Over the weekend, Greta acclimated to being back at home for Thanksgiving break, but she was thrown off by the dizzying number of appointments that I scheduled for her today. She looked totally flustered when I happened to bump into her downtown, in between her visit to the dentist and her trip to a doctor's office.

"I need to run because I'm meeting Lizanne for coffee," I told her.

"All right fine but make eye contact with me for a second," she said. "I feel like I'm in a clown car."

Our daughter Greta is a freshman in college and she hasn't been home for a long time. So I was really excited about grabbing her from school in Portland, ME on Saturday, and bringing her home for her Thanksgiving break. She seemed happy to be leaving her her cramped dorm room and the pressure of her classes and we had fun catching up on the three-hour drive back to our house. As we came into our town, she started to feel a little funny. 

"It seems weird that you can just drive here," she said. "It feels like a place you need to be transported to from another dimension."

Upon entering the house she grew up in, Greta said, "You really do have a lovely home. So spacious."

And later, when we sat down in the living room after dinner: "I
can't believe you guys are still here doing this."

Well you can forget I told you that culinary foam is all the go.  As of right now, it's out, having trickled down onto Olive Garden's menu with the Never Ending™ Foams di Rome Bowl, as shown below:

From Olive Garden's new menu, page 30, under Tastes di Italia.

Olive Garden's annexing of culinary foam is bad action for everyone everywhere:

Shareholders see that this is clearly a dumb business move for Olive Garden. It is virtually impossible for customers to fill up on foam because of its air quantity index. Patrons who order All You Can Eat foam will be camped in the restaurant for hours, slowing down table turnover and reducing profits.

Culinary Artists liked the healthy, creative, modern, flavorful and textural qualities that foam brought to the table. Now that down-scale restaurants are recklessly serving the once-favored flavor accompaniment, chefs are informing foam, "You are now ketchup to me!" 

Snobs are upset that, with foam out of the picture, they won't know how to place the most upscale order at the table. These nice people are rightfully worried that the next new thing will be cooking with feathers, or the "feathering" of food that I mentioned earlier in this blog.

What you can do: Continue to check in with me, as I will be on the hunt for the latest in culinary trends. For now, stay away from any restaurant that offers "fusion" as that movement is now seen as distastefully inauthentic. Until further notice, just eat Asian street food and you should be fine.

Since I've answered the question, "How?" about culinary foams for you, the next questions become, "Why? Why? Why?" The answers can be found in Spain. Spain is a rascally ground breaker that invented California and circumnavigating, so it makes sense that they also put food foam on the map. A modern, deconstructive Spanish chef named Ferran Adriá popularized culinary foam in an effort to help Spain start discovering things again like they did in the good old days.

Adriá nosed out that using flavored foam (sometimes ambrosially referred to as espumas) on his creations enabled him to add or intensify taste without changing the essential composition of his dishes. In other words, you can plop a little flavorful foam on top of a piece of beef and it won't go running like bulls all over what you just worked so hard to put together, as sauce is wont to do.

Literally a mouth watering foam?

Culinary foam is part of a broader movement called molecular gastronomy. If you're interested, there's a book called "Molecular Gastronomy" that goes on and on and on about it. The book's author is named Hervé This. If my last name were This, I would have felt compelled to name Margot, my older daughter, Thatanne Theotherthing This. And little Greta's first and middle names might have been, Now Hear. Anyway, in short, molecular gastronomy is a way of making your meal look more like the colorful cubes and spheres that they ate off trays in the cafeteria of the Starship Enterprise: 

Didn't an intense fight break out right about now in this scene?

I've written about culinary foam for the past two days, and a few readers have asked me to do some research to find out how the foam is made. I did look into it, but remember, I'm not a food writer, and this blog is not about helping you to "learn." So I'll scratch the surface by telling you that it's super easy. Take the flavored liquid of your choice, for example a broth or puree, mix in a stabilizer, which keeps the air bubbles from popping (you can just pull some agar-agar, lecithin or xanthan gum from your spice cabinet) and then drive air into the mixture with mechanical force. 

I selected this photo to share with you today, because it's a good example of the profound visual impact that foamed food can have at a dinner party. For instance, I can imagine seeing this at a lavish outdoor soiree, and everyone stepping around it to get to the table.

