And So It Goes

Adventures in Mobile Pastry

I dropped by Yodobashi Camera (the big electronics retailer with the really annoying jingle) in Shinjuku today to pick up some stuff, and passed through the South Exit of Shinjuku Station on the way home. At the top of the staircase down to the Yamanote Line platform I spotted a big advert for Doughnut Plant NYC, the Japanese branch of the New York City doughnut shop. It seemed oddly out of place and out of scale to me, covering the entire wall alongside the top of the staircase (with the eye-catching slogan "GO NATURAL WITH FRIEND"). 

It was when I passed the staircase that I figured out why: the sign was actually the back wall of a recently opened shop inside the station: a branch of The Doughnut Plant. Man, that business is expanding rapidly here in Japan -- and selling more than doughnuts. This store was selling cake doughnuts as well as the traditional kind, not to mention bagels, salads, and t-shirts.

Of course, it's really a franchise of the original store in New York, not a branch or extension, so it looks like they're doing things in their own way -- Japanese -- way: on offer at this store was the NEW YEAR "和" CAKE DOUGHNUT BOX - a pack of four different kinds of doughnuts: Triple Valhrona chocolate, green tea, yuzu, and kinako flavors (yuzu is a tart citrus fruit native to Asia and kinako is sweet toasted soybean flour often sprinkled on confections).

The biggest sign of this being a Japanese business were the display cases for the non-doughnut products: one refrigerator was labeled: 

PLANT SALAD & PLANT FOOD

After wondering, briefly, how there could be non-plant salads and anyways what was this place doing selling nursery supplies, the light dawned when I looked at the sign over the t-shirt rack, PLANT STORE. Ah, "Doughnut PLANT" --> "PLANT Salads", "PLANT Food", and "PLANT Store". Shows a less-than-certain grasp of idiomatic usage, clearly.

I bought a cinnamon bun and a frozen pizza-bagel, though I was somewhat tempted to buy one of the t-shirts, which has what looks like a Japanese-style slogan on it. I had to wonder if Doughnut Plant employees in New York City actually wear t-shirts reading:

NEVER SAY NO!
ALWAYS SAY YES!
BEST! BEST! BEST!

Honestly, I can easily envision a bunch of Japanese Doughnut Plant employees beginning the day with this chant. New York? Not so much.

UPDATE: And here's some pictures:

Vincent Schiavelli

ROME -- Vincent Schiavelli, the droopy-eyed character actor who appeared in scores of movies, including "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Ghost," died Monday at his home in Sicily. He was 57.

He died of lung cancer, said Salvatore Glorioso, mayor of Polizzi Generosa, the Sicilian village where Schiavelli resided.
        - Associate Press obituary by Marta Falconi, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Well, this is bad news. I've admired his work in countless movies (I remember Buckaroo Banzai in particular, and the "Humbug" episode of The X Files).  But it's also slightly weird, in that I was just discovering another side to the guy.

If you're reading this within a few days of my posting it, you should see to your left, in my list of books I'm reading, Vincent Schiavelli's book Many Beautiful Things: Stories and Recipes from Polizzi Generosa. I've put it aside for the moment -- actually, I left it by the bed and keep forgetting to put it in my bag when I leave for work each day -- but it's a lovely -- and hunger-inducing -- book about Schiavelli's encounter with his Sicilian roots in Polizzi Generosa, the town in Sicily where, according the obituary, he died. Which seems fitting, since his love for the town shines through in the book.

It's a pity, because Schiavelli's book made me want to visit Sicily and Polizzi Generosa, meet the people, maybe get a shave and a haircut (one of his cousins is a barber in town), visit one of the town's bakeries and try the pastries, and hey, maybe run into Vincent hanging around at the local cafe and have un caffè with him as we watch the world go by.

Sorry, Vincent.

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From the Trenches in the War on Christmas,

Courtesy of Brad DeLong, more about the real War on Christmas, the gritty details that the Mainstream Media hides from you, told in the way only Fafblog! ("The World's Only Source for Fafblog!") can tell it.

Resistance is Useless: When Memes Attack!

I blame Patrick Hayden Nielsen, actually, for this, my entry in the Meme of Four circulating around the blogosphere, since I caught it from him:

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: letter carrier, credit-union clerk English instructor, technical copy editor

Four movies you could watch over and over: Casablanca, Blade Runner, Sideways, L.A. Confidential

Four places you’ve lived: Panama City, Florida; Okinawa; Berkeley; Tokyo

Four TV shows you love to watch: Law & Order:CI; House, M.D.; Battlestar Galactica; The Amazing Race

Four places you’ve been on vacation: London, Paris, China, New York City (all within the last year-and-a-half, I might add)

Four websites you visit daily: Political Animal, Romenesko, Wikipedia, Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal

Four of your favorite foods: matzoh-ball soup, roast chicken, spaghetti with basil pesto, savory crepes

Four places you’d rather be: New York City, London, Paris, someplace warm

Gifting Myself

Well, Christmas Eve's Operation Brine Turkey Leg worked out pretty well: I roasted the leg/flank/whatever, made up a pot of mashed potatoes, and used the turkey drippings and a dash of white wine and Wondra Gravy and Sauce Flour to whip up some gravy. A few bumps, but that's to be expected: a bit too much salt in the brine, the roasting pan was too small and lightweight to handle well on the stove, and the mashed potatoes came out a bit lumpy, since I had to mash them with the only potato-mashing tool I had, a steel pasta ladle.

