Tag: Food

The Care Package Jess Brings Rory

Macaroni Cheese

Hamburgers

French fries

Salad

Chocolate brownies

Layer cake???

The care package is a more elaborate version of what Luke brought Lorelai for the Bid-on-a-Basket Fundraiser when they ate a picnic in the gazebo, as if Jess is trying to give Rory even more. It might be another sign that he is paying too much for her or offering Rory too much. He’s all for the big gestures – similar to Dean and his gift of a car.

The food is brought in a box which once contained bleach. I’m not sure if there’s any significance to that, but it’s provocative (sperm is often said to smell of bleach, for example) and slightly off-putting.

Dinner at the Spa

EMILY: They certainly do like their tofu here, don’t they?

LORELAI: And the word steamed. Well, they have dessert at least. Cookies sweetened with sprouted mung bean.

Tofu ends up being the villain of the piece, once again. Vegan food nearly always seems to be treated as some sort of disgusting torture on Gilmore Girls! The cookies would be made from sprouted mung bean flour, and I have seen them spruiked as a healthy detox snack. The recipe said they taste like peanut butter cookies without the peanut butter. So um … like nothing???

I don’t actually think it’s very believable that a luxury East Coast spa would serve only this kind of food for dinner. They exist to pamper people, and the ones I saw were handing around cocktails and glasses of wine while people were having pedicures in their robes – exactly the sort of thing Emily and Lorelai would have enjoyed. It seems more like something a Californian health and wellness sort of spa would serve. However, we need an excuse for them to leave to get a steak dinner, so this is it.

Mr Peanut

PARIS: This was the big night you had planned – a rendezvous with Mr. Peanut?

Mr Peanut is the advertising mascot for Planters Peanut Company, depicted as a peanut in the shell dressed as a gentleman, in top hat and monocle. Planters was founded in 1906 in Pennsylvania; Mr Peanut was created in 1916 after a schoolboy named Antonio Gentile won a design contest, with alterations made by artist Andrew S. Wallach.

Rory opens the door to Paris dressed in pyjamas decorated with Mr Peanut-like figures. (Rory’s pyjamas often have food themes; Lorelai said her “cutest” pyjamas had cupcakes on them).

Rory’s Indian Food Order

Chicken vindaloo (a spicy dish, originally from Goa, and based on a Portuguese dish) [pictured]

3 Samosas (savoury pastry appetisers)

2 serves garlic naan bread (a flatbread)

Rice

Green sauce (actually green chutney, made with mint and cilantro, to use as a dipping sauce)

She orders from a business called Sandeep’s, so there’s an Indian restaurant in town which delivers. Stars Hollow has a lot of food options for a small place!

The delivery from Sandeep’s never actually arrives – Rory is seen ordering it on the phone, then Jess turns up with food, and they eat that instead. It’s possible that the delivery person from Sandeep’s did get there, but it was never shown on screen, or that Rory rang straight back and cancelled the order, also offscreen.

Ranch Dressing

EMILY: Oh Lorelai, come over here, look. They have cucumber slices in the water.

LORELAI: Oh wow! Now if they have ranch dressing in the soap dispensers, this place is great.

Ranch dressing is an American salad dressing made from buttermilk, onion, garlic, mustard, herbs and spices mixed into a mayonnaise base. It was invented in Alaska in 1949 by a plumbing contractor from Nebraska named Steve Henson, looking for something that his crew would enjoy eating on their salad.

He bought a guest ranch in California in 1956, naming it Hidden Valley Ranch and putting his dressing on the menu. Although the ranch closed only a few years later, Henson was making so much money from selling his “ranch dressing” that it became the headquarters for his thriving condiments business. In1972, Clorox bought the Hidden Valley Branch brand for $8 million.

Ranch dressing has been the most popular salad dressing in the US since 1992.

Euell Gibbons

LORELAI: So, are you a healthy eater like Luke?
JESS: No. No one’s a healthy eater like Luke. Euell Gibbons wasn’t a healthy eater like Luke … Many parts of a pine tree are edible.

Euell Gibbons (1911-1975), outdoorsman and early health food advocate. He promoted eating wild food during the 1960s, having begun foraging for food as a teenager to supplement the family diet. His books on wild food were instant successes, and he became a celebrity, appearing on TV shows such as The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and The Carol Burnett Show, often good-naturedly sending himself up by pretending to eat wooden plaques and so on.

A 1974 television commercial for Grape-Nuts cereal featured Gibbons asking viewers “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.” While he recommended eating Grape Nuts over eating pine trees (Grape Nuts’ taste “reminds me of wild hickory nuts”), the quote caught the public’s imagination and fuelled his celebrity status.

How Jess knows about Euell Gibbons and the advertisement, which was broadcast ten years before Jess was born, is a mystery. Teenagers seem to have an amazing knowledge of 1960s and 1970s pop culture in the Gilmore Girls world.

Szechuan Chicken

This is one of the many chicken-based Chinese dishes Lorelai and Rory bought the night before.

Szechuan Chicken is a spicy stir-fry of chicken cooked with Szechuan peppercorns and chilis. It originated from the Sichuan district of southwestern China. It usually contains vegetables, especially red peppers, and sometimes peanuts, as well as hoi sin sauce.