Sweet Supermarket
Martta Borromeo
Since 1994, Samuel's Sweet Shop has sweetened the quaint upstate New York town of Rhinebeck with classic confections, decadent chocolates, delicious baked goods, and Partners coffee, the very best cup o' Joe around!
We know how it ends for the frog, right? And while I am not about to embark upon a diatribe extracting the merits of foie gras consumption, I am going to bend one of the hard and fast rules I set for myself late into last summer.
And there are three sweet flavors that I know of -- this like, apple pie, a chocolate fudge that tastes just like slipping your feet into a pair of Hermes shoes (indulgent and luxurious in an almost sacrilege way)
It reminds me of a late twenty-something-someone who is out dancing at an underground place where people dance. She is wearing a ribbed cotton tank top with rhinestone embellishment on the spaghetti straps and you can see her nipples through the shirt. She is not at all bogged down by lore that would make her believe they are completely offensive. She seems really to love them. Her nipples, I mean.
I am not a fan of self-deception \u2014 it is the ultimate betrayal. I have seen (experienced) precisely how it interacts with self-sabotage, convincing you slowly and surely over time, while you reside like a frog at the bottom of a beaker full of warm water getting hotter and hotter until it reaches boiling point, that the water is not boiling -- that it\u2019s just in your head.
Self-deception is in fact the ultimate betrayal, but when you are deceiving yourself into believing that you are eating, say, a churro dipped in caramel sauce when actually, you\u2019re having like, a puff made from cassava or some depressing grain-free pretzel rod that is limper than an $5 umbrella pole dipped in Bitchin\u2019s bitchin sweet sauce, you are betraying no one but the receptors in your brain that ask you for another hit of dopamine, waiting eagerly for your Achilles heel to come in like a lamb and never leave.
I went back to the vanguard of whole foods (that is, Whole Foods) at the end of last week to get some basic perishables like eggs, radish, veggie sticks, jarred tuna marinated in jalapeno oil, and almond butter-filled pretzel nubs when I happened upon Bitchin\u2019s sweet sauce in the refrigerated section right by checkout on the ground floor of the aforementioned vanguard of whole foods.
I always wonder why they are so hell-bent on stocking that fridge with drinks. I mean, I get it. I\u2019m sure they\u2019ve done tons of research on what makes the most sense to keep close to checkout or like, what most people are likely to spend money on, what they might decide they need on their way out, etc., but I commend the Whole Foods on 88th street for having taken the selfless risk of delighting their patrons in a full wall of non-essential dips on their way out.
There are like, 16 varieties of hummus (though if I\u2019m honest, very few of them are worth fucking with; the exception to which might be Abraham\u2019s olive and herb \u201Chummos\u201D), at least 5 of tzatziki (have never purchased tzatziki, never chosen to consume it when dining out either), some versions of babaganoush (though you know where I stand on The Baba), even more of some salsa and this one brand, Bitchin\u2019 Sauce, which I discovered last summer as a perfectly adequate substitute to that dramatically involved lentil dip I used to make at home.
Bitchin\u2019 Sauce is full of fuel: almonds and nutritional yeast, to be exact. The flavor profiles are not complicated: chipotle, red pepper, green onion, pesto, cilantro, and on. It is tangy, and refreshing, and filling if not highly specified in taste and therefore best to enjoy in low dose quantities. (Don\u2019t buy them all on your first go! I did this once.)
You want to be friends with her -- she seems fun! And so nice! -- but you\u2019re also kind of intimidated by how unapologetically free she seems to be inside of herself, even more, that she looks so fucking good in her stupid (awesome) tank top and nipples and uncomfortable shoes. It\u2019s kind of like holding a mirror up to yourself, exposing all your own ugliness then realizing that you can\u2019t blame anyone but yourself for it because the ugliness is totally a feigned illusion -- a mere reflection of the gaps between how you feel about yourself and how you want to feel about yourself.
