Wonder why chocolate from a company called Noka is so expensive? Curious about what you get for your money? This detailed and devastating examination of Noka chocolates on DallasFood.org -- in ten parts, all very worth reading -- will answer both of those questions.

Must find some Bonnat chocolate now.

The soup of my youth.

M. Proust had his madeleines; I have mushroom barley soup. I'm not sure why, though. It's not something my mother ever made -- I'm the only one in my family who likes barley. I don't remember having mushroom barley soup until I was in college. I had a steaming bowlful at a kosher deli on a blustery New England winter afternoon and discovered there was pretty much nothing more cozy, culinarily speaking. Mushroom barley soup is the gustatory equivalent of a cable-knit cashmere sweater with matching scarf, hat, and mittens, and the prospect of removing them all next to the fireplace in the very near future. As I said: cozy.

I've been trying for years to duplicate the mushroom barley soup I used to order at the Second Avenue Deli in New York. I couldn't fall back on family recipes because, as previously noted, I didn't have any. The recipe in the Second Ave. Deli cookbook fell dramatically short because it was based on chicken rather than beef (I suspect they did that on purpose to keep addicts like me coming back to the restaurant for the One True Soup). I always intended to show up and beg, plead, even wheedle the secret out of the owners, but earlier this year, the Second Avenue Deli shut down. I cried when I heard the news, I really did. And I kept looking.

Tonight I tried a recipe I found at random on Google. It seemed right. It was right. I halved the recipe because my large stockpot was already in use, but I still have enough soup to last me another couple of days, assuming I don't eat it all tonight, which I might because it's REALLY GOOD. Proust would understand.

Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.

Okay, so it's been a while. I've been eating, of course; I just haven't said much about it. I've been getting my food-opinion ya-yas out at Yelp. But tonight I was doing a little bit of shopping and it struck me how uncommon my neighborhood is, foodwise.

See, I live in a predominantly Asian neighborhood. As one of my Chinese friends explained to me, many folks of Asian descent have severe lactose intolerance. And so it is that I can find five-spice tofu in a refrigerated vacuum pack by wandering around the corner, but I have to trudge five blocks to get a quart of milk.

I like it, really.

Hole-in-the-wall bliss.

This afternoon I discovered the wonder that is the New Orleans-style iced coffee at Blue Bottle Coffee Roasters: coffee brewed with chicory, served light and sweet over ice. I was skeptical, especially when I saw that it was $3.50. "This had better be the best damn iced coffee I've ever had," I told the friend I was with.

It was.

I did not want to stop drinking it, ever. I wanted to move into the coffee shop, which is not so much a shop as a space tucked behind a garage door in the front part of a workshop that makes bent plywood furniture. I wanted to sleep under the counter so I could be sure to have the delicious New Orleans-style iced coffee first thing every morning. It was strong delicious crack and it made me happy and no, I'm not twitching now, why do you ask?

On having the blues.

I didn't get to eat blueberries very often when I was a kid. I have some vague ideas about why -- blueberries aren't exactly native to where I grew up, and they might have been a little pricey for my parents, who were trying to raise three kids on what I knew even then was not a lot of money. Then again, I do not come from a family with much gustatory zest. In the Midwestern suburbs of the '70s where I grew up, the only cheese we ever saw came in plastic-wrapped slices, a little sprinkling of oregano in the spaghetti sauce was about as spicy as things ever got, and the lone Chinese restaurant nearby was exotic and strange. Fruit was Red Delicious apples, navel oranges, and fruit cocktail from a can. And so it was that I came to consider blueberries a rare treat, something special to eat slowly, one at a time.

Today I went to the farmer's market, where I bought a pint of organic blueberries that had reached that perfect point between tart and sweet. I just now scooped a handful out of a bowl and ate them in a single mouthful. I know it's easy to take things for granted when they become more common, but I am grateful to be able to eat blueberries with abandon. I don't take that for granted at all. I'm loving every bite.

Mmmmm. Crispy.

Tried a new snackish food today: SnaPea Crisps. They're odd. Pea pods, with peas inside, coated with what I think is rice flour and baked into crunchiness. They come out sort of puffy and crispy at once, like a cheesy poof. Peasy poof? Anyway, they're pretty tasty, but I don't see them taking over from the classic potato chip any time soon.

