Unfortunately, one sometimes needs a math degree to make the conversions necessary to figure out just how many of my little friend Cal I’m taking in.

Microwave popcorn is one of the biggest perpetrators of these marketing machinations (It is the marketers, I am convinced, who wave their magic marketing wand over the labels to make things seem better for you than they really are, or at least pretty up the bad stuff).

My little box o’ Orville Redenbacher first notes that a serving size is 2 Tablespoons of unpopped corn. What good does this do me? I’m not going to eat the darn kernels! And if I opened the bag to see just how many of those little babies there were inside, it would ruin the entire business.

So, I move on.

The label next states that 2 Tablespoons of unpopped corn “makes about 5 cups popped.” Well, now we’re getting somewhere!

Reading further, I next note that there are about 2.5 servings per bag. OK. Now the math begins. That would be 12.5 cups popped. (Whew, maybe I am smarter than a fifth grader).

But then the label sends us right back to the freakin’ kernels. The box notes that there are 120 calories in 2 Tablespoons of the unpopped corn. Once again, I wonder: who the hell is going to eat the kernels?

Ah, but behold! Right next to that number, it informs me that there are a mere 20 calories in 1 cup of popped corn. WTF? Do they think we’ll be impressed because the popped corn is obviously so much healthier than the kernels that I would never eat in the first place (or couldn’t if I tried unless I wanted to swallow them whole like horse pills)?

By this time I’m really annoyed. For the second time I have to take out the calculator. Let’s see: 12.5 cups of popped corn per bag times 20 calories per cup of popped corn.

That’s 250 calories per bag.

Would it really have been so hard for Orville just to come right out and confess this? Right there on the box? “Yes, folks, it’s 250 calories per bag and I’m telling you this because I know you’re going to sit there and eat the entire bag yourself, not precisely divide it into 2.5 servings.”

Get real people. I want to see realistic amounts on those labels. Don’t make me get a degree before I can eat your product.

At least one source of info appreciates the consumer’s dilemma on this issue. If you’re like I am and don’t precisely measure out ingredients before you eat them and just want to know what the hell those 63 almonds you downed with your Corona are going to cost you, go to www.nutritiondata.com. They list an enormous amount of different foodstuffs and you can select from a wide variety of serving size options, many of which are going to make a hell of a lot more sense in context (though, for some reason, the popcorn is still only listed in portions of 1 ounce or 100 grams as opposed to the 1.6 and 2.9 ounce bags they are usually packaged in. Sigh. I will have to investigate this mystery further).

In the meantime, go forth and count.

Sigh. Wish I could do it all. Since I can’t, I’m going to try and tie these two endeavors together a bit, at least for today.

Writing is really the art of translation, i.e. translating one’s observations into words and then, in the case of a fiction writer, manipulating them into stories. It pays to be vigilant and I’ve recently started to record daily observations as a possible method for mining my own life for material.

What I put down in these lists has not, so far, been big, flashy sorts of observations, because whose life exists at that level all the time, after all?

No. It’s much more mundane stuff. Something as small as “florid-faced pudgy gent with tufts of reddish-gold hair on his earlobe” can make the cut. Whatever strikes me on a given day. Life’s little rations.

Over the last couple of days I have noted the following:

Small-ish man who plasters himself against the farthest wall as I walk by, making me wonder if he’s obsessive-compulsive, or if I’m just smelly.

The spotless cleanliness of the new Puerto Rican bakery I entered for the first time recently, the encased food looking like perfect replicas of food (The pastry, by the way, was excellent. I’ve recently learned that the Puerto Rican community in Springfield—where the bakery is located—is the City’s largest community).

A semi tractor-trailer truck hauling an enormous copper steeple.

The truck in front of that hauling a copper vestibule, presumably to be placed beneath the steeple somewhere.

Yet another truck hauling an enormous black cylinder full of holes, the use of which was decidedly indeterminate. I’ve seen a similar thing at work in a trash-sorting operation (as a tumbler), though.

The view from a platform eight-stories high as I watched two crane operators operate enormous versions of the prize-grabbing claws seen in amusement arcades in a very similar manner to the arcade games. These claws, however, were clutching at and moving several tons of garbage with each grab. (No, I do not spend all my time around garbage. Just some of it.)

Alas, since I’m writing a pre-industrial-revolution fantasy novel, I can’t use much of the above in that story, but perhaps it will all prove useful somewhere…..

One can dream.

Now, I immediately thought they were talking about something entirely different than…ahem…actual fruit, but no. It turns out the New York Times had a little article on a little berry that’s rocking the food world and turning Tabasco into doughnut glaze.