Also, it tastes pretty good with just about anything -- I\u2019m talking celery, carrots, I\u2019ve even tried it with a cucumber. I like to dip in a rice roll when I want something starchy and think the most illicit pairing I\u2019ve encountered so far, laddering up to a grand total of exactly 9 grams of sugar includes smearing the sauce between two cookies that I buy from this Jewish market on 81st street called Tomer\u2019s.
There\u2019s this made-in-my-own kitchen brand stocked there called Grandma Sallie\u2019s. Her labels are like, literally the tags you buy at Duane Reade \u2014 it makes me love her so much. She makes these cookies, which are actually clusters of crushed nuts and dark chocolate chips with vanilla extract and maybe some egg whites, I\u2019m not sure, I have to revisit the packaging.
So anyway, I spread the spread on one side of the cookie, fold (crack) it (the cookie) in half so it becomes a sandwich, and then I sit back and observe as my hand travels towards my mouth until finally, the cookie reaches the orifice and I take a bite, chew and chew while my tastebuds become the very twenty-something-someone dancer described above. It\u2019s like, she\u2019s not wearing rhinestones, but she does have a knack for choc chips and that is validating enough to let her let her hair down.
In delivering unto myself a good excuse to circumvent a propensity towards, I don\u2019t know, peanut butter cups hidden and crushed graham crackers hidden deep within chocolate ice cream that is covered in fluff or drenched in something as gooey as caramel sauce (malt balls for dessert!) so as to similarly circumvent the kind of profound sugar spike that always results in a comedown, I have found myself
Who among us hasn't impulse-bought a carton of berries at the grocery store? Whether it was a trance-like state induced by the hum of the fluorescent lights, the promise of warmer weather, or just a crazy-low sale price, we've all been there. We've all bought supermarket strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, or blackberries only to discover that they're nothing like the sweet, market-fresh treats of high July. (If you happen to live in California, please wipe that satisfied grin off your face and FedEx us a package of berries, will you?). You're hoping for earth candy, but what you get instead is a a somewhat hard, kinda sour, slightly astringent, and definitely not juicy taste. Eating them raw might be a little disappointing, so here are five sure-fire ways to make out-of-season or generally "meh" berries taste better.
It's science, or something: Adding sugar, eggs, and butter to anything makes it taste better. So it's no surprise that muffins, cakes, and scones made with berries are greater than the sum of their parts. But there's another reason that baking berries makes them taste better: Their flavors become concentrated when cooked, intensifying the sweet notes. Toss the fruit in a light dusting of flour before adding them to the batter so they become suspended in the baked good; otherwise, they'll sink to the bottom in a big berry pile. Or, make a crisp, cobbler, or crumble. The buttery, crunchy topping is a perfect foil for sweetened, jammy, just-cooked berries.
As mentioned above, cooking berries intensifies their sweetness. And sure, the amount of sugar that goes into jams and preserves doesn't hurt, either. But we're guessing you weren't planning on spending a whole day cooking and canning jam when you tossed that plastic clamshell of raspberries into your cart. Instead, cook down the berries with sugar in a skillet or sauce pot, stirring and mashing gently with a wooden spoon until they release their juices. Be mindful of splatter: The berries will spit and pop as they cook. The whole process takes less than half an hour, and will last in the fridge for a few weeks according to the BA test kitchen (all that sugar acts as a preservative).
In fact, we'd argue that the best berries for smoothies are slightly subpar. Free life advice: Freeze them first, and you won't need to water down your smoothie with ice cubes. When berries are perfectly ripe and sweet, they don't need much to shine. But start adding chia seeds, coconut milk, banana, avocado, kale, mint, and almond butter and the subtle sweetness of a blueberry will get lost.
Muddling berries into fizzy water is an easy way to get spa vibes at home. Additionally, if you're looking to up your h2o intake, this is a very easy way to trick yourself into thinking that drinking water is actually fun. Add a splash of lime juice, a dash of simple syrup, and you've got yourself a mocktail. Or take it to the next level: Tipple a little vodka, gin, sparkling wine, or bourbon over those muddled berries.