mary eats

is not a MAC shade of lipstick or the stage name for  burlesque dancer. Not yet anyway. I only know it as a natural rind so spreadable cows milk cheese out of Ft. Collins Colorado.  Nutty with an addictive salty finish, a wee wheel comes neatly packed at $8.99 for 5.3oz, and eats like cured ham and domestic brie made love one night only to get out of bed two weeks later. The orange tint is an intentional effect of smearing, where the cheese is rubbed by hand over the brief aging process to develop color in the rind and the flavor of the cheese. Festive for an autumnal cheese plate, but, who really needs an excuse to buy cheese? Go on, do it, just resist the urge to add “avec moi, ce sori.” when asking for it by name at the cheese counter.

Snow white and as soft as butter, Capricho de Cabra is a creamy and mellow young Spanish goat cheese. Produced from Murciana goats, the high fat content of the milk coupled with high traces of protein make for one versatile cheese, sans the graininess or grassiness associated with most young goat curds. Spread on morning toast then slather with jam, crumble atop a beet and arugula salad, cut into rounds, coat with bread crumbs and bake, or slather on your arm and lick off. It’s up to you.

Available at Whole Foods $11.99 a pound, around 3-4 bucks a container.

It’s a traditional Flemish red ale with an almost impossible name to pronounce: vich-ten-AAR? VICH-ten aar? vich-TEN-aar? (From a brewery with a more impossible name to pronounce- Brouwerij Verhaeghe). Chilled, this refreshing sipper smacks you in the face with notes of sour fruit, vanilla, and port. No artificial flavors added (this ain’t DeKuyper’s sour apple puckers schnapps), Vichtenaar is matured in oak casks for a minimum of 8 months. Perfect for shaking up your beer routine and duping all your wine friends who, “don’t drink beer.”

Vichtenaar is sold by the bottle, $2.99 at Whole Foods locations around Seattle

Peppadews* are small, bulbus, more-sweet-than-hot pepper hailing from South Africa packed in vinegar, much like a pepperoncini. Eat these candy apple red cuties off your finger as you would a black olive or use them as a vehicle for your favorite spread, blue cheese and cream cheese, cherve and feta, crab salad, anything with a creamy counterpoint for the peppadew’s piquant edge. Spice up baked savory muffins and breads, blend them into a dip, or add to an omelet.

Found usually in olive bars of upscale grocery stores, Peppadews are sometimes available in jars from gourmet food stores.

Peppadews in bulk run about $9.99 a pound at Whole Foods and Metropolitan Markets around the Seattle area. Jars are $7.99 at Whole Foods

*Peppadew is a brand name, Peppadew international holding all the rights to the growing, packing and distribution of the fruit. The line expands this year with hot sauces, chips, and more.

Kkan Ma Neul, or Vinegared Garlic, is soy sauce pickled whole cloves of garlic ready to eat from the package. Salty and sour, these flavor bombs are mellower version of their raw brother, but bring the acid ammo when sliced and added to sauteed greens or garnishing a steak. If you are feeling particularly sassy, forgo the olives and spear three on a pick, for your bloody Mary.

The package label is in Korean, with limited, and sometimes confusing English fine print. Here’s a hint: they’re usually found in the cooler of the produce section.

Kka Ma Neul runs between $2.50 and $3.00 and is available at Pal-Do World, three locations around the Sound, Including 17424 Highway 99 Lynnwood, WA 98037

Oh snap. Look who’s giving Shin Ramyeon a run for it’s money.

Red Bean Therapy. My mind runs wild at the thought of what this drink could be. At first, a thick pink sticky liquid- like the bottom of a dish of pat bing su, or maybe a pink-y milk like beverage, something like strawberry quick.

What it is however, is this; a barley tea like beverage, thickened with starch (seriously, this drink is chewy almost), and boasting the health benefits of red bean.

As a diet drink, no doubt it is thickened to make you feel more full, but it’s translucent appearance doesn’t jive with it’s texture. I feel like I’m drinking jell-o before it has had time to set up. Ew. Perhaps if the drink were more opaque I’d be down.

I never loved you chameh.

In fact, when offered to me, I found you lacking in flavor and wondering if you were even ripe. But as you are the ubiquitous summer fruit of Seoul, I followed suit and ate you peeled and cubed, membrane, seeds and all.

Growing up a sucker for fresh juicy honeydew and cantaloupe, each time I raised a bejeweled cocktail fork spearing a cube of you, chameh, I for a moment envisioned a honey like nectar being released under the pressure of my bite. And each time I was met with the same result; your quizzically firm flesh, your flavor too subtle to pin down, and a lacking sweetness.

Despite my indifference towards you, I couldn’t resist your oblong yellow and silver striped beauty this last weekend. All sorts of thoughts are now running through my head as to what, if anything, to do with you.

Because your taste is more akin to the cucumber-ish white of a watermelon, I’m nixing the idea or wrapping spears in proscuitto and drizzling with balsamic reduction.

I could go the route of pickling you, chameh, a la pickled watermelon rinds, or the way of my friend Caroline’s mother who would make kimchi out of left over watermelon rind.

Taking a cue from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, I could go savory and sauté you with a touch of soy, garlic, and gagnib.

Perhaps you’d do nicely in the Japanese pickling treatment Shiba-zuke?

One thread on Chow Hound suggested sprinkling spears of you with sugar and eating. Easy enough.

Thoughts? Ideas?

One great thing about not being able to understand much Korean is that I am not suspect to advertisements boasting the newest diet fads. While folks around me are buying the lasted fruit vinegars to mix into their waters, or making a diet from three tomatoes a day, I can blissfully go about my day, munching away on a box of chocolate digestive cookies.

Back in the states, shirataki noodles (tofu shaped like noodles) are receiving a lot of attention as the new low-carb food. Until running across beloved babblings post I had been blissfully unaware of their existence.

Does anyone know if Shirataki noodles exist in Korea? I must try them. I am trying to imagine the texture of a tofu noodle, and am coming up blank.

My Goodness, My Chinggis!

After a month long dusty and wind chapped trip through Mongolia our friend at the great state returned to Seoul with 5 tallboys of Mongolia’s national brew. Chinggis.

Extra hoppy, with a kick of skunk, Chinggis, no doubt refreshes in the dry Gobi desert.

Given his penchant for things of the skunky nature (it was said that Mongol warriors purposely did not shower as to make themselves more fierce) I think Genghis would approve.