It hails from West Africa and is called synsepalum dulcificum. And it trips out your taste buds, or whatever it is that makes your palate perceive sour stuff. Makes it all sweet.

At $2 per berry (probably more now that NYT has gotten the word out), it will make paying for gas seem cheap-n-easy. But since we’re staying home, I note that summer is a good time to party.

Sweet.

1. Make a list and stick to it: Preparation is the key to most successful ventures and so, too, with shopping. Inventory what you really need while you’re still at home and don’t stray too far from the list once you hit the store. Sure, we all like to splurge on the occasional new-fangled chocolate bar, but limit such side trips or they’ll cost you (and more than just the calories).

2. Set a budget: Again, the money saving begins at home. Once you have inventoried what you need and made your list, take stock of your finances. This is the most important step to ensuring you stay on track once you’re in the field. If you can only spare $45 this week on groceries, you’d better know it. And you’d better enter the store armed with such knowledge to fend off any errant marketing strategies for bigger, better cinnamon buns.

3. Hit the sales: Sales (like coupons, below) can be great ways to save money, but only if you’re buying things you would buy otherwise. Beware, however. Stores tend to place sale items at eye level, which means they want you to see and buy them. Lower-priced versions of similar items likely are shelved below or above the sale items. Scan those items too, to make sure they’re not a better deal. Stores usually have flyers at their entrances, highlighting their sale items. Take a gander and see what’s on sale that fits your list.

4. Use coupons: Coupons (like sales, above) are really designed by marketers to get you to buy things you might not otherwise, usually so-called “convenience foods” that are more expensive than just purchasing their component parts and making your own lunch would be. To save money, coupons work best when you use them on items you buy all the time (and would be spending those extra cents on anyway). So, use them for those items on your list and avoid the marketing ploys.

5. Buy in bulk: Often (though not always), buying foods in bulk will prove cheaper than buying the same amounts in smaller portions. Especially for staples, this can be a good way to save some pennies. But you’ll want to comparison shop (see below) between the sizes to be sure the bulk prices really are a bargain.

6. Comparison shop: Sure, you’re thinking, “I don’t have time to hit all the competitor stores in my area, just to see who has the best price. And, besides, gas costs money too.” So true. But comparison shopping doesn’t have to be between stores, it can be in the same store. As mentioned above for sales (and as is true with coupons too), scan the shelves for similar items and compare prices between them. Is that sale or coupon item really the best deal for the money?

If you find yourself regularly shopping in a variety of stores (i.e. you’re there anyway), it may pay to keep a list of those items you buy often to compare between stores and choose to buy where it dents your budget least.

7. Don’t shop hungry: This is the most important rule for me. If I walk into the grocery store with hunger pangs, it’s all over. I might as well shred my list, my budget, and my diet plans, because I AM going to buy those full-priced ginormous sugar cookies with butter-cream frosting. Why sabotage yourself so? Eat a handful of nuts before you hop in the car. Your wallet, and your waist, will thank you.

Baba Louie’s is a little pizza bistro tucked in amongst other quaint establishments on Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. After a showing of the independent film “My Winnipeg” at this year’s Berkshire Independent Film Festival, we found ourselves hungry and showed up on the eatery’s doorstep.

One look at the menu and I was all about trying it. It was the Isabella Pizzarella that got me. With roasted sweet potatoes, parsnips, garlic, mozzarella, parmesan, balsamic vinegar, it already offered so much in terms of interesting ingredients. But, get this, the pièce de résistance was the addition of shaved fennel. Rarely is fennel seen on any menu, much less a pizza menu. This, I had to have.

The organic sourdough crust provided a wonderful (and edible) platform for a lovely array of some of my favorite flavors. With no way to go wrong, it was oh so right. The faint licorice-y taste of the fennel complemented the winter vegetables, flavoring their edges and bringing order to the whole. My only complaint is that I was dying for a diet Coke that afternoon and the restaurant offers only organic juices, teas, natural sodas, beer and wine (nothing really to complain about, is there?).

My companions ordered: (1) the Melanzana Cardinale (another sourdough pizza, this one topped with eggplant, tomatoes, mozzarella, smoked gouda, and pesto), and (2) the Pomodoro Bianco pizza (portabella mushrooms, garlic, tomatoes, mozzarella, parmesan, red onions, goat cheese and pesto). These two came out looking surprisingly similar, but their tastes were radically different.

The portabella pizza struck me as the most traditional of the three we ordered and, as such, the least interesting. Though it was certainly good, I was a bit disappointed the usual meatiness of portabellas seemed absent and the overall flavor subdued.

