Comforting Freshness at BK Larder

After my month-long holiday break in the Midwest, I finally returned to my Brooklyn apartment this afternoon to a truly unnerving sight. As I was packing last night, an unshakable sense of foreboding washed over me as I pondered which food item I had forgotten to dispose of roughly 30 days prior. Dropping my luggage by the door, I feverishly scoured my small apartment to find that my fridge was pristinely empty, the trash had been taken out and the dates on the condiments were reassuringly far off.

Yet, upon opening my 'pantry' (if you can call my bread-dedicated [breadicated?] cabinet that), I found the two menacing bread products that had slipped my mind: a loaf of generic, grocery store brand, whole wheat sandwich bread and a few organic whole wheat pita pockets from a local store. While the pitas were covered in a nauseating blanket of furry green mold (contained safely inside of a plastic bag), the sandwich bread (approximately a month and half old at this point...) looked as if it was fresh from the grocery store.

Now, while I find mold as gross as the next girl, I found the more disturbing of the two to be the 'bakery fresh'-looking sandwich bread that was-according to traditional logic-way past its prime. Bread is supposed to get stale and moldy and inedible after a few days or at most a week. I mean, isn't that why it's so cheap? Why coffee shop bagels and muffins are a dollar for a whole bag the day after? Why bread boxes were invented?

Here is where I make a sweeping New Year's resolution to swear off overly-preservative-packed food items: an easy thing to say, a harder thing to actually do since preservatives lurk unnoticed in even the most simplistic, wholesome and 'natural' of foods. I don't know about you, but living to be 157 because of the food I eat (a human science experiment in pickling) is not one of my long term life goals (ha!).

And here's where the food reviewing comes in: by shopping and noshing at Brooklyn Larder *-a neighborhood newcomer between Prospect Heights and Park Slope-this resolution will be considerably easier to keep.

While I could write a short novel on all of the goodies the Larder carries (local sausage, coffee, tea, cheese, bread, condiments, chocolate, beer, wine, Euro sodas, oh my!), I'm going to focus on a single bowl of soup and a crunchy hunk of (undoubtedly) fresh bread. Concocting a new hearty soup daily, the Larder intermittently offers chicken noodles, tomato bisques and interesting stews. On the day I happened into the Larder, it was love at first sight as I noted that the daily special was a beer cheese soup-perfect for one of those bitterly crisp fall days.

Unlike traditional bar fare, this beer cheese soup was actually beer-based with chunks of tangy cheddar mingling with thin sliced onions in the thin beer broth-a dish in which the beer took center stage. Whipped together that morning, I took comfort in the fact that I could identify each of the soup's ingredients just by sight.

At a window seat, I lingered over my $5 bowl of soup, dipping hunks of their crusty French bread amongst the cheese chunks and onions, for an inordinate amount of time oogling over the menu and pondering what I would get on my next visit. A great supplement to your weekly grocery store shopping, the Larder also is just one of those nonchalant, local places that you want to be-its proximity automatically making you that much cooler.

Squelching dietary preservatives has never promised this much cultural capital.

Price: Varies, but their lunch special is $12 for a soup, sandwich, cookie and soda.

Location: 228 Flatbush Ave.

Subway: 2, 3, 4 at Bergen St.

According to Wikipedia, a larder is a cool place to store food prior to use. They were common before the invention of the refrigerator.