March, 2011
March 29th, 2011
Operation Stop Being a Fat Fuck Inspires a Musical Dedication
I’d like to dedicate the following song to 220 pounds:
Starting weight: 223
Three weeks ago: 220
Last week: 220
This week: 220
Goal (maximum): 205
Goal (ideal): 195
March 28th, 2011
Pie Day Year 1: Spring Edition
Three months ago, four friends and I headed to Hoosier Mama for Pie Day, a breakfast feast of 10 different slices of pie. It was almost certainly the best breakfast I’ve ever had. Well, until yesterday.
That wonderful morning in December, a blood pact was made at the end of the meal. The participants pledged to return to Hoosier Mama every three months to do the exact same thing. And so it was that we met at Hoosier Mama just before 10:00 yesterday morning to indulge once again.
I’d love to write a thousand poetic words on the greatness of the pie at Hoosier Mama, but that’s beyond my skill set. Basically, the pies are like the pies everyone has eaten elsewhere, only significantly better. The flavors are stronger, more balanced, and born of better ingredients than pretty much every pie around.
Baseball stat geeks have come up with a bunch of new ways to measure performance in recent years. One of those stats is VORP, which means Value Over Replacement Player. VORP quantifies the number of runs a particular player contributes beyond what a league average replacement player at the same position would give a team. While eating at Hoosier Mama, I was thinking about a way to rank different best foods in Chicago when the concept of VORP hit me. There may be other foods in Chicago that I would rather eat, but there is no category of food in which the difference between best and second best is close to as large as the gap between Hoosier Mama and whatever place makes the second best pies in town.
Apple Pear Cranberry
Buttermilk
Espresso Cream
Ginger Custard
Maple Pecan
Passionfruit Meringue
Pear and Fig
I still can’t get over how great these pies were. Two of them were repeats from last time – Maple Pecan and Pear Apple Cranberry. They’re both too good not to include. Passionfruit Meringue has long been my favorite pie at Hoosier Mama, but I don’t know if that’s true anymore. That’s not to say that it was not a magnificent slice of pie, because it most certainly was. It’s just that the other slices are so freaking delicious that I don’t know if I can pick a favorite. The other cream pie, the Espresso Cream, made with coffee from Metropolis, is just exceptional. Because I am an excellent wordsmith, I will tell you it explodes with coffee flavor. Lesser writers would just tell you it’s full of coffee flavor.
The remaining three pies were not only new to me at Hoosier Mama; they were pies I never imagined existed. The buttermilk pie was a simple custardy pie made with buttermilk. Conversation at the table focused on how amazing it was that the pie featured what is normally an overpowering flavor and kept it subtle while still standing up to the much more full-flavored pies we ate with it. It was a culinary marvel similar to the Vinegar Chess pie we had on our last visit. Carrying on in that theme was the Ginger Custard pie which married a gentle ginger aftertaste with Hoosier Mama’s always amazing custard.
My favorite pie of the day, partly earning the title since it was just so different, was the pear and fig pie. New to Hooser Mama less than two months ago and only available when shipments of fresh fig are available, this pie was loaded with large pieces of fresh figs.
Now, you might have noticed that only 7 pies have been discussed so far. This time, we decided to mix things up a little bit and get some savory pies, selecting all three that were available on Sunday.
Mushroom Gruyere Quiche
Quiche Luann
Chicken Pot Pie
The first quiche is mushroom and gruyere and the second is Quiche Luann (bacon, onion and cheddar). The day I get excited about quiche is probably never going to come, but the mushroom and gruyere was easily the best quiche I’ve ever eaten. Now, there’s really not much competition for that title, but the strength of the gruyere was really amazing.
The chicken pot pie, on the other hand, was truly astonishing. The flavors were remarkably balanced and the ingredients were top notch. But it was the crust, which could possibly have more butter than flour in it, that absolutely blew me away. The various crusts on all the fruit pies I’ve had at Hoosier Mama have been uniformly awesome, but for me the filling is what makes the pies. On the chicken pot pie, as good as the filling was (and it was fantastic), the crust stole the show.
So apparently it is not exactly normal for a group of people to come in and get 10 slices of pie at Hoosier Mama. Our enthusiasm was rewarded with a gift of four hand pies (two were eaten before I remembered to snap a picture). There were two kinds, sweet potato and lamb. The latter, shown cut in half, was really delicious. It had well-seasoned ground lamb and some kind of fruit (we think apricot). And, of course, the crust was sensational.
Pie Day Year 1: Spring Edition was an overwhelming success. It was the best breakfast I have ever eaten, a title I expect it to hold for three months when our little group returns for Pie Day Year 1: Summer Edition AKA Berry Time.
