More on Shopping and a Sincere Apology

Yesterday, I drove to Philadelphia to meet The Diva and her Significant Other for a Vietnamese meal in Chinatown. On the way, I made a pit stop at the Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting, which according to the market's website is - at a mere 45 miles away - the closest of their stores to my humble abode.

This was only my second visit ever to this temple of organic eating, my first being back in November when I quickly ducked into its sister establishment in Fort Lee, NJ during my Mitsuwa pilgrimage. Readers may recall that some of my most successful gluten-freedom ingredients and products were serendipitously purchased during this brief foray, including Dowd and Rogers chestnut flour and lemon cake mix and King Arthur Gluten-Free Multi-Purpose Flour, the only flour I will now use for general baking.

There were a few things listed in my shopping app for which I was on the prowl. Since my last WFs visit, I have become passionately devoted to organic russet potatoes and cauliflower, which are not always available locally.

In addition, I had been hearing a lot buzz on the web and elsewhere about Bionaturae pasta, an Italian gluten-free product that is supposedly beyond excellent. That, too, is unavailable nearby. I have not eaten pasta in weeks and weeks, as the only varieties to which I have access are not worthy of the name. I was briefly encouraged by a locally-available brand of corn spaghetti until a batch literally disintegrated and disappeared down the drain one evening when I accidentally tipped the colander into the sink. It was heartbreaking and I swore never again. But I am a sucker for the shilling that goes on in Bon Appetit magazine, so I was determined to give the Italian stuff a try. What do the Canadians know about pasta, anyway?

I presented myself at Whole Foods at 2:30 pm sharp, iPhone and recycled shopping bags in hand, and didn't get out of there until an hour later. Sadly, the Plymouth Meeting branch doesn't carry Dowd and Rogers products (shame! shame!) but there were many other riches to console me:

Two kinds of Bionaturae pasta (rigatoni and spaghetti); King Arthur Flour g/f chocolate cake mix (which I just know will be awesome); a new variety of spice cake mix; sweet biscuits from Glutino, makers of the best g/f crackers of all time; and two beautiful jars of fancy-schmancy preserves for corn-bread* adornment. I am also the proud new owner of several bags of organic vegetables and tubers, which should keep us going for weeks.

I now have the material for several days' worth of trial and experimentation and will be reporting my findings in due course. Who knows? This time next week, I just might be eating pasta again.

*
Fractured Amy apologizes for an egregious typographical error in her cornbread recipe. The blooper was discovered this morning, after a disastrous episode involving a hungry family anticipating Sunday breakfast; two newly-opened jars of sour cherry jam and bitter orange marmalade; and an over-leavened pan of burnt cornbread that proved inedible to man and beast. A hasty check of the recipe revealed that tablespoons rather than teaspoons of baking powder and soda were mistakenly specified in the relevant posting. This inaccuracy has now been rectified.

Fractured Amy's only defense is that the procedure was published on January 1st, when a girl is never at her best. She humbly apologizes to any readers inconvenienced by the lingering effects of her New Year's Eve revelries and assures one and all that she has now Learned Her Lesson.

Salmagundi

Item One
Profiteroles were in the news this past weekend, with three out of five contestants on the Next Iron Chef opting to make a croquembouche for their chocolate-inspired wedding-worthy dessert. I watched the ensuing fiasco with not a little satisfaction, knowing that my own gluten-free boules are at least as attractive as - and possibly texturally superior to - those produced by Chefs Tsai, Canora, and Caswell (definitely more attractive than Chef Canora's, which looked like demoralized and deflated golf balls when they came out of the oven). This is the second time I have been ahead of the curve, the first being when I outpaced Chef Dumont in my knowledge of xanthan gum and its wily ways. I have decided the Chairman could save himself a great deal of time and aggravation by halting his search and crowning me the next Iron Chef without further ado - it would be a doubly appropriate choice, given the fact that I spend much of my working day surrounded by great hulking piles of metal.

Item Two
Sir has been summoned to Tokyo once again, leaving the Kid Squid and me languishing at home, raking leaves and plowing through algebra homework. As a penalty for his desertion, I am requiring that he present himself at the Ginza branch of Laduree in order to purchase some macarons as my consolation prize. I have already visited the website to choose the flavors I shall require in my Boite Prestige: jasmine mango; bergamot; rose; pistachio; black currant violet; chestnut; and lemon cedrat should do nicely for a start. I will not stand in need of licorice, coconut, or mint, which is bound to make Sir's life easier. I did not know previously that Laduree lay claim to the invention of the macaron, which they attribute to one Pierre Desfontaines, cousin of the Great Man Himself. I was also unaware that they age their macarons for two days before presenting them for sale, as this holding period is deemed necessary for a 'perfect balance of texture and flavour'. This spells disaster for Toad and me, as we will this weekend be obliged to eat at least some of ours - for quality control purposes - immediately upon fabrication.

Item Three
At long last, I have been able to make my semi-annual pilgrimage to Mitsuwa, where I stocked up on a wide variety of gluten-free pantry staples, including five bags of good sushi rice, three different varieties of naturally-brewed shoyu (which I have decided is gluten-free); two kinds of organic tamari; sesame oil, mirin, rice vinegar, and lots of other goodies. I always make it a point to buy something I've never tried before, and on this visit it was a packet of goma dofu, a tofu-like substance made from white sesame seeds, water, and kuzu (or kudzu).

My Mitsuwa haul: the goma dofu is the
upright white packet in the middle

I had some for lunch today. It tasted like a very gelatinous peanut-butter pudding, and the sticky sweet miso helpfully provided as an accompaniment only served to heighten its strangeness. I was just getting ready to declare it not worth the calories when I discovered I'd eaten the whole thing. Such is often the way with Japanese delicacies, I find. They grow on you.

During subsequent research, I ascertained that goma dofu has a long and noble history and is, in fact, an artifact of Shojin Ryori, the vegan cuisine perfected by Buddhist monks. Kuzu, it turns out, is an awesome gluten-free thickener that I will be trying at the first available opportunity - although any temptation to grow it in my own garden is tempered by the warning implicit in the pea-cousin's moniker 'the foot-a-night vine' or 'the vine that ate the South'.

Item Four
On my way home from Mitzuwa (keeping an eagle-eye out for some Real Housewives - alas, they must all have been getting manicures in Paterson that day), I made a short detour to the Fort Lee, NJ branch of Whole Foods. As difficult as it may be for readers to believe, I had never before stepped into one of these organic warehouse giants, as none has yet been built within forty-five miles of my domicile. I thought I would see if they had any brands of gluten-free baking flour I might try, and possibly some g/f soba, which was conspicuouslyy absent from Mitsuwa's shelves. What riches! Two new kinds of baking mix, plus bags of buckwheat flour and sweet chestnut flour (I predict that galettes de Bretagne and crepes aux marrons are in our future). Also, I saw several different types of boxed cake preparations that I thought looked intriguing.

Readers have been telling me to stop pounding my head against the wall and go ahead and invest in some box mixes already. Hitherto, my response has been, 'If I didn't use cakes from a box before, why on earth would I now?'

The ingredients on the labels were suitably natural, organic and virtuous, so I chose two - lemon and chocolate/cayenne - for trial. I also bought a box of g/f pie crust mix, since Thanksgiving is coming and there's only so much a girl can do, right?  I will report back on these gluten-free labor-savers in due course.

Oh - and Whole Foods had the soba I was looking for, too.