The Chicago Tribune endears itself to us this week with a paean to the emperor of emulsions, mayonnaise. The Trib supplemented their mayo lovefest with a blind testing of some commercial varieties, plus homemade, and Hellman’s ranks first, and homemade comes in third. We question the methodology of including “homemade,” since it’s so unstandardized and the whole “it needs more salt” complaint could have been remedied by, you know, adding salt. But the fact remains that mayo is awesome and certain east coast city MenuPages editors who persist in hating it are just plain wrong. Ahem.
(For ourselves, we are unrepentant fans of the white stuff, with slavish brand loyalty to Hellman’s (though we admit the MSG-fueled brilliance of Kewpie), and a mildly embarrassing tendency to attempt to make our own mayo at home, generally only attempting it on humid days when it entirely fails to come together [never mind the old wives’ tale about what happens to homemade mayo when a woman makes it during her time of the month].)
The Sun-Times, on the other hand, offers up a little bit of a smooth-going-down reprieve from egg whisked with oil: drinks! Delicious summer drinks! Instead of using up your summer garden harvest on boring ol’ caprese salad, make a tomato-basil-kitchen-sink margarita! We think this is brilliant – not just because we are huge fans of fresh herbs and savory adult beverages, but because we wholeheartedly believe that it’s about time the locavore movement embraced its inner alcoholic.
Elsewhere, among other things:
• You know how you’re supposed to drink 8-ounce glasses of water 8 times a day in order to be healthy? Ha ha! Not true! [Tribune]
• Via the New York Times, Mark Bittman gives us a no-fail recipe for chilled avocado soup. Which somehow he convinces himself (and us?) is “healthy.” Har har. [Tribune]
• Beer sorbet! Beer sorbet! Beer sorbet! Where was this when we were trying to impress people in college? [Tribune]
• The lasting effect of this summer’s salmonella scare? With luck, it’ll be an increased interest in local produce and sourceable foods. [Sun-Times]
• Kendal Duque, chef at Sepia, weighs in on the use of fruit in savory dishes. Apricot + cherry + lamb = deliciousness! [Sun-Times]
[Photo: Real Mayonnaise, via dougalug’s Flickr]