We now know that culinary foam is all the go at elite restaurants because it's modernist and healthier than sauces. Sauces already have an old-timey, vintage feel to them, so expect to see them again soon, because old-timey, vintage things are also all the go. Also expect to see sauces again soon because many people, not me, are unsatisfied with foam on or under their food, especially when they are paying for it.

It will anger the chef if you ask for your foam on the side. 

Just try to move through it.

Maybe today's leading chefs are foaming our dishes because they're bracing us for the day when commercial fishermen take the last fish out of the ocean in 2050*. And with no seafood left to serve, culinary artists will be forced to create the illusion of fish and shellfish on our plates by including items that I normally try to dodge at the beach, like sea foam, driftwood and potentially feathers**.

Tomorrow:  How to make culinary foam, if I can get a bead on it.

*This is what the U.N. is saying according to a website that I recently saw. I didn't recognize the organization that sponsored the site, but I know it's legit because there was an Anthropologie ad running down the right side of the page and I bought a sweater.

**Cooking with feathers is something I will not be able to handle, even though I usually gravitate toward things that are all the go. We can talk about it another time, but for now, just know that, at the beach, I would sooner pick up a used condom or a plastic tampon casing than an unattached feather.

Top chefs are now serving foams instead of sauces with their offerings because foam fits the needs of today's upscale patrons. For those of you who have not yet experienced it, here's a photo of a scallop dish with mushroom-infused foam that my sister-in-law, Sarah, snapped at a fabulous restaurant in Quebec City:

 
Sarah's dinner that 
got foamed in Canada.

Culinary foams have a light, pleasant texture, and can be flavored with anything, including beer, thus eliminating the ghastly chore of burping it up on your own. Foams are less caloric and healthier for us than sauces. Cream and eggs are dropped from foaming recipes, in favor of a less caloric ingredient called air. This is important for those of us who want to have good butts for the weekend.

Tomorrow: More reasons to eat foam. 

  

I was reading about haiku the other day and I mentioned to Bo that I find that kind of poetry interesting because of the structure of seventeen syllables, divided into three lines of five, seven and five beats. They're like limericks, which of course I love, but more sensitively written and there's no rhyming.

Well, for reasons I'll never understand, Bo wasn't listening to me. So for a punishment, I got a piece of paper and a pencil and asked him to write a haiku for me, reminding him that they often describe the essence of a poignant experience.

Slick new saddle shoes

Made you slip in the lobby

Of course people clapped.

Technically, he nailed it. Then I remembered that haiku traditionally have something to do with nature, so I asked him to redo it in that vein.

Slick new saddle shoes

Made you slip in the lobby

It was raining out.

"Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is an expression you don't hear very much anymore because it's not ethically correct to put babies in harm's way. So, too bad for us, now there's no real way to cleverly say, "let's not get rid of something good in our efforts to weed out the bad." However, if you knew in advance that you were actually going to throw your baby out with the bathwater, it would be cool to name it "Jettison."

I invited lots of people over to watch football last weekend but no one could come because all of my friends have concussions. So instead, I arranged to meet my sister Barb at our parents' house in Philadelphia. But as soon as we set foot in their house, my dad said, "I'm happy to see you girls, but try to keep a lid on it because your mother and I both have concussions." We had a nice time, considering that we were visiting people who were trying hard not to concentrate on anything.

When I got home last night, I went to check on our pet turtle. "How's Natasha?" I asked Bo.

"She's okay, but she has a concussion," he said. "She swam up too fast and hit her head on her basking platform."

"Ouch!" I said.

"How are you doing?" Bo asked me. "You look a little off. Do you have a concussion?"

"No," I said. "I just look concussed because I ran out of eyeliner. How are you?"

"I think I'm good," he said. "But I still have a concussion. Thanks for leaving me that new helmet. It's very cool."

"You're welcome," I said. "I thought the black would bring out your left pupil."