For Christmas itself, I decided to spend it in the traditional American way: shopping for gifts. Mostly for myself, as a way to treat myself. So I spent some time wandering the garishly lit shopping areas of Shinjuku (lots of Christmas lights strung up everywhere), and wound up buying a new Apple computer mouse (thinking buying an entire computer to go with it next year), a new Apple keyboard (the old one is acting up), a polarizing filter for my video camera, four foreign magazines at Kinokuniya Books, and, from Tokyu Hands, because they have everything, a potato masher.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! (Or Happy Hanukkah, or whatever). T'aint't no War on Christmas here in East Asia -- that photo on the right is from the window of a hospital in Wuhan, China, which I took last year during my vain attempt to escape the relentless Christmas atmosphere (shoppers, Santas, and singing of Christmas music on PAs (Tannoys, for you Brits) everywhere here in Tokyo. No luck, exactly the same, especially in Beijing. (We did spend Christmas Day 2004 on a day trip to the Buddhist Dazu Stone Carvings outside of Chongqing (formerly Chunking), a World Heritage Site that which was mercifully Santa-free.

Now pardon me, I need to go do some last-minute shopping: since Christmas isn't an official holiday in Japan, the stores are still open. The only reason I'm not at the office now is because it's Sunday, but I did get the long weekend because Friday the 23rd was the Emperor's Birthday. No Emperor's Birthday Sales or Emperor's Birthday Songs -- well, maybe the latter is true among the right-wing whackos.

Of course, if you want the REAL War on Christmas, you'll have to see Operation Kringle Kill for that.

Timing is everything

Yesterday after work, I dropped by the Hanamasa store between my office and the train station to pick up some groceries. Hanamasa is a meat wholesaler that operates retail stores -- kind of like a small-scale Costco, doing walk-in business for tiny restaurants and such -- that sells large packages of inexpensively priced food, especially meat. They usually have an odd assortment of imported food (potato chips, sauces, biscuits) and for awhile were importing stuff from Trader Joe's -- no longer, alas. They even have turkey -- Jenny-O brand (imported from the states) either frozen or pre-roasted, as well as cut-up turkey. On a whim just after Thanksgiving, I bought one of the pre-roasted ones, since my little convection oven probably wouldn't fit a even medium-sized turkey without the use of a crowbar -- not bad, but WAY oversmoked -- giving me the old-fashioned US Thanksgiving experience, complete with far too much leftovers.

In any case, last night I pondered whether to buy MORE turkey and cook it myself this time -- the turkey parts looked manageable, certainly -- dithered a bit, but decided no.

When I got to the train station, I realized that I had left my iPod on my desk, and not wanting to go the long weekend without it (today's a holiday), I trudged back, retrieved it, put it on, and started walking back to the station while listening to the podcast of "NPR's Most E-mailed Stories", specifically the interview with Ted Allen of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on tips for Christmas turkey dinners. I'm a fan of the show -- well, of the episodes I've been able to get my hands on -- and even have QESG desk calendar at the office, so I paid particular attention.

Allen's first advice was to cut up the turkey and roast/cook the different pieces separately. Hmm, good, I could do that, even with my small oven. And literally as I was passing the Hanamasa meat market again, he mentioned brining. This stopped me dead in my tracks. Allen raved about brining, brings flavor, juiciness, etc as I stood outside the store and listened.

Brining, in a nutshell, is soaking meat in salty water, which, through osmotic action, infuses the meat with water, salt, and whatever flavoring (spices, etc) you've put in the brine. Alton Brown of the TV show Good Eats raves about the technique in his book I'm Just Here for the Food, (which I have a copy of, of course). I've never tried it, but Allen's mention of (and effusive praise for) the technique suddenly brought it back to mind. So I turned right, walked back into the store, and bought a package of three turkey legs/flanks (inadvertantly following another bit of Allen advice ("Buy three legs and tell your kids it was an unusual turkey"). I brought them home, concocted a brine, more-or-less following a recipe from the Alton Brown book -- salt, orange juice, brown sugar, bay leaves, peppercorns -- and God willing and the creeks don't rise, I'll be having a roast turkey with real mashed potatoes (I also bought potatoes at Hanamasa) and gravy for Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow.

If it weren't for the fortuitous timing of hearing that podcast I'd probably be getting my Christmas turkey either from Leftover Turkey Stew or a sandwich at Subway's (yes, they have them here).

Back-logged again

Yeah, I know, I'm lazy. More back-log through October.  Let's try again.