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A slice of buttermilk pie, courtesy of Flickr user ralph and jenny

I think I’ve known one person in my entire life who actually drinks straight-up buttermilk as a beverage. Something about a sour-tasting dairy drink is low on appeal for most Americans. (However, it should be noted that other nationalities have similar cultured dairy beverages that are very popular.) But, oh, the things it can do to in tandem with other ingredients.

Today’s buttermilk is really fermented milk, different from the byproduct of butter-churning from olden days. Because it contains high amounts of lactic acid, buttermilk is excellent at helping baked goods rise and at tenderizing meat, not to mention adding tangy flavor to other recipes. The problem is that it always seems to be sold in a larger quantity than any one recipe calls for. And, although it has a fairly long shelf life, it’s always a challenge to find enough uses for the remainder before it goes to waste. Here are a few ideas to help make full use of your next quart.

1. Marinate meats. According to Fine Cooking magazine, buttermilk and yogurt are the only marinades that truly work to tenderize meat. Vinegar-based marinades are too acidic and could actually make meat tougher, while for some reason—possibly the calcium—the only slightly acidic buttermilk seems to stimulate the breakdown of proteins. However it works, it’s especially good with chicken, whether grilled (as in this simple marinade from Cheeky Kitchen) or fried (like this double-dipped version from Epicurious).

2. Add low-fat creaminess. Low-fat buttermilk is creamier and more flavorful than regular low-fat milk, so it’s perfect for mashed potatoes (this herbed recipe from Dash and Bella also contains butter, but it sure sounds good); creamy soups, like a buttermilk summer squash soup from 101 Cookbooks; or sauces, like Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s fish poached in buttermilk, from the New York Times.

3. Cook up breakfast. Some of the best morning foods are even better with buttermilk. It makes for fluffy pancakes, crispy outside/soft inside waffles (so says Smitten Kitchen), and rich scones (these lemon-blueberry buttermilk scones from Sing For Your Supper sound delicious).

4. Bake some bread. Buttermilk’s slight acidity helps activate baking soda and make bread rise. It’s the traditional liquid used in Irish soda bread. Oatmeal buttermilk bread gets high marks from Clockwork Lemon. And chances are good Grandma’s delicious, flaky biscuits were made with buttermilk. Sweet breads also get low-fat moistness from buttermilk, as in this banana-blueberry buttermilk bread from Eating Well magazine.

5. Save room for dessert. The same moistness also does wonders for cake, whether Bon Appétit magazine’s blackberry buttermilk cake or what the Pioneer Woman calls the best chocolate sheet cake. Ever. And don’t forget the Southern specialty, sweet, custardy buttermilk pie; Homesick Texan shares her Grandma Blanche’s recipe, which you just know has to be good.

"We Were Made For Each Other." Image courtesy of Terry Border.

Terry Border’s photo blog Bent Objects, begun in 2006, anthropomorphizes inanimate objects using bits of wire and a few props. He creates scintillating inner lives for the ordinary things that most of us take for granted. And a good chunk of his work revolves around the pantry, portraying modest pears, bespectacled raisins and brain-starved zombie peanuts, even a Hitchcockian scene of a carrot descending a staircase unaware of a menacing vegetable peeler lurking nearby. This food-stylist-cum-humorist’s blithe (and sometimes bawdy) wit was first collected in the book Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things, and a new collection of photographs due out this October, Bent Object of My Affection, explores the love lives of the odds and ends lurking in our cupboards and closets. Border was kind enough to entertain a few questions via email about his work and his unique relationship to food.

What were you doing before Bent Objects?
I was in commercial photography for several years. Loved everything about it except for the actual photography part.  It’s an interesting business, but dealing with art directors was going to be the death of me (or one of them).

Did you ever play with your food as a child?

I had a good imagination as a kid, but I never ever played with my food. When I’m sitting down to eat, someone playing with their food is right up there with them chewing with their mouth open—it drives me crazy!

What inspired you to start the Bent Object blog?

I started doing some small wire sculptures, so I thought I would share them with whoever might be interested. Thought maybe I’d sell one every now and then for some coffee money.

How do you go about inventing the personalities and private lives of foodstuffs?

I think I have a lot of empathy. I’m able to imagine myself as whatever object I’m working with. The more of a story-line I’m able to come up with, the more I can pack into the photo.

Has working on the blog changed the way you now look at food when you go grocery shopping?

There’s a part of me that’s always thinking about possible scenarios when I’m walking the aisles. Especially the produce area. I’m sure the produce people wonder why I loiter so long in their part of the store. They probably think I’m crazy, or that I work for their competition!