Greta was dragged around antique stores when she was little and I think that's why she appreciates old things and the way people used to live their lives.  I'll bet this is why she never calls me from college long distance. It's also probably why she's communicating with me in her emails and facebook messages like she's paying by the word to send me a telegram:

WESTERN UNION

Telegram

CONNIE: YES I VOTED  STOP  YES I HAVE FRIENDS  STOP  GRADES GOOD  STOP  GOT AUNT BARB'S BROWNIES  STOP  NEED BLACK TIGHTS  STOP  HOME FOR BREAK 11/21  STOP  PLEASE NO DENTIST THIS ONCE  STOP  MASSAGE WOULD BE NICE  STOP  MY OFFICE INSTRUCTED YOU TO ADVANCE ME UP TO $25,000  STOP  HEE HAW AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING! GRETA 

I love everything about getting presents, except when I get lots of them at someone else's house and no one thinks to help me carry them out to the car. I'm pretty tapped into when and why presents happen and I'm always open to it. So it's funny that I didn't know that gifts women receive from their husbands when they have new babies are called push presents.

Of course, I had heard about ladies getting jewelry on the day they delivered, but there was no name for it and I wasn't that interested. It's not that I believe the baby itself is reward enough on the day you push it out, not at all. It's just that I really don't wear jewelry, so I don't know what would have been the right push present for me. Maybe a lamp. Definitely not a puppy.

I read that the phenomenon is big in England and I heard that Kate Middleton got a ring when she pushed out the future king. Push presents should become a thing here too, right? But let's put a new spin on it. So say the doctor has to go in and break your water. Well, in America, that calls for a push-pin present, which is usually some kind of brooch. But what if you need to have a c-section and there's no pushing? In our land, you'd get a pull present, which could be a nice lawn mower or a small outboard motor.

Dear Jes:

Thank you so much for writing back to me on the microphone drop thing and I'm glad that you understand why I had to let go of it. When I think of the hours you spent working with me on the move -- "So, it's hold the fake microphone up to your mouth and then drop it." It seemed like it was going to be so easy and I still think that you're an amazing teacher. Also I think maybe you're right about why it was impossible for me to learn. When I got the fake microphone in my hand, real stage fright kicked in and I panicked because I knew there was zero way for me to deliver a two-hour PowerPoint on Bikram yoga, especially when I was running late and had no clothes on.

In your letter, I noticed that you spelled it "mic drop," instead of "mike drop," so I went back to yesterday's blog post and changed my spelling, because I know cool when I see it.  Also, I teared up with joy when I read that you, and other people in their twenties, are still doing the corn-on-the-cob/ding move. Maybe it is a timeless thing, like pull my finger.

If you have time over the holidays, I'd love for you to work with me on a new signature move.

Love,

Connie

Dear Jes:

Thank you so much for all the work you did over the past year trying to teach me how to fake a microphone drop. Unfortunately, I was never able to get the movements down smoothly, and now the mic drop is a thing, so I wouldn't be doing it anymore anyway. That said, I am very good at raising and lowering a fake microphone for people of varying heights and also tapping a fake mic to see if it's on.

Also, I will no longer be saying "Connie Out!" to punctuate my departure or to end a conversation on my terms, because that phrase is also now a thing (of course, people are inserting their own names). It's sad too, because I've been saying "Connie Out!" since the girls were little, and it used to give them great comfort. For instance, when they were upset that I got a babysitter -- over their sobs, I'd say "Connie Out!" as I shut the front door, and magically, right then, the crying would stop. 

I want you to know that I am really great at faking the slamming down of a phone receiver, which is strange because I don't think I've ever hung up on anybody in real life. The movement, holding my right thumb to my right ear and my right pinkie to my mouth, then pretending to smash the fake phone onto its base, comes really naturally to me. It's used when I'm telling a group of my friends what I would like to have said, but didn't, in a phone conversation with a meanie. Sadly, most telephones won't be traditionally shaped for much longer, so this move will become obsolete, just like the one when you eat a whole row off of a piece of corn-on-the-cob without stopping and then say "ding." That was a great move and it never got old when typewriters were still a thing.

Jes, let's keep talking, though, about how to make me look cool.

Love, 

Connie

Another reason why I'm embracing my likeness to Mayor Boris Johnson of London is because he's likable, self-deprecating and funny, in a Drunk Uncle kind of way. It has been written that Boris "invites underestimation," and that also really applies appeals to me. Here he is at an unplanned stop on a zip line whilst promoting the London Olympics. 

Boris and I both know that getting stuck places is always funny, which is why we are able to laugh stuff like this off: 

Let's close it down with my favorite Boris Johnson quote: 

"I could not fail to disagree with you less."