Speaking of potato chips, I am reliably informed that you can get pickle-flavored chips in London. The Brits do have a lovely exotic way with what they call "crisps." Every schoolchild in England likes a nice "crisp butty," which is not an uncomfortable pair of pants, but a bunch of potato chips mashed into a sandwich between two halves of a buttered roll. When I was last in London, I saw and ate potato chips in flavors like curry, cheese and onion, even shrimp cocktail. I am in favor of exotic flavor! But a potato that tastes like a pickle? That's just wrong.

A new culinary challenge

Frustrating food news: I just found out my cholesterol is high. Not call-the-doctor high, but higher than it should be for a woman my age and size. I suspect it's because of all the bacon, soft cheese, and fried chicken I love so much. So for the near future, at any rate, my gustatory experimentation will have to involve (shudder, wince, sob) eating a bit more healthily than I have been lately.

Did you know 73% dark chocolate has no cholesterol?

Anyway. I had a few friends over last night, and I'm pretty pleased with what I chose to serve them. I needed to meet these parameters:

1. Accommodate a couple of folks' food sensitivities: no tomatoes, no celery, no nuts, no beef.
2. Serve ten people who will not all be arriving at the same time -- in other words, something that can be served at any point, rather than needing to be plated and eaten at a precise point of doneness.
3. Be reasonably "healthy" without leaving my guests feeling that I'm forcing them to observe a diet.

I ended up starting with a recipe for Moroccan vegetables and improvising on it considerably. What I ended up with was a stew of chicken, onions, chickpeas, carrots, sweet potatoes, and corn, heavily spiced with garlic, cinnamon, ginger, cumin, red pepper, black pepper, and clove. I served it over couscous and let people doctor it with mild harissa to their own heat tolerance level. (I can easily find mild harissa in the tube -- I got mine at the Ferry Building -- but I'm still looking for the hot stuff and will probably have to order it online.)

Tasty, healthy, lacking all offending items -- it was a hit, and I had a tiny bit left over, which I ate this morning for breakfast, since like most stews, it was better the second day.

The creative home chef, or, adventures in Lazy But Hungry

My sincerest apologies for not saying much lately. It's not that I haven't been eating. I have, of course, several times a day. It's just that nothing I've eaten has seemed worth mentioning. See "the road to hell, paving of."

My food-loving pals and I have a concept we call "Lazy But Hungry," or LBH for short. It refers to the things you eat when you want something tasty, but don't have the time, the energy, or the ambition to make a big effort. For me, that sometimes means making a quick run around the corner to King of Thai Noodle House for the #16 (flat steamed rice noodles with squid, fish cake, ground shrimp, whole shrimp, and fake crab in delicious gravy -- highly recommended). Sometimes it means tossing a big bowl of pasta with garlic, olive oil, and red pepper flakes. And sometimes it just means "hmmm, what do I have in the house?" Tonight fell into the latter category. I didn't mind cooking, I didn't even mind improvising, as long as it didn't mean having to give it a lot of thought.

I started by defrosting the last 1-cup container of chicken stock from my last bout of stock-making, mostly because I wanted the container for the next batch of stock, which I plan to make this weekend. To that, I added a pot of white beans I cooked yesterday on the assumption that I'd figure out something to do with them later, though I didn't know what that would be at the time. They were soon joined by a can of diced chopped tomatoes, a couple of minced cloves of garlic, one small onion chopped up fine, some thyme and sage (note to self: you're almost out of sage), and a hot Italian chicken sausage sliced into thin rounds. I stirred the lot of it together in a 2-quart casserole and stuck it in the oven at 425F. After 15 minutes, I topped it with two slices of 12-grain bread cut into cubes and tossed with olive oil and salt and pepper and put it back in the oven for 15 more minutes until the bread was all crispy and golden.

Et voila: faux cassoulet. Or should I call it "half-assoulet"?

