Pies are not my forte. When I was a teaching assistant for a food science lab in grad school, we had one lab that I nicknamed the Salute to Crisco. Students made crusts with different fats (oil, butter, lard, and shortening), and then judged them on flakiness. The shortening crusts won hands down, courtesy of the hydrogenated vegetable oil and the now-vilified trans unsaturated fats. There was a stacking of the deck, however. The lard the students used was hydrogenated almost to the point of being entirely saturated. (Fun fact: Lard as it comes off the pig is relatively unsaturated. If we’d used non-hydrogenated lard, it would have won the contest.) I didn’t make pie crust at home until I discovered recipes using the food processor and all butter as the fat. Even then, pies are a once or twice a year production.
It’s high cherry season here in the Pacific Northwest. Julian had a hankering for cherry pie. He discovered an all-butter flaky pie crust and cherry pie recipes on seriouseats.com. He had me watch the pie crust video. The technique looked straightforward, but I was a bit put off by the blue nail polish on the demonstrator’s hands. (It’s the recovering Registered Dietitian in me.) The crust was as promised, easy to come together and roll. The crust went into the fridge to rest overnight, and the cherry filling making began. Since Julian is even less of a pastry-maker than I am, it fell to him to pit the cherries. I loaned him my old lab coat so the cherry juice wouldn’t splatter on his clothes. (Luckily, the pigment in cherries is water-soluble.) We used a mix of Bings and Rainiers. The thickener in the filling was tapioca starch. The pie took over an hour to bake. I was worried that it would be incinerated, but it came out golden brown.
The additional feature of the pie was cherry whipped cream. You marinate the cherry pits in heavy cream for a couple hours, then whip the cream. We used our nitrous oxide cream dispenser, otherwise known as the Whippy Thang. This was a mistake – the cream pretty much solidified within the container. Next time we’ll know to whip the cream the old-fashioned way.
The pie’s destination was the annual July 4th feed and fireworks-watching extravaganza at our friend BG’s house. It was very well received. Only a small piece returned home with us, and that didn’t last the night. We’d make this recipe again.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/07/06/can-we-bake-a-cherry-pie/
Every month the pornography hits our mailbox. In these libertine times, the publishers don’t bother with plain brown wrappers. They taunt us with saucy covers of voluptuous breasts, meaty legs, and strategically-placed coverage. Inside there’s even more to pique our desires: Cheeky peaches, plump balls, and tanned skin. It’s my monthly haul of food magazines. Add to this the cooking and food/nutrition-related books, and you have our home as a temple of food porn.
My predilection for food smut has parallels with other genres of pornography. It can be aspirational. Your average schlep has no hope of bedding a centerfold model, and I’m no more likely to make some of the recipes in my magazines. If I do make a recipe, the results aren’t as pretty or posed as the picture in the periodical. There’s an obsessional component to acquire a complete set of magazines in a particular genre. Both make good bedtime reading. And there are food magazines for every desire, from vegan to Paleo, pastry to cheese.
Food porn is different from sex porn. I can read my magazines on the bus without askance glances from fellow passengers. I often see others reading food porn, so I’m not alone in my predilection. I’m not ashamed to loan my porn to friends. I don’t have to hide them when my friends’ kids come to visit. As many magazines and cookbooks as I have, hiding them isn’t an option anyway. Other than potential weight gain, the aftereffects of reading food porn are relatively safe.
Julian keeps threatening to find me a twelve-step program to deal with my addiction. However, he benefits just as much as I do from reading the food porn. In the last two weeks alone, he’s made three recipes from recent issues. I think I’m safe.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/06/30/pure-smut/
Poutine is the provincial dish of Quebec. It consists of french fries doused with brown gravy and sprinkled with cheese curds (not grated cheese). It’s junk food kicked up a notch or two. Today we have invented a variation: Greek poutine.
