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Gastronomique: How 'Bout Some Christmas Falafel?
SFist wants peace in the universe, but sometimes we feel like starting our own war on Christmas. More specifically, the war on Frito-Lay's conspicuous Christmas advertising displays in our own local Safeway. We can bemoan the commercialization of Christmas --heck, we can rage against the rape of Christmas by the forces of the free market -- but this particular example adds a second tier of evil: not only does Frito-Lay appropriate the values of Christmas for marketing purpose, they leverage the imagery to force-feed junk into our kids.
In the market Safeway (please let us know if you have seen this elsewhere in comments), a 10 feet tall cardboard structure depicts a cartoonish Santa on a sleigh holding cartoonish snack packages: kids, if you like Santa, you must like chips. Children obesity, children shmobesity. (15% of children age 6 to 11 are obese, as opposed to a 5% twenty years ago. Another 15% is at risk.)
We already bitched about Frito-Lay advertising targeting the young ones. So we called them, and an assuaging lady told us "it is snack food, it is not meant as a replacement for a whole meal." OK, but why target the children? "It is meant for the whole family". Fine, but the advertisement in Safeway is not meant for the whole family, is it? "I will forward you to a public health person who will get back to you." Unfortunately, not in time for this post.
After the jump: some Christmas love, instead of some cheap chip hate.
So stay away from them chips, please. What to eat, then? For Christmas, the food identity is a bit more diluted than Thanksgiving: the turkey is still there --us French eat it with a chestnut stuffing on Christmas day, dinde aux marrons-- but not as dominating a presence. And there are few other items to provide comfort during the holidays. Oysters are a typical opening for a Christmas meal, and SFist Derrick provided a handy tutorial.
But most of the food we associate with Christmas belongs in the sweet end of the spectrum, Santa displays of salty chips be damned. We salivate over a bûche de Noël with a Douglas Fir essence gelato. More casually, we recommend three items, which we tried for you (and please feel free to add your seasonal recommendations in comments): Strauss creamery's egg nog, made of a few simple natural, organic ingredients: cream, egg yolk, sugar, nutmeg. Actually it's so simple you could make it yourself, perhaps adding rum to the recipe, but Strauss's eggnog comes in a nifty glass bottle that you feel really proud to bring back to protect the environment. And the taste will be consistently delicious.
Talking about eggnog, we purchased the ice cream flavored with it at Mitchell's. You can buy the drink there as well, but why would you, when you can get it mixed into a luscious and fluffy ice cream?
And lastly, we found our Christmas favorite tradition: marzipan stollen, the German coffee cake filled with dried fruits and almond paste. We saw plenty at Trader Joe's and the like, but we wanted ours preservative free. We eventually got some from Arizmendi bakery, which sells a rich fresh stollen and other Christmas specials. Other locations (which we haven't tried): Sterntaler bakery (click the link for where to find the stollen), whole foods or in the East bay, La Farine. Have yourself a Merry Christmas.