While I loved my choice of the fennel-frocked pizza, I have to say that the Melanzana Cardinale was truly the best of the three pizzas at the table in terms of flavor and texture. The soft eggplant simply melted in one’s mouth. The gouda lent a touch of smokiness to each bite and that particular cheese was a perfect accompaniment to its vegetable companions. I will definitely be trying it on pizza at home.

If you’re ever out in the Berkshires and want a fun, casual and satisfying dining experience, I would definitely recommend Baba Louie’s. You may wish to arrive slightly before usual mealtimes, however, because, by the time we had ordered, the line was out the door. It is a relatively small establishment with what appears to be a large reputation.

As we sat down for beer, our group of three began discussing the world’s current socio-agro-environmental crises and we ended up focusing not on hops, but on corn.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that corn prices have recently gone through the roof, inflating the specter of starvation in the Third World and raising real questions about our environmental fate.

This is what Rolling Stone magazine had to say about this issue a year ago:

“Ethanol doesn’t burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption — yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming.

“So why bother? Because the whole point of corn ethanol is not to solve America’s energy crisis, but to generate one of the great political boondoggles of our time. Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 — twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners. And a study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development found that ethanol subsidies amount to as much as $1.38 per gallon — about half of ethanol’s wholesale market price.”

Somebody’s making money off this. And it ain’t the so-called Third World. Or me.

We’re all going to pay in the end.

Not only does the name reference the great swing dance known as Lindy Hop–with all the style and bold flavor that implies (to the delight, I am sure, of any would-be marketers)–it also plays on a key ingredient in many beers (hops).

Unfortunately, I hate hoppy beer.

As my friends and more dedicated readers know, I’m into the smoother, sweeter stuff (all hail Belgian ale).

Still, it might be worth it just to use the name. I’ve been wanting to try home brew….

My sentence, constructed primarily of words from today’s dictionary page:

A sauceboat, saucepan and saucer sat on some satin atop the savannah, with some sauerbraten, sauerkraut, sausage and savarin, accompanied by sauternes and sauvignon blanc, awaiting some savvy savage or savior with savoir faire to sample and savor the flavor.

Mmm. Mmmm. Good.

Bully-Bob and the Culinary Canine Caper

Bully-Bob had a problem. He’d just eaten the lipstick out of his mistress’ handbag, which she had foolishly left on the floor next to the couch, and he was feeling a little ill. Bright red smears stained his drooping muzzle, alarming evidence of his indiscretion. It was her favorite shade—Candy Apple Kiss—but he supposed she’d prefer to wear it herself. It hadn’t tasted at all like either candy or an apple. He hung his head in shame and did not look up when he heard the inevitable shriek.

“Bully! What…? Oh my God, you ate my lipstick!”

He heard Caroline rush over, saw the tips of her red patent-leather pumps come into view, and dropped his head even lower. She knelt, picking up the violated plastic tube. “Bad dog,” she reprimanded and lifted his chin. Shocked by the color’s blood-red vividness, she softened. “Are you okay?” she asked. Then, to herself, “Lipstick isn’t toxic, is it? No, it can’t be. Right? Of course, it’s not meant to be eaten in large chunks. Oh geez!”

She called out to her sister in the other room, “Darlene? Darlene, I’m going to need some paper towels!” Bully-Bob felt better when Darlene rushed in and promptly burst out laughing. He’d always liked Darlene. “Silly-Bob” she called him, for reasons that were abundantly apparent at this particular moment.

The sisters cleaned him up and called the veterinarian, who assured them that Bully, an English bulldog of long and sturdy lineage, likely would survive the incident, if with a little indigestion and temporary facial discoloration.

He hadn’t meant to eat the lipstick. Well, not initially anyway. No. He’d been overcome by the lingering smell of the artichoke langostino from Pepe’s and thought, perhaps, that some had escaped the doggie-bag Caroline had brought him last night.

Caroline, to Bully-Bob’s never-ending delight, was a food critic. Last night he had been, as he often was, the beneficiary of one of her many culinary excursions. She had tucked the doggie bag of leftovers into her over-large bag. So, it was really her fault this had happened at all. Unable to find the langostino, or even a bit of day-old artichoke cream sauce, Bully-Bob had resorted to the lipstick. Any self-respecting dog would have done the same.

Ultimately, life is about applying our closely held theories to the way we live our lives, including its intimate details, such as the food we eat.  This is the lesson of Bloodroot.     

