Posts Tagged ‘Easy-Bake Oven’
“In the last analysis, a pickle is a cucumber with experience”*…
The pickle is Gen Z’s avocado; it’s a passion and a personality. But maybe, Jaya Saxena suggests, that’s missing the point…
In the Top Chef episode “Pickle Me This,” which aired on April 17, host Kristen Kish, in power clashing greens, announces that two teams of chefs must go head to head in creating an all-pickle dinner. The five-course meal was to feature different kinds of pickles in every course — not kimchi or achar necessarily, but instead the cornichons and dill of the European influence. There were charred pickles with cured mackerel, cucumber and celeriac pickle gelee, chef Massimo Piedimonte’s winning fried pickle cannolo, and of course a bread and butter pickle curd with dill ice cream. Individually, each dish sounded great, and judge Tom Colicchio said two of the dishes, including the dessert, were some of the best he’s ever had on the show.
Top Chef contestants often have to create meals utilizing an ingredient that’s in the culinary zeitgeist. Some of those meals are more successful than others. But a successful five-course meal of all things pickles illustrates the strange place in culture the pickle holds now: both cheffy and with diverse-enough flavor profiles to inspire chefs in fierce competition, but obvious and basic enough to also be a little bit of a joke. It’s the food of the moment, both sincerely and ironically.
As Rebecca Jennings wrote in Vox, pickles are Gen Z’s avocado, a viral food that people genuinely enjoy: They “pair well with other contemporary food trends like dirty martinis and canned cocktails, and fit right in with aesthetically pleasing butter boards and “girl dinner” spreads.” But people are also consuming pickles for the meme of it all. There are pickle chips, pickle popcorn, Flamin’ Hot pickle Cheetos, and pickle seltzer. Popeyes recently introduced an entire pickle menu, including pickle lemonade. 21Seeds wants you to make a spicy pickle martini with its tequila, and people are putting pickles in their soda. Sweetgreen has pickle ketchup, and of course Molly Baz has dill pickle mayo. And like any “it” food nowadays, the pickle has moved into fashion and home decor.
Like with any trend, though, it’s kind of exhausting when it’s everywhere. Pickles have become subject to the flavor-ification of actual foods; half the time, pickle-flavored anything is an unsatisfying approximation of the flavor of Central European-style pickled cucumbers — typically a combination of salt, vinegar, and artificial dill which evokes none of the live-culture fizz that hums through the real thing. It’s that complexity we crave, herbs and lactic acid and often spices like coriander.
But for the pickle to be the centerpiece of an entire five-course meal, or for it to be one’s personality to the point that it flavors every snack in one’s house, slightly misses the point of the pickle. A Popeyes meal of fried pickles and pickle glazed wings washed down with a pickle lemonade serves no refreshing alternative to the onslaught of puckering pickle potency. A filthy martini and a bowl of pickle popcorn offers no relief. What makes pickles great on a sandwich or a charcuterie board is usually that the pungent brine and preserving salt make for a great contrast to any creamy, sweet or rich ingredients. Pickles are salt and acid bombs that are delicious on their own, but also enhance every other flavor. It’s why olives are often served with bread and cheese plates have all that cheese. The back and forth is what makes pickles truly shine.
Obviously no one is forcing anyone to only consume pickles, and if that is indeed what your taste buds crave, then congrats on being the moment! But put pickles everywhere and they cease to be a treat, the shining zinging bite to zap you into whatever else you’re eating. Maybe they should stay a sometimes food…
The flavor of the moment: “Is There Too Much Pickle?” from @jayasaxena.com in @eater.bsky.social.
Possibly apposite?: “Will Gen Z’s Pivot to the Republican Party Last?– It’s not only young men who lean conservative. The youngest female voters are also abandoning the Democratic Party.” (gift article)
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As we test our tastebuds, we might recall that it was on this date in 2009 that 12 year old Catherine Ralston ( a member of Gen Z) was named Easy-Bake “Baker of the Year” for her “Queen of Hearts Strawberry Tart.” The Easy-Bake Oven is, of course, a working toy oven that Kenner introduced in 1963 (more than 16 million Easy-Bake Ovens (in 11 models) had been sold by 1997), and which Hasbro still manufactures.
“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories”*…
Mel Birnkrant is a successful toy designer, creator both of items that succeeded in the toy market (e.g., the Outer Space Men and Baby Face), and (with his wife Eunice) of the output of “Boutique Fantastique,” handcrafted “‘authentic reproductions’ of antique toys and music boxes that never existed in the first place” (or, as The New York Times put it in a review of a show of their work at the Cooper Union Museum, “antiques that never were”).
But he is probably as well known– at least in the circle of aficionados of which he is a part– as the force behind The Birnkrant Collection of Mickey Mouse & Comic Characters, unique in both its breadth and it depth…
The Birnkrant Collection of Mickey Mouse & Comic Characters was christened “MOUSE HEAVEN” by our good friend Kenneth Anger [Kenneth Anger… Kenneth Anger!] many years ago, long before he made his film of the same name. Although, the Collection encompasses the vast expanse of Comic Character Imagery, beginning at the Turn of the 20th Century, right up through the early 1940s, and is about much more than merely Mickey. The title “stuck”, and over time, in my own mind, it came to include Everything!
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A collection, like this, can only happen, once in a lifetime, and by some twist of fate, that lifetime happened to be mine. For better, or for worse, the likes of it could never be amassed again. So this is it, about as good as Comic Character Collecting gets. To duplicate what you are about to see would require just three things: 1. Infinite resources. 2. A Time Machine, you’d have to be there, either living from 1890 to 1945, or be in attendance at all the great flea markets, antique shows, and toy shows on the East Coast, for the past 50 years, and be able to run faster than me. And, finally, 3. You’d have to BE me. All this only looks haphazard, actually, its unified by a single vision. Everything here is related, It all goes together, in a way that few perceive.
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I’m not a historian. My interest in the items I collected all my life was always purely Visual. They are simply, flat out, Works of Art to me. So don’t expect a history of the various characters they portray. As interesting as that may be, it was never what interested me. What I learned, along the way, about the various comic characters and their creators was purely secondary. That scant knowledge was only used as clues to help me find more of the same. Thus, my commentary, as we go along, will serve only one purpose, I will strive to help you see these Works of Art as Works of Art. But, be forewarned, you’ll learn little of their stories, and who they were, historically. It’s all about the way they look to me. These Icons are the Graven Images of would-be Gods and Goddesses, in the Comic Character Pantheon. I will present them as Iconic Idols, worthy recipients of Idolatry, and spare you the theology…
Take the online tour of Mouse Heaven. And then there’s Anger’s film…
* Walter Benjamin
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As we wander in wonder, we might recall that it was on this date in 2009 that 12 year old Catherine Ralston was named Easy-Bake “Baker of the Year” for her “Queen of Hearts Strawberry Tart.” The Easy-Bake Oven is, of course, a working toy oven that Kenner introduced in 1963, and which Hasbro still manufactures. Indeed, more than 16 million Easy-Bake Ovens (in 11 models) had been sold.
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