We were at the Greenwood Car Show today and got hungry. We dove into Yanni’s, a Greek restaurant on Greenwood Avenue near the southern end of the car show. We ordered sandwiches (pork gyro, lamb burger) that came with Greek fries. These were fries festooned with feta and an herb mix of fresh parsley, thyme, and oregano. Julian said, “These look like the Greek version of poutine.” My reply was that it required tzatziki as the sauce. Opa! A dish is born. Note to Yanni’s: We will waive royalties should you choose to put this item on your menu. You’re welcome.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/06/30/greek-poutine/
Our garden is going gangbusters. Even the ferns, sedums, and ajugas in the shade are running wild. One of the fuchsias may be an exception. I rotated the pot to give the other side some more light. One side looked a little peaked. Julian claimed that the plant was “confused”. He claimed that rotating the pot confused the plant and forced it to grow in the opposite direction. “This happened last year with one of the hanging plants”. News to me, I thought all of last year’s hanging plants were quite happy.
Our friend LG came over last night for a consult. She thought the fuchsias looked good, but were a bit dry. She also suggested feeding them on a more frequent basis. We’ll see if these steps unconfuse them.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/06/25/confused-plants/
The current administration has apparently reversed its stance on family separation at the Mexican border. While the news sounds good, the damage has already been done.
- Over 2000 children have already been separated from their parents.
- There is no plan to reunite these families in the near future. Tracking these children, especially the babies and toddlers, is iffy at best.
- Some boys are being held in an impromptu tent detention facility outside El Paso.
- Immigrant girls have been moved out of Texas as far away as New York City.
- The administration wants to reverse the order that detained children be housed in licensed facilities. This increases the probability of abuse and neglect.
- Military lawyers are being solicited to prosecute immigrants in deportation hearings.
Don’t be fooled. Very little will change. There will still be traumatized children and a take all prisoners policy at the border. We can’t let this tragedy continue.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/06/20/the-damage-is-done/
Q: What do the following eras have in common?
- Nazi Germany
- Argentina under the military dictatorship of the 1970’s
- The current administration
A: Forced separation of parents and children.
Throughout history, despots knew that breaking up families was a key strategy to vanquish dissidents or undesirables. The Nazis separated children and parents to send them to their deaths in the concentration camps, either upon arrival or after torture, forced labor, or “experimentation”. The Argentine military junta had children of the desaparecidos adopted by couples sympathetic to the regime. The current administration’s strategy of separating families as a deterrent to further immigration just follows the well-worn path.
It should be no surprise that the children suffer most from this separation. Psychological trauma in early childhood is linked to serious physical and mental conditions later in life. The jailers (I refuse to call them caretakers) have been instructed not to pick up or console children in their custody. What sort of person can be so heartless as to not attempt to comfort a crying child? Young children don’t have resilience and coping skills, so the scars will be deep and long-lasting.
Fortunately, citizens are beginning to wake up to forced separations. Major religious denominations are denouncing the practice. We need to keep the pressure on politicians and the administration to reunite families and assure that immigrants are treated humanely.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/06/17/common-threads/
A friend of mine liked a post on LinkedIn about a grocery store opening in his town northeast of Boston. This, and a trip to my hometown, got me thinking about food deserts and how they may be more prevalent in rural areas than in cities.
What’s a food desert? It’s an urban neighborhood that’s more than a mile from a full-service grocery store, or a rural area that’s more than 10 miles from a grocery. The classic urban food desert has convenience stores or bodegas that sell food as an afterthought to cigarettes, beer, soda, and rolling papers. [Remember I live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal.] There may be a couple of sad bananas or green potatoes for sale, but not much else in the way of fresh fruit and vegetables. And unprocessed meat? Forget about it. To get produce or fresh meat, residents in urban food deserts have to take mass transit. Ever try to schlep full grocery bags on a bus or up and down subway stairs? Not an easy task, even for those in good physical shape. Lack of access to nutritious food is a definition of food insecurity.
While it seems counterintuitive, farm country is more at risk for food deserts. Consider the following:
• Mass transit is uncommon in the country. A car is necessary to go grocery shopping. This can be problematic for elderly folks who no longer drive or, as is the case in my hometown, bad weather makes any grocery store hard to access.
• Despite city folks’ conception, very few farm communities are fully self-sufficient. Pepsi orchards don’t exist. As farms get larger and devoted to commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat, tobacco), it can be more difficult to find locally-grown produce. Fruit and vegetable stands are mostly seasonal.
• Little family-run grocery stores have gone the way of the dodo bird in the country, especially as families move to suburbs or cities. Chain groceries are reluctant to move into rural areas. Amazon Fresh will never serve sparsely-populated areas. The cost of fuel to reach isolated communities is too high. Dollar stores are popular in the area near my hometown, but they don’t stock fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables. Walmart has moved into the grocery business; however, a superstore can still be far away from the smallest towns.