Bloodroot is a feminist vegetarian restaurant in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  I first heard of the eatery in 1992, when I went with a friend to visit a mutual acquaintance who had become a chef there.  I only vaguely remember that visit, mostly by the snapshot in my head of the feminist and lesbian literature that decorated the walls of the lavatory and the cute little feminist bookstore attached to the restaurant. 

My parents live quite near the place, so it’s something of a puzzle why I hadn’t returned until a couple of weekends ago, particularly since I’ve been a feminist (read:  “someone who believes in social, political and economic parity for women and girls”) for as long as I can remember and have always, even when a card-carrying meat eater, enjoyed vegetarian fare. 

Suffice it to say that I didn’t think a feminist vegetarian restaurant would appeal to certain members of my immediate family.  Imagine my surprise when my mom, in gracious consideration of my spouse’s and my vegetarianism, suggested we go there.  I readily agreed.  Now one rich slice of parsnip pie later, I can say I’ll definitely return more quickly the next time.

The restaurant is tucked into a residential enclave along Long Island Sound.  If you didn’t have directions, you’d never guess it was there.  The building is, on the outside, reminiscent of old-timey Cape-Cod beach cottages.  I couldn’t help feeling as if I’d stepped back into the 1970s as I got out of the car; the very air of the place causes one to expect long hair and bell bottoms and the unrestrained social energy of that vibrant and explosive time. 

Entering through the front door, a tiny bookstore occupies space to the left.  In front of you is a large window opening onto the kitchen.  To the right is the wide-open space of the restaurant, featuring high, beamed ceilings and peppered with mis-matched tables and chairs.   The walls are covered with black-and-white and sepia-toned pictures of women that would be at home in the Victorian age.  Though a Saturday evening, the surroundings were relatively quiet, with only three or four couples seated in the dining area and a couple of larger groups occupying the open space.

Bloodroot offers a unique dining experience.  The seasonally-changing menu is handwritten on a chalkboard above the window that looks into the kitchen.  Beer and wine is on a handwritten menu next to the door and features organic wines.  Customers order their meals at a small desk next to the entrance before being seated.  If you want bread or dessert, you have to order that separately too. On this night we were honored to be attended to by one of the restaurant’s founding matriarchs, Selma Miriam.

We ordered our food and a 2005 organic pinot noir from Oregon’s Cooper Mountain winery and took our seats. My partner and I ordered, to share, a seaweed and watercress salad.

For entrees, and because it seemed the perfect dish to say goodbye to the long and dreary winter, I ordered the parsnip pie with a house salad. My partner ordered the feijoada (Brazilian black beans and rice with kale, spices, lemon-pepper hot sauce, and manioc—a grain-like meal made from dried cassava) and, for dessert, their cheese plate. My mom ordered the Mulligatawny soup and a salad, my dad the Thai “chicken” stir fry and a slice of banana cream pie. My brother, ever the picky eater, ordered only a house salad.

Although my mom found her salad disappointing, expecting more than greens, I found my house salad fresh, with a satisfyingly light and tasty dressing. However, I expected more from the seaweed/watercress salad. Although it was presented beautifully, the watercress was less tangy than I expect of the usually potent little green and, since I’m used to seaweed at my fantastic local Japanese restaurant, my standards are high for seaweed.

However, my spouse and I found our entrees extremely flavorful and satisfying. The feijoada was beautiful, with dark onyx-like beans and an enticing aroma that didn’t disappoint upon tasting, bringing forth visions of colorful Latin American celebrations. It probably doesn’t hurt that rum is used in the recipe.

My parsnip pie came as an unadorned triangle on a light blue plate. As a French Canadian, I was reminded of the pork pie my mom used to make when we were kids. This was as rich and filling, though the flavor was completely different. I love parsnips in most formats, but this was one of the most interesting I’ve seen. The crust was thick and flaky and the filling slightly sweet, with hints of peanut, onion and ginger.

Unfortunately, for entrees, my mom also proved least satisfied with her meal, indicating the soup was bland. That being said, I note my dad ate all of his stir-fry before I had a chance to try it, so I’m assuming it was good. It certainly looked and smelled great. The cheese plate came with a nice array of several cheese, which my spouse refused to inquire about so, dear reader, I don’t have more information for you on that, except to say it’s worth a try. And the banana cream pie was fantastic, totally unlike the instant-pudding versions you often see. This was full of real slices of banana bathed in creamy white softness. It tasted of fresh bananas with a tangy side note. I’d go back just for that.

Despite some disappointments in the meal, as noted above, this place is worth giving a try, if only for the experience. Overall, I found the meal satisfying on several levels—for its food and for its principles.

And if you’re interested in finding out more, Bloodroot just released two cookbooks for your culinary foray into eco-feminist cuisine.