japaneseicecream.blogspot.com

Mmm, seafood ice cream.

​You probably ate a lot of food this Fourth of July. We're not judging. We did the same thing. But while you were gorging yourself on hot dogs and that questionably warm potato salad, we made a dessert that's sort of nutritious, but more important, guaranteed to make the youngest members at the next family barbecue squeal. Plus, it'll freak out our crazy aunt.

One of the Observer advertising reps came over to the dark side of the editorial department last week with a batch of homemade ice cream for us to sample, but we were a little nervous when he told us the flavor: Peach and calamari.

Even though squid ice cream is a big thing in Japan, we're not big fans of combining sea creatures and desserts, but we tasted it and actually agreed it was pretty good. Some of us agreed the calamari could have been saltier, but the overall taste was good. If you added a dash of salt before throwing the mixture in an ice cream maker, that would punch up the salt-to-sugar ratio. The rep shared the recipe with us, so learn how to make peach and calamari ice cream after the jump.

More >>

​Kids are back in school, which means their summer diet of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and Mountain Dew is giving way to ... black bean burgers and hummus? What the what? In our day, school lunches were composed of compressed mystery meat, gubment cheese and sugar. We'd have laughed the lunch lady right out of the cafeteria if she'd offered us a "Crafty Chicken Salad Wrap" or "Fresh Fruit." The only use we had for "crafty" was figuring out how to buy nothing but chips and Little Debbies without the lunch lady insisting we eat some meat, and fruit came from a can, the way God and the superintendent intended.

But not everything has changed: An unofficial poll of the two kids who live in our house reveals that with but a few exceptions, the cafeteria food is "disgusting." The difference, though, is the exceptions. Hamburgers and nachos are the only halfway-edible entrées, they say. Quite a switcheroo from our day, when nachos were middling and the school's idea of a hamburger was like something off You Can't Do That On Television.

With that, we present our Top Five and Bottom Five School Cafeteria Lunches From The Good Ol' Days.

Top Five

5. Pancakes, eggs and sausage. It was a rare treat when the school menu offered "Breakfast For Lunch." And it was incredible how much syrup those pancakes could absorb. The meal proved educational, too: Through an accidental discovery on these flimsy Styrofoam plates, we first learned how much better breakfast sausage tastes with maple-flavored syrup.

More >>

Mikal Beth Hughey

Carbonating water with the SodaStream machine.

 We hear lots of things in this office, such as last week's notice of a "New and Fun Drink Idea:" the SodaStream home soda maker.

Well, while the idea of making soda at home was new to me, it's not exactly a new idea to the world, sez Wikipedia (sorry--breaking our rules for the sake of a quote): the forerunner of the modern SodaStream, the "Apparatus for aerating liquids" (doesn't quite roll off the tongue like "SodaStream," does it?), was created in 1903 in London. The product was popular in the U.K. in the 1970s and '80s.

Sadly, Soda-Club (which now owns the SodaStream name) dropped the "Get busy with the fizzy" slogan. Anyway, calling it "new" might be a stretch. But as for it being a fun idea? That I can't argue with.

The Kids Eat crew, a couple of their friends and a few parents gathered recently for an impromptu soda party. After the jump, our thoughts on the root beer, lemon-lime and ginger ale--as well as the results of an ill-fated experiment in carbonating orange juice.

More >>

Chapp's Hamburger Cafe (Arlington location)
2596 E. Arkansas
817-460-2097

Maybe it's because we were all half-starved by the time we had dinner, but Chapp's provided the best meal that Iris (11), Lyle (7) and I enjoyed all week.

Kinda sad, really. Iris had just finished a soccer game--which always seem to be scheduled right at meal time--and was begging for Sonic, where she could get a foot-long coney, one of her favorite meals. But from the field, a run to America's Drive Through would have entailed going the wrong way down a one-way access road.

I've got no problem taking the occasional traffic risk when hunger demands it, but Sonic's greasy burgers are hardly even worthy of a left turn, let alone something for which I could be ticketed.

Fortunately, Chapp's also offers a chili-cheese dog.

More >>

The last time the Kids Eat tasting crew sampled organic, natural, healthy snacks, they were not impressed. So I didn't have high hopes for Lifeway's ProBugs, a line of fruit-flavored organic whole-milk kefir drinks. Kefir, by the way, is a fermented milk beverage that is catching on as a health-food trend because it contains "probiotics," strains of bacteria that are supposedly beneficial to the digestive and immune systems.

Rather than gloss over the fact that these drinks contain bacterial "bugs," Lifeway's marketing embraces it, hoping to hook kids with gross-out flavor names like "Orange Creamy Crawler," Sublime Slime Lime" and "Goo Berry Pie"--while simultaneously appealing to health-conscious parents.

Pretty clever.

