Cheesy Dreams

It's an old wives' tale that eating cheese gives you nightmares. I've actually never heard of this, until I came across a study by the British Cheese Board in 2005 that looked into it.

They found that eating cheese before bed actually helps with getting a good night’s sleep (it's the tryptophan). The best finding, though, is that different cheeses cause different types of dreams. For example:

• Stilton, a blue cheese, not surprising perhaps, resulted in really vivid and weird dreams, though not necessarily bad dreams, for 75% of men and 85% of women who ate it. How weird? Talking soft toys, a vegetarian crocodile upset because it could not eat children, dinner party guests being traded for camels, soldiers fighting with each other with kittens instead of guns and a party in a lunatic asylum.

• Brie caused women tended to experience nice dreams, such as Jamie Oliver cooking dinner in their kitchens, or sunny beaches, but men had obscure dreams, such as driving against a battleship, or having a drunken conversation with a dog.

• Cheddar-eating participants tended to dream of celebrities.
  

Now this is a study just crying out for verification and reproducibility. Time for some nighttime snacks!

Krab People!

Times being what they are, the time had come to pass up on the crab, and to try out krab.

I know I've had krab, or imitation crab, before. I must have - it's often used in California rolls or in crab dips and the like. But it's not something I really remember tasting.

Crab, on the other hand, I've tasted - and love. When my parents bought crab, it was fresh - so fresh that if you dropped it you'd have to chase it to get it back.

Foodgoat doesn't quite that fresh, and I'm not even sure we can really get that level of crabbiness here in Cleveland. But we do often buy excellent, freshly made crabcakes from the West Side Market and the occasional can of crabmeat.

Alas, that can can come in at upwards of $25 a pound. Imitation crab, we noticed, rang up at $11. Would it be worth it? It was time to find out.

Imitation crab is actually made from fish - specifically, surimi, which white fish meat that is ground into a paste and becomes gelatinous and rubbery when cooked. Usually that fish is Alaskan or walleye pollack, a very mild tasting, plentiful fish (it's certified as a sustainable fish, so you can eat it with confidence that you're not draining the oceans of life). Surimi has been made for over 800 years in Japan (it's also used to make fish balls and other types of processed fish products), but imitation crab meat was introduced in the United States in the early 1980s.

To turn surimi paste into something crab-like in texture, they add starch (usually wheat or tapioca, for firmness), sugar (for preservation), and egg whites and vegetable oil (for cohesion and shininess). To give it a crab-like flavor, they add both natural (from actual crabs) or artificial (from New Jersey) flavorings. Add a little food coloring to give it a crab-like pinkishness, and all the ingredients are in.

This paste is formed into smooth sheets, which are then cut into strands that are rolled into a rope, and steamed cooked - and in the end, it looks a lot like crab (and, some say, like string cheese).

We initially got the krab for California rolls, but ended up making a crab salad instead. Texture-wise, it was awfully rubbery, rather than meaty. Taste-wise, well, I really wouldn't mistake it for real crab in blind taste test.

However, it wasn't bad - - it was mild and vaguely crabby and generally inoffensive. It just wasn't really much like crab.

But, imitation crab is quite popular and lot of people genuinely like it. I think I would be more enthusiastic about it if it didn't pretend to be crab. If we just called it fish fillets or ground pollock or something, I feel like it could stand pretty well on its own. Obviously, it does all right in California rolls, mixed with avocado and rice and wasabi. It would probably do excellently in a creamy seafood dip or a mixed seafood cassarole.

But as a straight up crab substitute? In recipes in which crab is central to the flavor? Not so much. In recipes where the crab is central to the texture (like crab cakes or crab salad)? Really not so much.

Sick and Tired, of Being Sick and Tasteless

It's no fun being sick. Especially when it's a sickness that hits Foodgoat, then takes me down, then gets Foodgoat for a second go round. And a sickness that wipes you out, and keeps us in bed, delirious and coughing, for days, and one that continues to linger on annoyingly for weeks.

But, even worse, being sick means having losing your sense of taste and your appetite. When your great comfort and enjoyment in life comes in food, it's depressing to find that nothing tastes good and nothing even sounds tasty. As a result, we haven't managed to make a good, interesting meal in weeks.

Instead, the only things we have had the energy or inclination to eat are Cheerios or bagels with cream cheese. One day we managed miso soup. Oh, and lots and lots of hot tea with honey. Indeed, we've gone through more honey in two weeks than we have in two years. Everything else, though, just tastes like cardboard. Which is really very sad.

Nothing Says Love Like Bacon

For Valentine's Day, Foodgoat and I shared an intimate meal ... over burgers and fries from Wendy's. After all, what could be more romantic than matching Baconators?

The Wendy's Baconator, introduced last June, consists of six strips of bacon on top two quarter pound beef patties with two slices of American cheese, mayo and ketchup.

Besides having the most awesome burger name ever, the Baconator is actually really tasty. Wendy's burgers tend to be among the better of the fast food choices, but the Baconator stands out as being particularly yummy. The key, I think, is the bacon: the hickory smoked bacon is slightly sweet and quite flavorful and crisp. It's an aptly named product. And it's huge - much bigger than I could finish off. Or would want to: the Baconator comes in at (gulp!) 830 calories.

But every once in a while, Foodgoat and I look into each other's eyes ... and decide what we really want is a Baconator.

Super Taco Tuesday

It doesn't look pretty, and it can an agonizingly long time to digest. That was today's taco dinner, as well as the waiting for Super Tuesday results to come in. Hopefully the primaries will end leaving as good a taste in my mouth as the tacos did.

Foodgoat has managed to perfect his taco construction technique: blue corn hard shell tacos held inside a soft tortilla with a layer of warm refried beans. You get the crunch and the flavor of the blue corn hard shell, without the danger of structural collapse. Some ground beef (flavored with taco seasoning), some cheese, some salsa, and of course a dollop of sour cream, and you can face a night of primary returns fortified.

Tacos never look very big, but they are incredibly filling. Foodgoat doesn't know if it's the tacos or Hillary Clinton causing the indigestion. Maybe it's both.