold as a concession treat at the Grand Ol' Opry (GOO).

During the Great Depression, the slogan for Goo Goo Clusters was "a nourishing lunch for a nickel."

In this Depression, I'd love to find a nourishing lunch for a nickel. I'd go goo-goo over it.

 

Last week, Fat City reported that Food & Wine Magazine had named Elbow Chocolates' No. 6 Dark Rocks the best chocolate in the whole wide great big United States.

Christopher Elbow seemed honored, but his eyes didn't really light up until we started talking about the limited-edition Valentine's Day boxes that he created specially with his wife Jennifer.

Elbow said he started working on the box in October and that each of the 17 flavors took a week -- or weeks -- to perfect. "They're not really an aphrodisiac, but I tried to choose romantic flavors. There's passion fruit champagne, red wine... we just finished them and put them on the counter."

When Elbow makes a chocolate it's not a normal process.

For the last few years I've been saying that tiramisu -- the Italian confection of spongecake or ladyfingers dipped in coffee and marsala wine and layered with sweetened triple-cream mascarpone cheese and grated chocolate or cocoa -- has become so ubiquitious in the United States that I expected McDonald's to be serving it any day now.

That hasn't happened yet, but Archer Farms, the food-and-beverage house brand for the Minneapolis-based Target stores, has a packaged Italian-style versionon sale in the freezer cases of most area Target and Super Target stores.

The 12-ounce portion of the Archer Farms tiramisu is big enough to feed three hungry people and six people with more modest appetites. It takes a long time to defrost in the refrigerator, but it is easier to slice in a semi-frozen state. The box explains how, for an intimate dinner party, a tasteful host or hostess can cut the frozen confection "into small cubes and divide between four wine glasses. Let stand on counter for 20 to 30 minutes."

There's no wine or liqueur in this tiramisu, of course, and I wouldn't call the ladyfingers light and fluffy (or resembling anything like the photograph on the box), but the recipe is quite close to the traditional recipe -- which I've made many times and it's extremely easy to prepare from scratch. The biggest difference, of course, is that the Archer Farms dessert uses corn syrup, the low-cost staple of most processed foods, candy and soda pop in America.

It's tasty enough, but if I need a quick fix of a really first-rate tiramisu to pick up on the go, I prefer the generous individual portions sold at Avelutto's Italian Delight restaurant and grocery in Mission. It's not frozen, but tasteful hosts can still put it in wine glasses for a festive dinner party. I know because I did!

 

My parents were both children of the Depression and could remember lots of businesses closing in those troubled times. But not, my late father once told me, the places vital for American life: movie theaters and saloons, of course, and drug stores, grocery stores and bakeries. In those days, people still bought their bread from bakeries -- and their cakes, doughnuts and cookies too.

It's a different world now and no matter how fabulous a unique, family-owned bakery can be, it's hard to survive in this tough economy. Case in point: Last fall, I wrote a Fat City post  about the closing of Artisan Francais bakery in Overland Park. I mean, I knew it was closed, even though the phone message was still optimistic, announcing that the owners, Sebastiene and Briana Saint-Ouen, were on vacation. Three months later, the glass bakery cases still sit empty, the cappuccino machine is unplugged and the doors are locked, with this depressing sign: "Closed Until Further Notice."

On the other side of the metro, another sensational bake shop -- two, in fact -- served their last pastries after 11 years. The two Pastry Goddess shops -- in the Northland's Briarcliff Village and the original venue in Independence -- were shuttered in mid-December. The owners, Kathy and Doug Huddleston, left a brief farewell on the Pastry Goddess Web site. 

Not only is the economy making things hard, but the competition is getting more intense. Just across the street from Artisan Francais is the very big Whole Foods Market, which has several well-stocked pastry cases. I tasted a first-rate bear claw and a flaky croissant from the bakery department one day. Maybe not as fine as the ones made by chef Sebastiene Saint-Ouen, but pretty darn good. One of the employees explained that the cakes and pastries aren't exactly made on premises: the croissants, for example, are brought in frozen and baked off in the store and the pretty iced cakes (including the surprisingly delicious non-dairy vegan apple layer cake) are "assembled" by store employees.

