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If Peeps brûlée turn up on the menu at the Catholic Charities dinner next March, I will be ecstatic. It’s an extreme long shot but at least I planted the idea in the mind of Christopher Moore, executive chef for the Knoxville Convention Center.
Chef Moore was on stage at the Tennessee Food & Wine Festival, preparing beef brisket soft tacos. As emcee, I was making small talk and asking questions about the recipe. Our conversation turned to the tortillas, which the chef buys uncooked. We talked about ways to cook them, including over an open flame on a gas grill, which is the same way I toasted the Peeps brûlée. The chef said he wanted to try Peeps that way. A snippet of our conversation turned up on SMOMOtv on Saturday.
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The headliner at the festival was Royal Chef Darren McGrady, who told stories about Queen Elizabeth while preparing one of Prince William’s favorite tea cakes. The no-bake recipe calls for crumbled McVitie’s Classic Rich Tea Biscuits and melted chocolate. He used Ghirardelli. The chef said that we Americans could find the McVitie’s biscuits on Amazon.com. I mentioned that some local supermarkets have a British shelf. From my perspective, the broken tea biscuits looked vaguely familiar. I asked if we could substitute animal crackers for McVitie’s. He thought about it for a moment and, to my surprise, said yes. Animal crackers were probably a fairly close match.
Durkee and Fluffing
Susan Olsen was a VIP guest at the “What the Fluff?” festival in Somerville, Massachusetts on Saturday. Her pal Geri “Fake Jan” Reischl was there too as was Allee Willis, who wrote the Earth Wind & Fire song “September” and many other hits. Susan says Allee talked her into going to the festival this year. Geri posted videos of her Fluff experience. Another attendee posted video of this year’s Pharaoh of Fluff being crowned.
I asked Susan which of the delicious Fluff treats she sampled at the festival. She replied that she didn’t eat any! She was too busy selling Fluff Art at her booth. Susan has been creating Fluff Art for five years. She has set up an online shop where you can buy Fluff Art prints for less than $20. In the near future, she’ll have a way to sell autographed prints and limited editions.
Are You Fluff Enough?
Susan Olsen and I have been swapping emails and Facebook messages about Marshmallow Fluff for years. It’s been over ten years since I presented her with her first jar of Fluff. About five years ago, I wrote a blog post about how she adopted Mother Fluffer as a nickname.
It’s also been five years since I wrote about the first “What the Fluff?” festival in Somerville, Massachusetts. When Susan started creating Warhol-inspired Fluff Art about three years ago, the match seemed obvious. This year the twain shall finally meet. Susan Olsen will be a VIP guest at next weekend’s festival. It gets better. Her Fluff Art is already on exhibit at Bloc 11 Café throughout this month.
Since I can’t be in Massachusetts on Saturday, I will be keeping an eye on Twitter and Facebook and any other online media I can find. After it’s over, I will have to chat with Susan to get her first-hand comments about all the gooey goodness.
Foam Party
The cover of the September issue of Feast has an amazing picture of stacked s’mores. The magazine is distributed at restaurants throughout St. Louis. I picked up a copy after dinner at Fountain on Locust on Saturday night.
In addition to a fine article about homemade marshmallows, the magazine promoted an online video showing their creation. They used some of the same techniques as they did when making a cilantro sauce last month. I am equally inspired by another video on their site featuring gooey butter coffee cake. I’ll have to remember it for my next trip.
Familial DNA
Most of the members and guests of the FBI Knoxville Citizens’ Academy Alumni Association didn’t realize that they were doing one of the same exercises as the middle school kids who enroll in the “Fun with Forensics: Adventures in Chemistry” summer camp run by Dr. Al Hazari. At the conclusion of our tour of the National Forensic Academy, we used mini-marshmallows, Twizzlers and toothpicks to make models of DNA molecules. I know this because my son volunteered as a lab assistant at the chemistry camp last summer. He and I also toured the NFA last summer. We got to see some different stuff last night.
Earlier in the evening, one of the instructors said that Knoxville was the center of the forensic universe, thanks to the Body Farm, Oak Ridge National Lab and the National Forensic Academy. Over the past ten years, police officers from 47 states have trained at the NFA. Only Hawaii, Vermont and Rhode Island have failed to send anyone to take the ten-week course. From a couple of the anecdotes that Evidence Technician Tim Schade told us, it sounds like the Knoxville Police Department has some advanced equipment that you might not expect to find in a city its size. Tim also showed us how to dust for fingerprints on porous and non-porous surfaces.
In a pitch-black room, Oak Ridge Police Detective David Stephens showed us alternative light sources that illuminated various stains such as bleach, milk and spit. He then demonstrated BLUESTAR® FORENSIC latent bloodstains reagent, which lights up when sprayed on bloodstains that are invisible to the naked eye.
In a third room, we collected evidence at a staged crime scene and learned how to properly seal an evidence bag. The NFA’s Robert Geiger showed us bullet holes in a car windshield and let us figure out whether they were fired from the inside or outside. Then he put a laser in a bullet hole and then lined up a gun with the light to determine the bullet’s trajectory.
Since we would be gathering in Oak Ridge around dinner time, I asked Dave Neusel of Big Ed’s Pizza to provide a few pizzas for the group to enjoy. He is a big supporter of Dr. Bill Bass and the Bone Zones team. I correctly guessed that he would generously help out our group too. We were able to raise some money for the Junior Special Agent program and a few other good deeds to come in the months ahead.
S’meeps & S’mupcakes
A search for WordPress themes led me to an unusual Marshmallow Peeps recipe. I am still looking for a good fit for a new FBI Knoxville Citizens’ Academy Alumni Association website but I will take a moment to enjoy the sweet distraction.
A website called Tasty Kitchen caught my eye. I was drawn to the desserts section by their photo of Peep S’mores. The simple recipe calls for layers of graham cracker crumbs, M&Ms and Peeps. It would be a good way for me to use up some of my leftover Peeps.
I can imagine how Peep S’mores must taste. Another recipe on the site made me curious and interested in trying soon. As the name suggests, Salted Fudge Brownies combine salt and chocolate. From the photo, I assumed that coarse salt was sprinkled on top of the dark chocolate brownies. Instead, the recipe says to swirl the salt into the batter.
They have a recipe for Chunky S’mores Dipped Cupcakes that is unusual to me. Marshmallow frosting is piled high on graham-cracker cupcakes and then chilled to firm it up. The frosting is then dipped in melted chocolate to complete the trifecta.
Egg Timer
To keep me from sneaking a peek at our Easter baskets, my wife draped them with an extra tablecloth. This came about around midnight, when we got home from the Easter Vigil. She would be leaving early in the morning to sing at two more Masses and hated to miss seeing my first reaction to the baskets. That’s when I suggested covering them the same way furniture was covered by drop-cloths in old vampire movies.
My wife knew I would be happy to see the See’s Scotchmallow Eggs, which she had ordered from their catalog. The Marshmallow Peeps dipped in dark chocolate were not a surprise because I had purchased them at Food City a few days earlier. The Peeps Freezer Pops were new to me. I put them in the freezer right away and will get to them eventually. I hope that the “marshmallow flavor” doesn’t taste like vanilla.
A Twitter joke from Russell Biven reminded me of an Easter spent with friends in California. Russell said he couldn’t wait to hide eggs this year so he could find the eggs from last year. One year at the annual egg hunt that we did with our friends Anja and Charlie and their family, I wrote the previous year on an egg. This year, I helped my wife by decorating one egg. Although instead of writing “2010″ on it, I just wrote “Last Year.”
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