Am I the only one who loves Toffifay? I like how the chocolate goes deeper than it looks, and how the bottom looks like plastic, but it’s edible!
“No wonder Toffifay is so popular with more and more people every day!” says the Storck web site. They wish! Toffifay lovers, come forward.
Today in [Serious Eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/):
> A recent 60 Minutes broadcast with Anderson Cooper examined a third-world nutrition supplement called (I love this name) Plumpy’Nut, a fortified peanut butter. “What about peanut allergies?” Cooper asked Dr. Susan Shepherd, head of Doctors Without Borders in Niger.
> “In developing countries, food allergy is not nearly the problem that it is in industrialized countries,” Shepherd said.
My friend [Traca](http://seattletallpoppy.blogspot.com/) forwarded me an invitation to a press event:
> As global interest in Japanese cuisine continues to increase, we hope that you will be able to rediscover the greatness of traditional Japanese dried fish, as well as get hints for new creative cooking. We would also be grateful if you would give us your brief opinions on how to make dried fish more popular in America.
There will be a tasting event, it went on to explain, with free samples of the product, and free sake. Sake, I don’t have to tell you, is technically a kind of beer, and free fish and beer sounded like a better than average Monday.
The product, produced in Kihoku-cho, Japan, is microwaveable dried fish. It’s actually semi-dried. The Japanese word is *himono.* You pop the frozen package into the microwave for one minute, then open it and find the steaming fish on a paper tray, ready to eat. Some of the varieties were mackerel, young mackerel, sea bream, and tuna. Many notable people, such as the Consul-General of Japan, had a lot to say about this product, and they said it all in Japanese with no translator, so all I can tell you is that they are in favor of it. (Actually, the guy next to me did some translating, and one of the speakers lamented that young people today in Japan don’t eat enough himono.)
Before the program began, commercials for the product played on TVs. The commercials featured a wildly enthusiastic announcer and people on the street tasting the fish and smiling approvingly.
Then we tasted the fish and filled out a questionnaire, which had questions like, “Which of these products do you think will do best among American consumers?” A Seattle chef, Tak Suetsugu, prepared an elaborate bento box with the fish prepared in various ways–in salads, sushi rolls, pesto sauce, and so on. They sent us home with a goodie bag with four types of fish, including both mackerel and young mackerel. (“Young Mackerel” is a world-class *nom du rap*.)
So, in short, it was like spending the afternoon in one of the loopier alternate universes. I liked the fish, especially the mackerel and the pike. But the chance of anyone in the US buying this product if they are not Japanese-American or a food geek is zero. Not only are they strong-tasting fish–and the drying process greatly intensifies the flavor of the fish–but most of them have *bones.*
But hey, maybe I’ll end up looking like the guy from the LA Times making fun of onigiri in the 50s. The guy who didn’t buy stock in himono when he had the chance.
No, I haven’t tried out any of your wonderful fish recipes yet. But today, Iris and I were playing Iris Overboard. In case you haven’t heard of it, this is the brutally realistic game where Iris and I sit on pillows, piloting a ship, until we hit an iceberg and Iris falls overboard. I rescue her by tossing her a life preserver and then extracting the fish from her mouth.
> **Me:** Let’s see, there’s the herring, the mackerel, and the sardines. You’re saved.
> **Iris:** You can leave the mackerel in there because it’s tasty.
“Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back…And How You Can Too” (Shauna James Ahern)
I am worried about this book. The publisher seems to be marketing it as an allergy cookbook–or, worse, a diet book, the kind of thing doomed to rocket to the remainder tables. But it’s none of those things. And the book has a force behind it that I believe to be more powerful than any ill-advised PR: the author herself.
Before I talk about why I like the book, a few words about [Shauna James Ahern](http://www.glutenfreegirl.com/). The first time I ever heard from Shauna was when she sent me an email with the subject:
> hey Matthew, I want to help get you and Iris on tv!
If I sent you an email like that, you would add me to your killfile. It’s a good thing I didn’t do that, because I read the email, and as a result, Iris and I were on the Food Network a couple months later. Shauna has a reality distortion field, like Steve Jobs. If she says she’s going to get you on TV, it sounds reasonable, and then she makes it happen. She’s also been instrumental in getting my book published. So I owe Shauna a lot more than a mere positive book review, but that’ll have to do for now.
To explain why I enjoyed this book, I’m going to use an analogy that I hope won’t be too tortured.
For several years I served on the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board, a citizen board that advises city government on all things pedestrian-related (budgets, projects, planning documents, enforcement, and so on). One of my fellow board members was Jean Healy. Jean, who lives in my neighborhood, is deaf and blind and a tireless advocate for people with physical disabilities.
When Jean first joined the board, I was pleased that she was advocating for her constituency, but I didn’t see how it was relevant to me. At every meeting, she’d bring up an example of a design or enforcement issue that was annoying or dangerous to people who were blind, deaf, or in a wheelchair. It took me way too long to notice that the solutions she was suggesting wouldn’t just be a win for people with disabilities: they would be a win for people pushing strollers, people wearing headphones, people who want to walk around their neighborhood without crashing into a misplaced Dumpster or getting mowed down in a defective crosswalk. In other words, when Jean wins, everybody wins.
So it is with Shauna and her fight to make the world safe for the gluten-intolerant. Her book isn’t about replacing wheat flour with rice flour (which, she’s quick to point out, rarely even works). It’s about having her eyes opened to all the great things she *can* eat. In that respect, it’s like The Amateur Gourmet.
I can eat gluten. But yesterday I was staring into the pastry display case at Tully’s. It was about 10:30am. Snack time. I don’t think there was anything gluten-free in the case. Because I was working on this post, I imagined Shauna being stuck there. (Airports, she says, are the most heinous gluten ghettos.) But forget about Shauna for a minute. What about me? What if I don’t want an overinflated pastry for a snack? What if, as is often the case, I would like to snack on meat or cheese? Would it be so hard for a coffee shop to offer a cheese plate with some salami? Maybe a couple of roasted red peppers? Chinese turnip cake, like they serve at dim sum?
> Sitting in the living room of our London house, pale sunlight filtering through the windows, I took a bite of the soft cheese from Holland. First, I tasted milkiness, like a bucket of warm milk condensed into one bite. It was chewy, with a true texture, which forced my teeth to bite down. After a moment, there was a hint of something almost smoky at the back of my mouth. My tongue noticed the nubbly texture where the cheese met the waxy red rind. And in the end, it all smelled clean, like pastures in spring.
Yes! That’s what I wanted for snack. Instead I got a bad chocolate-chip cookie. Give ’em hell, Shauna.
(This post is part of Shauna’s [virtual book tour](http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/2007/10/life-gluten-free-with-little-help-from.html).)