It's all too bittersweet. 

-- By Charles Ferruzza

Holidays ain't the greatest time to be dieting. Still, a lot of people are hoping not to gain that five or 10 pounds over the holidays, and that involves some concessions.

Instead of giving up entire meals, most people will try to cut back on one thing or two. The foods with the most calories are alcohol and sweets. Preferably, hardcore dieters would give up them both, but you don't want to be a total calorie Grinch. So you're at the Christmas table and the wine starts flowing. Do you pass and wait for dessert or say yes to the wine and exit before dessert?

After the jump, a special Pitch-made chart and a BBC game to help you figure out the answer.

Today is National Chocolate Day! I'm a huge fan of this dessert myself, although rather than ordering them in restaurants, I prefer to bake my own (which I once did live, on-camera for KCPT-Channel 19 for some kind of cooking-segment fundraiser). I have to confess, though, that I have a secret weakness for the Brownie Fudge Sundae at Steak and Shake -- even if it does have -- gulp! -- over 43 grams of fat!

I've always wondered who invented brownies. The first known reference to them is a box of chocolate candy (named for the characters in a Palmer Cox book) sold in the 1897 Sears & Roebuck catalogue. The first recipe for the dessert was in the 1906 edition of the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook.

I've been trying to think of a restaurant that has a really great chocolate brownie on its dessert list -- and would be happy to take nominations from our Fat City friends. -- Charles Ferruzza

By OWEN MORRIS

A friendly knock on my door yesterday reminded me that it is already time for Girl Scout Cookies.

According to the Northeast Kansas/Northwest Missouri Girl Scout's Web site, Girl Scouts have been canvassing neighborhoods since the beginning of the month. Call me jaded, but I guess I didn't notice them because of all that other canvassing for a different event that's thankfully over.

Looking over the cookie varieties, I noticed one I hadn't seen: Daisy Go-Rounds are "crispy cinnamon flowers" that come in the ever-popular 100-calorie packs.

The other familiar cookies all remain, and boxes are still $3.50, with more than 70 percent of that money going directly to the Girl Scouts. If you haven't been so lucky as to receive a visit from some plucky, clipboard-carrying girls, you can still get the cookies at one of the hundreds of cookie booths the Girl Scouts are running in the area. A list of locations is here.

For the record, I am a populist and went with the Thin Mints. For a while two years ago, Costco sold its own larger-boxed, cheaper-priced version of Thin Mints, which I hoarded. Since then, though, my Costco hasn't carried boxes of the chocolate mint wafers. Did Costco feel bad competing with Girl Scouts or did the Girl Scout mafia apply some friendly heat to get them to discontinue the product? All I know is that once again the Girl Scouts have a monopoly on Thin Mints so I took no chances and ordered ten boxes.

Cookies will be on sale until November 30 with delivery shortly after the New Year.

By CHARLES FERRUZZA

I have friends who won't touch bread pudding. The idea of a dessert made from old, stale bread offends their sensibilities to the very core, even though the history of the dessert as a clever way of salvaging dried bread dates back to the 13th century.

One of the finest pastry chefs in the city, Megan Garrelts -- who co-owns Bluestem with her husband Colby -- gave me a look of distaste when I asked if she ever offered bread pudding as a dessert. "It's kind of boring," she told me. "And it's made with old, leftover bread."

And what's wrong with that?

BY OWEN MORRIS

It’s a little trick of the trade. A restaurant opens and its prices are pretty cheap. Word spreads about the new restaurant with great prices. As the clientele grows and the restaurant becomes established, the prices start coming up to normal.

Dolce Bakery, 6974 Mission Road, has been open several months now. But even though its customer base seems to grow by the day, its prices have remained low. Creme Brule is $3, a big cream cheese brownie only $2, cupcakes $2.25.

Compare that to its cross-Johnson County-rival Dean and Deluca.