With regular Kids Eat taster Iris out of town, three friends stepped up to help Lyle (7) try out the drinks: Eva (10), Emma (10) and Jiri (7). Turns out those bugs are pretty darned tasty: all three sampled flavors were a unanimous hit. They also liked the packaging...and even managed not to spill any when tearing the things open.
More >>

Jesse Hughey

"Purple Funk," one of four Funky Monkey varieties.

Available at Whole Foods since early last year, Funky Monkey Dried Fruit Snacks combine the crunch of potato chips with (most of) the nutrition of fresh fruit. Even better, three of the company's four varieties (Bananamon, Purple Funk and Jivealime) have been certified organic according to Natural Organic Program standards; the fourth variety, Carnaval Mix, is made with organic banana and pineapple along with non-qualifying ingredients.

So the freeze-dried fruit snacks would seem to be healthy, at least compared to most of the other prepackaged snacks kids love. The real question, then, is whether kids will eat them.

According to a recent City of Ate taste test, that depends on the variety--and the kid. Iris (11) and Lyle (7) sampled all four Funky Monkey flavors. I did too, and found them all quite tasty, particularly the banana varieties. But what I think doesn't matter. Their impressions:

More >>

Jesse Hughey

Of all the fast-food chicken places in my neighborhood, Popeyes is by far my favorite. Williams Chicken is OK. I used to work at a KFC and have pretty much had my fill for this lifetime while Church's makes me question the existence of God.

Problem is, my daughter isn't a fan, and my wife is not too keen on greasy fast food in the first place, so occasions to eat it are rare. But last night Lyle (7) and I picked up a to-go sack for dinner. Lyle opted for the kids meal with four chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes and a 16-oz. strawberry Fanta, which was $3.49 plus tax.

Now, it seems like fast food places get a lot of blame for the obesity epidemic in America, serving up empty calories and oversized portions. As far as empty calories, well, I'm no nutritionist, but I suspect the chicken at least offers some protein. Anyway, that's why we have chewable vitamins, right?

But in the case of Lyle's meal, the problem was undersized rather than oversized. And worst of all, no biscuit with the kids meal Come on, Popeyes, "biscuits" is right in your freaking name. What's with the stinginess?

Yet Lyle had a different complaint.

More >>

I didn't take a picture of our NY Pizza deliveryman, but can tell you that he looked pretty much like the opposite of this person.

NY Pizza
3917 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., #103
972-298-4700

Promised delivery time: 40 minutes
Actual delivery time: 37 minutes

Ease of telecommunication: 20
No delivery charge: 10
Not being Pizza Hut: 10
Steaming-hot pizza and cold-enough soda: 10
No parmesan or red-pepper packets offered--despite overly generous $5 tip from my wife who, because of her own food-service job [part-time, at that!], feels obliged to give outlandish gratuities no matter how undeserved: -10
Driver old enough to prompt this dilemma: -3
Delivering to our neighborhood at all: 20

Total score: 57
(Fails to reach--or even approach withing spitting distance of--top ten)

Top Ten

See complete 2009 standings here

Don't get me wrong. I love Oak Cliff. But when it comes to delivery, my part of town leaves a lot to be desired. Some nights, morally weakened by hunger and fatigue, I catch myself harboring lustful fantasies about what it would be like to live somewhere else.

More >>

If the potential for boredom and awkward conversation make you dread the family togetherness that comes with the holidays, allow me to make a suggestion: Farkle.

Basically, Farkle is a game in which you roll six dice and gain points for 1s, 5s and various number combinations. The winner is the first to 10,000 or, in shortened versions, 5000. You can read rules and game variations at the Wikipedia entry. But the Wikipedia entry leaves out the most crucial element of the game: the loser penalty.

Whoever scores the fewest points must endure a predetermined penalty, which may range from mildly humiliating to absolutely revolting.

Perhaps because we always play the game before or after meals, my family tends to use food as a form of punishment. Last weekend at my mother's house, the penalty would be to drink a shot glass filled with whatever vile combination of ingredients the four non-losers chose. It was a 5000-point game, thus: Death Shot 5000.

I'll spare you the play-by-play. Let's just say that my 11-year-old daughter's conservative strategy did not pay off. Iris would be drinking a generous splash of brine from a jar of Mediterranean olives, a spoonful of mashed beets, a spoonful of horseradish to cut through the briny mash, and a dollop of cold pork gravy, courtesy of Iris' loving grandmother.

Now, Iris makes Mikey look like Andrew Zimmern. The odds? She would spew across the kitchen. But...

More >>

Metro Diner 2316 W. Davis St., Dallas

The Metro Diner in Oak Cliff is the epitome of no-frills, greasy-spoon dining: short-order fare, the waitresses call you "Hon" and you'd be hard-pressed to spend more than $10 on a meal. I knew I was right at home when my daughter asked about the vegetable soup, and the first ingredient the waitress mentioned was ground beef.

But whether I liked it is of little consequence. The opinions that count are those of 11-year-old Iris and 6-year-old Lyle.

More >>