This week the Bear Market
embarks on a great adventure: the sandwich. Last weekend we bought a
stack of frozen grocery store panini and flatbread and stockpiled them
in the RFT freezer. Barring theft, we will try out a new one every day this week.We had to go back to the supermarket this morning to get a new Oscar Mayer Deli Creations Flatbread Sandwich so we could find out what it tasted like untainted. We stood in the packaged lunchmeat aisle and stared at the array of sandwiches before us. T
Todd Ehlers, Wikimedia CommonsRobin Wheeler writes for the blog Poppy Mom. After years of making and eating fancy food, Robin is sick of it all. She's returning to the basics: recipes that haven't surfaced in three decades. She reports on the results for Gut Check every Tuesday.If we've learned anything from mid-century stereotypes, it's this: People drank a lot back then. Between the nuclear threat and being crammed into a girdle, you'd probably have a Pink Lady or four before making dinner for
Robin WheelerVince Valenza of Blues City Deli shows off his muffuletta sandwich.The signature item on the menu at Blues City Deli, this giant sandwich is named for the round Italian bread used since New Orleans' Central Grocery invented the sandwich in 1908."Back in the mid-80s we didn't know what a muffuletta was," Blues City Deli owner Vince Valenza told me when I interviewed him for today's profile. "In the downtown St. Louis Italian neighborhood -- Sicilians -- we did muffulettas, but we
User "Fanghong," Wikimedia CommonsThe Rock and Roll Craft Show is held the weekend after Thanksgiving as an alternative to the whole "Black Friday" mess -- an opportunity to get some Christmas shopping done, buying unique, handmade items and supporting local artisans, all while avoiding becoming a stampede victim at a mall or department store.I suspect another reason the craft show is so well-suited for this weekend is that many people have out-of-town guests they have to entertain, and any
Whenever we go out for a fancy dinner, we feel a bit like a little girl playing dress-up in mom's heels. In fact, tonight we are wearing borrowed clothes from a fashionable (and charitable) girlfriend who agreed to dress us for this evening. Sipping a sidecar, we think, is helping us pull off the illusion that we are very, very sophisticated. Not that there's much of anyone to convince. Outside, snow is falling, Inside Franco, on this quiet Monday evening, only a few other tables are occupied.
