Hungry but lazy.

I know, I know, it's been a long damn time since I posted anything here. (Believe me, it's not that I haven't been eating.) I blame it on having friends who are professional food writers. They make me feel all inadequate. But food is fun and writing is fun and I am not having enough fun with either one lately, so here I am.

Last night I had both food and fun. You can see the results right here.

Flesh for fantasy.

How much do I love New York Times food critic Frank Bruni? Only an out gay man could write a believable review of going to the Penthouse Executive Club for the steaks. (And apparently they're damn good.)

Adding a little spice.

I've mentioned before that I grew up at a time and in a place where the unadventurous palates of my family members were not unduly challenged. My mother had a cabinet full of spices, but the only ones she used regularly were cinnamon (on cinnamon toast), oregano (in spaghetti sauce, to which she added sugar), garlic powder (used very sparingly), and bay leaf (for beef stew, of course). I'm fairly certain that some of the small square tins on the spice shelf haven't been touched more than twice since her wedding day in 1965; she's not one to throw anything unused away. As a result, I grew up believing that spices were meant to be used sparingly and intended to last forever.

I grew up to be heavy-handed with garlic and basil, shockingly free with cumin and cayenne, downright promiscuous in my use of rosemary and coriander. I use more spices than my mother did, and use them up more frequently. Nonetheless, I seem to have inherited her habit of not replacing anything until I was all out -- and so I'm embarrassed to admit just how recently I realized that I too have a collection of dusty, ancient containers full of dusty, ancient spices. My whole cinnamon sticks bear the label of a brand I haven't bought in at least two years. My ground cloves have a price tag from Star Market, a supermarket chain in the city I left in 1999. My supply of marjoram? Let's just say I bought it when I was stocking my first post-college kitchen and leave it at that.

So this week, I'm throwing out any spices I didn't buy in the last 12 months and making a list of what needs to be replaced. I'm also planning to buy a spice rack to replace the mishmash of mismatched tins, jars, and baggies full of mystery spices. And in that rack will be bottles with lids I can mark with a freezer pencil, so I can date the spices inside. And things will taste the way they should. Amen.

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?