It's not an experience, it's a meal

Friday's New York Times included an article about how it's no longer enough for food writers to wax rhapsodic over a genuinely delicious meal. No, writes William Grimes, that's too pedestrian. Today's reader, weaned on a steady diet of extreme sports and reality TV, wants food writers who dare to eat dangerously -- trying an ethnic delicacy that could prove fatal, for example, or downing as many hot wings as possible in 30 minutes. As Grimes puts it, "Cheap airplane travel, mass tourism and television, not to mention a horde of scribbling journalists, have shrunk the globe and placed absurd demands on anyone trying to deliver an exotic experience to readers. When everyone, either in person or through the Food Network, has sampled street food in Hanoi, what's left?"

The thing is, he's right. We've all been tricked into thinking that eating has to be a "dining experience," and that our experiences aren't authentic unless they risk, if not life and limb, at least nausea and cold sweats. Heaven knows I've been sucked into it -- hell, I started this blog with the idea of using it to inspire myself to eat more adventurously, and I'm far from what you might call a picky eater. It's embarrassing to realize that I've gotten sucked once more into the zeitgeist, fallen prey to the sad notion that a challenge is more worthy than a pleasure.

And so I will note for the record that on Sunday I ate a tiny chocolate-dipped pastry puff filled with zabaglione (custard flavored with marsala wine), nibbling it to make the "experience" last rather than succumbing to the temptation to pop it all in my mouth at once, and that it was not a challenge at all. It was simply a creamy, flaky, sweet, sensual pleasure.

What happens in Vegas stays on my ass

Last weekend I was in Las Vegas for my sister's wedding. No, it wasn't in a drive-through chapel. It was in a lovely outdoor garden at Caesar's Palace, the bride wore the requisite big white poofy dress, I carried a bouquet of lavender roses with my black chiffon cocktail dress, and the groom started crying halfway through the ceremony, which was just about the sweetest thing in the world. But enough about that; let's talk food.

Like everything else in Lost Wages, the food there is laughably excessive yet not what you'd call challenging. At various points in the weekend, my diet included:

• smoked salmon on rye bread with creamy dill sauce
• scrambled eggs and corned beef hash
• a Bloody Mary with two olives and a stalk of celery
• a Bloody Mary with no olives and no celery but a giant wedge of lime
• an enormous scoop of chicken salad with celery, walnuts, apples, and grapes
  
• seaweed salad
• a scary amount of boiled shrimp
• pasta salad with white beans
  
• a vegetarian egg roll
• manicotti stuffed with spinach and ricotta
  
• grilled filet mignon
• grilled antipasto
• orange juice near which a bottle of vodka may or may not have been waved
• cheesecake with a bit of chocolate sauce drizzled over the top
  
• the cutest little cannoli you ever did see, with eensy weensy chocolate chips on top (okay, okay, I had two -- what can I say, they were so small, one barely seemed to count)
  
• a stunning wedding cake that was both vanilla and chocolate in cunning stripes, with raspberry filling

Most of it was delicious. None of it was especially adventurous, other than in volume. All together, I ate more in three days than I ordinarily eat in an entire week. I came home feeling a little uncomfortable, both literally and metaphorically. I seriously considered subsisting on rice and miso soup for the rest of the week, but I rethought that plan once I realized it didn't allow for coffee.

Artichokes and anchovies

Many people are intimidated by artichokes. I sort of understand it, in the same way that I sort of understand being intimidated by lobster: "You want me to eat what? Just look at it! That's not edible!" But just like the succulent lobster, the artichoke rewards the brave and patient. Peel away the spiny leaves and scrape the undersides with your teeth. Then bite off the bottoms of the tender inner leaves. Then slice off the fuzzy "choke." Only after all that can you gobble down the heart -- or, better yet, nibble at it. You don't eat an artichoke in a hurry.

You can, however, prepare one in a hurry, should you so desire, and why on earth wouldn't you? Get your nice big globe artichoke. Whack the stem off flush with the base. Cut the top inch off, too. Turn it upside down on a square of plastic wrap (or cling film, if you're a Brit), swaddle it tightly like a squirmy baby, and upend it on the seam so it stays wrapped. Put it on a plate and pop it in the microwave for 6 or 7 minutes, depending on how big it is and how powerful your microwave is. Let it sit for another minute, unwrap it, and start plucking off those tasty leaves. Watch out for the prickly bits!

