Squaw Valley: Northern Lights chili

There aren't many deals in Squaw Valley U.S.A., home of the $9 sandwich. But the $6 chili from Northern Lights in the Olympic House is one of them.

Proprietor Alan serving his delicious concoction.

food: vegetables arranged to have IQ of 142

Back to Millennium Restaurant. Interesting to compare and contrast with an earlier visit. No single standout ingredient like the mushrooms to end all mushrooms.

Start simpleRoasted BeetsThen move to Cauliflower & Cipollini Onion Pakora
spicy coconut & cilantro chutney, cardamom scented pear-curry leaf relishyummy, creamy, delicious fusion food but you could imagine other restaurants like Tangerine getting lucky and delivering this.

Now main course, read very very carefully
Smoked Cherry Chard & French Lentil Roulade
crisp olive oil crust, black chanterelle & merlot reduction, Meyer lemon & rosemary roasted artichoke & potato gratin, fried capers, grilled endive & blood orangeAny good restaurant would be overjoyed just to come up with the artichoke and potato gratin. Greens Restaurant, fine though they are, would have put the chard and roulade (a slice of a roll) together with the fried capers and been well satisfied. But Eric Tucker's kitchen is taking your mouth places you didn't know existed. The endive is so tart and bitter it's close to a wincing bite of grapefruit. It makes you return to the other elements to experience them anew. The blood orange is another taste juxtaposed with the rest.

My date had a similar tongue overdrive.Seared Emerald Rice Cake
sauté of jerked seitan, crisp plantains, brassicas, baby erbette chard, ginger scented coconut & winter squash puree, Seville orange & habanero coulisThe moist chewy rice sits in repose at the center of a solar system of tastes and ingredients, and all the planets align. Anyone else would have focused on the habanero, but here it's just a slight harmonic. I re-read the menu over and over to make sense of all the ingredients.

It was so stimulating that I circled back for another starterGrilled Maitake Mushroom Flatbread
seared baby onions, fava greens, pine nuts, cashew garlic cream, bitter green saladUnlike the main courses this dish wasn't smarter than its eater, it was almost a pizza. But the bitter, peppery green salad brought each mouthful to life, and the touch of cashew garlic cream was soft, warm, unbelievable.

You're a vegetable, you're a vegetable
Still they hate you, you're a vegetable
You're just a buffet, you're a vegetable
They eat off of you, you're a vegetable

-- Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' Michael Jackson off Thriller (25 years old)

ultimate nutrition eating guide

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That's it. Then Michael Pollan in the New York Times spends 12 pages explaining how it all got so complicated. Great stuff, including how the processed food industry, scientists, and journalists benefit from the confusing focus on nutrients instead of food. It all started in 1977, when a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition "drafted a straightforward set of dietary guidelines calling on Americans to cut down on red meat and dairy products." The food industry went nuts, so instead we get “Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.” Nutrient information replaces food information. So you have the sad spectacle of people eating carb and protein bars instead of real food, or eating artificial chocolate cake and believing it's OK since "Now with Omega-3!"

Of course it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.

[People in studies lie about what they eat], judging by the huge disparity between the total number of food calories produced every day for each American (3,900 calories) and the average number of those calories Americans own up to chomping: 2,000.

our bodies have a longstanding and sustainable relationship to corn that we do not have to high-fructose corn syrup

Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick. It’s gotten good at extending the lives of people with heart disease, and now it’s working on obesity and diabetes.

Long but excellent.

food: tastiest mushrooms ever

I hadn't eaten a memorable meal in ages, since some toasted gnocchi a year ago. Another pasta, another fish, some fresh vegetables on the side, a novel sushi combination, yadda yadda. Have I become hopelessly jaded?

Or maybe most restaurants don't work hard enough. We returned to Millenium Restaurant for a sensational meal.

Orange Glazed Exotic Mushrooms
toasted crostini, herbed lemon pesto, cherry tomatoes

sounds like any other bruschetta-type appetizer, but those were by far the best mushrooms I have ever tasted.

Blackberry BBQ Tempeh
warm roasted corn, sweet pepper & brown rice salad, orange vinaigrette, ginger cucumber pickle, toasted pecans

was exquisitely tasty. I sat there for an hour grinning like an idiot making subvocal grunting noises (a habit I picked up from one of our dogs, it's his version of purring). My significant partner other domestic had a crazy dessert of avocado and red Hawaiian salt and lemon zests that tasted like nothing else. Millenium's chef Eric Tucker is operating on a higher plane than a merely fine restaurant. And it's a vegan restaurant.

I shouldn't be surprised, years ago at Millenium's old location I had a warm chocolate cake that brought tears to my eyes.

Like skiing without the effort.

Categories: food, MilleniumRestaurant, gourmet, vegetarian, pleasure