Are there certain foods that you find especially rewarding to work with? Any that are especially difficult?

Hard foods are easy to work with, soft foods are difficult. Trying to make a banana stand up is challenging. Plus they bruise easily and age pretty quickly. Other foods, like peanuts, will last forever.

For the past few years you have encouraged readers to embrace and celebrate unnaturally orange foods with Strangely Orange Snack Appreciation Day. How did this “holiday” start and what do you find so appealing about these foods?

Take a look at all of the fluorescent orange snacks as you walk down the chip aisle at your grocery. I find it sort of scary! But I went the other way and decided to embrace this weird, other-worldly snack food color. I figured why not try to have fun with it.

In what directions do you want to take your Bent Objects creations next?

I recently finished my first animated short, starring a slice of peanut butter bread (I made it to promote my second book, Bent Object of my Affection). I sent a link to it to Roger Ebert, and he gave it a good review on his Facebook page! Now that was a good day. It was so much fun, and totally different than distilling a whole story into one single image. It’s a totally different way to approach things, and I think I’ll be doing some more in that direction in the future.

The origin of the michigan hot dog is murky (courtesy of flickr user scaredy_kat)

It’s taken me all summer, plus the six years I’ve lived in Northern New York, to finally taste the region’s signature warm-weather specialty: michigan hot dogs, also known simply as michigans. That’s michigan, lowercase m—though some cap it—as opposed to the state, where these franks topped with spicy meat sauce are emphatically not from.

Unless they are. Like most food-origin stories, the legend of the michigan is as murky as the water in a hot-dog vendor’s cart at the end of the day. One widely accepted version has it that Eula and Garth Otis, who opened Plattsburgh, New York’s first michigan stand in the 1920s, were from Michigan. Another claims that it was a different Michiganer, George Todoroff, who first brought the secret recipe to Coney Island before it made its way to the northern reaches of the Empire State. Locals don’t much care for the latter story, or anything else equating their beloved heartburn-on-a-steamed-bun to other weenie varieties. They will insist it is not a chili dog, though the uninitiated could be excused for being unable to differentiate. That every michigan recipe seems to be a secret doesn’t help matters. Some say allspice is the key to the unique flavor of the tomato-based ground beef sauce; others say it’s cinnamon, or cumin or cider vinegar or—you get the point.

In any case, don’t try to order a michigan in Michigan, or outside of a 100-mile radius of Plattsburgh, lest you be greeted with blank stares. If your travels do bring you to the North Country—the most likely scenario being that you are en route to Montreal—there are dozens of spots where you can give the dogs a go: Gus’ Red Hots is conveniently located near the ferry to Vermont. (The grammar nerd in me always wants to add an “s” after the apostrophe on their sign, so that the name doesn’t appear to be the plural possessive of Gu.) Clare and Carl’s Texas Red Hots, established in the 1940s, adds yet another unrelated geographic reference into the mix. Red hots, by the way, refer to the snappy, nuclear-red casings used in a locally produced brand of hot dogs, which are typical but not required in a michigan. Chopped onions—ask for them “buried” if you want them under the sauce—and a bit of mustard are considered appropriate finishing touches.

I chose to finally try a michigan at Woody’s Brats and Hots, a seasonal stand in Lake Placid, because it is the one and only place that makes a meatless version. I’m not a vegetarian, but I don’t eat beef, a restriction that had previously precluded my eating a michigan. In any case, I’ve always found meat-on-meat a little vulgar, or at least overkill, and the same goes for fake meat on fake meat. I prefer my (turkey or tofu) hot dog topping to provide some contrast, like the crunchy zip of sauerkraut. My faux michigan was pretty good, but probably not something I’d crave.

To be fair, judging all michigans by a soy version is a little like basing an opinion of chocolate on carob. So you’ll just have to take the word of my more carnivorous neighbors.

Braised shark's fin soup with fresh crab meat. Image courtesy of Flickr user Sifu Renka.

California is on the road to becoming the fourth state in the union to ban shark fin soup on account of the ecological impact that rising demand is having on shark populations. A bill nixing the sale, trade or possession of shark fins passed the state senate on September 6 and is awaiting governor Jerry Brown’s signature to be passed into law. The namesake ingredient for this Asian delicacy is harvested by fishermen who catch sharks, remove the fins and dump the carcasses back in the ocean. While other parts of the shark are edible or can be used for other purposes, it makes more financial sense for the fishermen to haul back the fins because they are the most valuable: they can sell (depending on size and the species of shark) for upwards of $880 per pound on the Hong Kong market. (In 2003, a fin from a basking shark sold for $57,000 in Singapore.) It is estimated that between 26 and 73 million sharks are killed worldwide each year for their fins, and with sharks unable to reproduce at such a rate to meet human demand, sustainable shark fishing is a bit unrealistic.