And speaking of prickly things: Anchovies used to be on my list of things I avoided. No, they weren't on the short list of gag-inducing foods, but...tiny salty fish with seemingly more bone than flesh? Why bother? Then I discovered pasta puttanesca, for which the anchovy is a necessary component. You still won't find me putting them on my pizza, just because I feel strongly that fish and pizza don't mix. You don't put tuna on your pizza, do you? Do you? Well, maybe if you're in Japan, you do. They put just about anything on crust in Japan and call it a pizza. They put mayo and sunny-side-up eggs on pizza there, and dear lord, I cannot think of anything more repulsive than that.

But with tomatoes and olives and capers and red pepper flakes and oregano and lots of olive oil and garlic, anchovies are a fine, fine thing. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go make some penne.

Fish got livers!

Today's adventure: ankimo, or in English, monkfish liver.

Okay, it wasn't an adventure to me. I've eaten it many times. It is one of the first things I look for on the menu at a sushi bar, and if it's not on the menu, I ask the chef if it's available. Basically, it's fishy paté, steamed until it's a little firmer than chicken liver paté and comes apart in chunks instead of crumbling. It generally arrives in little round pieces, about the size and color of a slice of hot dog, and it tends to be on a bed of shaved daikon.

Today's was topped with a little dollop of grated daikon infused with chili so hot it made my eyes water and little bits of minced green onion. It was perfectly fresh, rich, and creamy. I was tempted to get a second order, and now I'm sorry I didn't.

Later, I had two macarons -- hazelnut (sadly, not as nutty as I'd like) and chocolate-mandarine (the orange and dark chocolate in excellent balance). Macarons are not adventuresome; they're just sublime.

Crispy, green, and irresistible

My original plan was to blog only about things that took actual courage to eat, but I can't be expected to seek out chocolate-covered insects and lightly grilled organ meats every day. So I may choose on some days to ramble about some food item I think is odd. Today is one of those days, and the food item in question is guacamole tortilla chips.

Now, I am a big fan of avocados in all their delicious buttery forms. At its best, combining the creamy green goodness of avocado with the proper bite of a good salsa and a shiver of lime, guacamole is sublime. And a corn chip, in addition to being satisfyingly salty and crispy on its own, is the perfect delivery vehicle for a big dollop of guac. But I cannot figure out how they get the avocado into the chip. I'm sure it involves a giant vat of multi-vegetable slurry, and that is something I prefer not to think too much about.

Nonetheless, I bought a bag yesterday from Trader Joe's, which I can rely on to meet many of my "hmmm, never tried that before" needs, and dug in, and: crackity crack crack crack. These things are dangerous. They aren't perfect; they need real guacamole on top. But I munched my way through half the bag in what I can only call a snack food fugue in about 15 minutes. Beware the guacamole chip! Beware!

a little less conversation, a little more action

Some time in the last few weeks, I found myself having a serious conversation about calf's liver. I saw it on a menu, made some comment to the friend I was with that amounted to blech, liver, and...well, I'm told it's quite good if it's prepared properly, but clearly, I've never experienced it properly prepared.

Anyway, that's where the idea for this blog came from. I am not a gourmet or any kind of food professional; I'm just a woman who likes food -- cooking it, and more importantly, eating it. I'm pretty much omnivorous. I'll try just about anything once, and if it doesn't trigger my gag reflex, I'll probably try it again. And I'll tell you about it.

For reference, these are some things that trigger my gag reflex:

• Runny egg yolks. You can keep your poached, sunny side up, soft-boiled, what have you. I call that raw, and while raw is nice for sushi, it is not so nice for eggs.
  
• Uni. Looks like snot, smells like the beach at low tide, tastes like snot on the beach at low tide. Also, has a mouthfeel not unlike library paste.
  
• Mayonnaise. If it's in potato salad or lightly spread on toast for a BLT, I'm fine with it. Otherwise, it's (shudder) raw egg yolks, and I already told you how I felt about those.
• Calf's liver, maybe. Just the thought of it kind of does me in. But I will bravely try it. Because I care. Or is that because I can?
  

This is not a comprehensive list. It's just meant to give you some idea of what to expect.