Here are a few potential solutions to rural food deserts. One innovation that deserves preservation from politics is the use of Electronic Benefit Transfers (alias Food Stamps) for farmers’ market and fruit/vegetable stand purchases. This program benefits both farmer and consumer. Another possibility that’s been used in Seattle food deserts is the grocery van. This is analogous to a food truck, although the contents are produce, dairy, and selected staples. Community-supported agriculture boxes could be expanded beyond the growing season and include items other than produce. Other creative ideas are needed to improve access to groceries in remote areas.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/06/11/food-deserts-in-farm-country/
Although I was raised in Hannibal, I consider Ithaca where I grew into myself. Although the Cornell campus and city bear little resemblance to what they were when I started college here, I still consider it home. The hills. Cayuga Lake. The Ithaca Commons.
This morning my former roommate Anne and I went out to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology for a tour. I’d never been out there before. Julian had collaborated with some of the staff on their projects back when he was working in the Neurobiology and Behavior department. As it happened, our tour guide today was one of those collaborators. We didn’t see a whole lot of birds, but we walked through several habitats at the facility.
Later in the morning I walked up to the Veterinary College. There’s an entirely new entrance and library. In addition, the college just opened a companion animal clinic. We were shown around by two members of the college staff and a woman who just finished her first year in vet school. The clinic isn’t fully equipped yet (no x-ray, exam tables, or other furnishings), but it’s much more light and airy than the small animal clinic I took my cat Chubbette to when she was diagnosed with diabetes. The new clinic has separate waiting and exam areas for cats and dogs. It was worth the hike.
More fun and frivolity to come.
Home sweet home. McGraw Tower and Uris Library.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/06/08/i-am-home/
There was a potluck at work last week. Since I was leaving for New York late that day, I needed something quick that wouldn’t produce too many leftovers for Julian. I knew we had several odds and ends of corn in the freezer, so I decided to make a corn salad on the way home the night before.
I picked up a bell pepper, beefsteak tomato, and a bag of spinach at the fruit stand on the way home. After the dinner dishes were done, I microwaved about 2 pounds of frozen corn until the kernels were thawed. While the corn was in the microwave, I whisked together a quick olive oil-white wine vinegar-Dijon mustard dressing. I cut up the bell pepper, tomato, and a bit of onion while the corn was cooling. Julian suggested not adding the vinaigrette until just before serving. I also kept the spinach and basil out of the bowl until lunch time. The salad was a big hit, so much so that there was only about 1/3 cup left at the end of the potluck for Julian.
Given the success with my coworkers, I decided to try the recipe with a more challenging audience: My family. I had to do some adaptation, since my hometown’s grocery store didn’t have any fresh basil. The frozen corn I bought was more like what’s grown for cattle, but I used it anyway. I put tomato, bell pepper, celery, and onion into the salad, along with fresh oregano. I left out the spinach to keep the kids happy. Success again. My mother liked it, and she prefers canned to frozen corn. You can probably even use sweet corn cut off the cob, provided it’s not too starchy. You can add any fresh herb or dried seasoning you want, depending on the other components of your meal. And feel free to add any vegetable taking up space in your produce bin. One pound of frozen corn will probably feed 4-6 in a meal.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/06/05/copacetic-corn-salad/
The biggest falsehood about a successful person is that s/he is self-made. There is no such thing as a self-made person. Let me start from the beginning:
- The person was born. There were two people involved in this process, directly or indirectly.
- The person was raised by at least one parent or guardian. Granted, some childhood homes are more chaotic than others.
- The person went to school and learned from teachers. Again, some teachers are better than others.
- The person had to get capital to start business from somewhere. S/he didn’t print the money. It had to come from inheritance, saving money from another job, crowdfunding, or getting a loan from a bank. Other humans were in on any transaction.
- The person had to hire people.
- The person had to sell products or services to other people.
- Even the Unabomber had to go into town to buy pork and beans sometime.
The next time you hear someone touting him/herself as self-made, be dubious. Failure to acknowledge the role of others in one’s success is delusional. This is another phrase that should be expunged from the business vocabulary.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/06/04/no-such-thing/
Load more
Recent Comments