Soy Sauce Packets & Epiphanies: "atlantic city style" italian bread...

italian bread. one of life's simple pleasures. a loaf of good italian bread can be as good as, i don't know, sex or a porterhouse steak. ok, maybe not sex, but it could come in a close second under the right circumstances. in north jersey italian bread was always one of those things that you had to be to the bakery 'in time' for. once the day's loaves were gone you were shit-outta-luck; off to the shop-rite to pick up a loaf of, and i use this term loosely, bread. in complete contrast, in south jersey, it doesn't matter what time you get to the bakery, the bread sucks. it could still be warm, fresh out of the oven and it tastes like hell. i realized this soon after i moved here, but yesterday i finally realized why it sucks. i went to the store yesterday for a loaf of 'italian bread.' i squeeze the loaves to check for the crust and consistency of the center. shit, shit, shit, shit, and so on. every one, shit. i finally find one with some type of crust. i open the bag and inside is, not even joking here, pizza dough stretched into the shape of a baguette. first problem, baguette is french. second problem, if i wanted pizza crust, i'd buy a damn pizza. it was the exact texture of overcooked pizza crust. no thanks. as i'm putting the loaf back in the basket i see on the label it says proudly: "ATLANTIC CITY STYLE ITALIAN LOAF." garbage. this is when i realized that if the area's prideful baked good tastes like hell, and it's their specialty, of course they are not going to know how to make "new york style" well. i've had better new york style bread in wyoming!!! i've had better new york style bread in culinary school, and that was made by some pimple-faced, virgin, freshman 'pastry arts' student...

TO RETURN:

the story behind ssp&e:

so i'm not sure if you're anything like me, but being the 'off the cuff cuisine' chef that i am, i try not to let anything go to waste. you know, when you bring home some bk or mickey d's, and after consuming your poor excuse for food, have ketchup packets or sauce shots left over that you throw in the door and forget about. same goes for chinese food, and you know they always give you enough sauce to put out a fire at the pentagon with your order. you throw them in your refrigerator door and forget about them. then one day you're trying to impress some last minute guests that have decided to stay at your place for dinner and all you have in your 'gourmet' kitchen are some ramen noodles, frozen veggies and some leftover grilled chicken from last weekend's cookout. the makings of a superb, on-the-fly stirfry. but wait, OH SHIT!, how are you going to make a sauce for your stirfry with no sauce? you look in the fridge and all you see is a bottle of ketchup, french's mustard (i use the term mustard loosely when describing french's), and a jar of pickle juice. oh no, what to do, what to do. then you bust open the butter holder, that invariably has never seen a stick of butter in it's life, and VOILA! soy sauce, duck sauce, hot mustard! packets, but instant chinkychow sauce nonetheless! each one of those packets, collected over time, came from a meal, inevitably eaten over conversation, an argument or during a lone lunch of self-reflection, came from a time and place in the past. as are our lessons learned. we learn through the years how to cope, how to inspire, how to teach, and how to live. we don't always remember those lessons, as we throw condiment packets in the fridge we throw life-lessons into the back of our heads, until one day we find ourself in a situation where it becomes relevant and we pull them from the back of our minds as to not waste the advice and lessons of the past. the moral of this story, and the linking of it to my blog- our life experiences are our 'soy sauce packets,' our hidden links to our experiences of our past...

e·piph·a·ny - noun - a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. [www.dictionary.com]

the epiphanies that we experience in life, questions or situations that we find ourselves in, and don't know how to resolve, can most often be solved my raking our brains in search of a 'soy sauce packet.' an answer to a question. a solution to a problem. and so this, this blog, is simply an ever-expanding culmination of soy sauce packets in my butter box, and the epiphanies that have helped to make room for more butter in my fridge...

Soy Sauce Packets & Epiphanies

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"atlantic city style" italian bread...

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

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