So what’s the big to-do over this dish? It’s certainly not the fin’s flavor—which has been described as being relatively tasteless—but rather it’s unique, rubbery texture. Once dried, processed and incorporated into the soup, the fin looks like fine, translucent noodles whose culinary value is in their mouthfeel—all the flavor has to come from the other soup ingredients. Some chefs have tried using gelatin-based substitutes, but, for those intimately familiar with the dish, imitation shark falls short of capturing the feel of the real deal.

“This is the most stunning aspect of the entire economic empire that has arisen around shark’s fin soup” environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin writes of the soup in her book Demon Fish. “It is, to be blunt, a food product with no culinary value whatsoever. It is all symbol, no substance.” Indeed, with some iterations costing upwards of $100 a bowl, it’s a dish that, if nothing else, displays one’s social status.

The dining tradition that dates back to the Song Dynasty (960 to 1279 A.D.), becoming a mainstay of formal dining during the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644 A.D.), and it continues to be a popular dish at Chinese weddings. Opponents see the ban as an act of cultural discrimination, with the language of the bill singling out shark fin soup and giving no mention of other shark-based products, such as steaks or leather goods.

But shark populations are declining. In the 1980s, Hong Kong’s local shark populations were overfished to the point that its fishing market went bust. In the U.S., dusky shark numbers have declined by roughly 80 percent since the 1970s, with conservationists estimating that it would take upwards of 100 years for those populations to rebuild. In western Atlantic waters, hammerhead sharks have declined by up to 89 percent over the past 25 years. And in spite of cultural traditions, the international community—with the exceptions of Japan, Norway and Iceland—has placed bans on whaling because humans put such a strain on those populations. Should the same reasoning be applied to sharks?

Thirty cents could get the author an assortment of candy, including Boston Baked Beans. Courtesy of Flickr user daveparker.

For this month’s Inviting Writing series, we asked for stories about food and independence: your decisions about what, how or where you eat; the first meal you cooked—or ordered in—after moving out of the house; or about how you eat to the beat of a different drummer.

Our first story is about the thrill of illicit food. Nikki Gardner is a writer and photographer who lives in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. She blogs about art, food and stories at Art and Lemons.

A Mission for Candy

By Nikki Gardner

After years 7 years of living under my mother’s strict sugar-free household rules, I couldn’t take it anymore. It wouldn’t be far off to say that I kind of freaked out. My mission, which I bestowed upon myself, was to sample as much sugar as my stomach and allowance allowed.

My younger sister and I were allowed an occasional doughnut before a special Sunday church outing, a piece of birthday cake, or ice cream scoop. But there was a red line between candy and me: it was NOT allowed.

I remember clearly the ride home from school that day. I rode up to the stoplight, smiled and waved at the crossing guards, and made it through two crosswalks. Then I stopped. Parked my bike outside the Burger Dairy, which was another mile or so from our new neighborhood. The fluorescent lights flickered inside. One wall was dedicated to butter, bread, cheese, eggs and milk. Staples we often stopped for between trips to the grocery store. This was my first time there alone. The woman behind the cash register sized me up. We both knew I wasn’t in it for the milk that day.

She wore one of those black hairnets and snap-up white jackets like the lunch ladies at school. I was nervous and broke from her stare and busied myself with the business at hand. The coins in my pocket jangled recklessly, ready to be laid out on the counter. In a moment of haste, I pulled out 30 cents or so and quickly did the math. Thirty cents could get me a box of Lemonheads or Boston Baked Beans, a cherry Blow pop, a Fireball, and 2 pieces of Bazooka comic gum.

The cashier popped and cracked the small pink stash of gum in her mouth. She seemed as old as dust to me and she was all business. We were alone in the store and the small bubbles she blew between her coffee-stained teeth echoed in there.

I slid my money toward her. She wore black cat eye glasses. I noticed her eyes go squinty and small, like dots made with a ballpoint pen. I wasn’t sure what she would do. Rough me up a little about spending my college fund or give me some wisecrack about ending up like her one day, which seemed pretty okay to me.

“That it, sweetheart?”

“Um, yeah.”

A few gum cracks later, I walked out of there clutching my candy stash. I went back a number of times and it wasn’t until I developed a few cavities that I came clean, well not totally clean, but eating less candy anyway. So I switched to the fast food burger joint and replaced one restriction with another. But that’s another story.