Dec 25
Last night was the annual Christmas Eve dinner/white elephant extravaganza. Tonight we’re making duck à l’orange for a smaller crowd. There are still the food allergy land mines, but we’ve found a menu that avoids gluten, alliums, walnuts, and zucchini:
Guacamole without onion/garlic and corn chips
Duck à l’Orange
Roasted brussels sprouts
Salad
Brown/wild rice blend
There will be cake, cookies, ice cream, and challah. Wine, too.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/25/one-menu-to-feed-them-all/
Dec 25
Last week I went to my usual salon to get my hair cut. Lena had the All Christmas radio station playing. Most of the songs are so overplayed that I’ve considered wearing noise-cancelling headphones around town throughout December. Then, just as I was leaving the shop, I heard the voice of John Lennon singing his message of peace on Earth and good will to all. He cut through the chestnuts, sleigh bells, and snow men to the core of the holiday.
Today an editorial in The New York Times also brought me back to the optimism that Christmas and the New Year should engender. Here’s the link to the piece, but the last paragraph bears reprinting:
“Evil is everywhere, and anger and hatred are loud. The shouting drowns out the quiet; tragedy and disaster block the view of the good. Yet there are always signs of progress toward a better future. Look, or you may miss them.”
Merry Christmas.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/25/so-this-is-christmas/
Dec 22
I wrote the previous post on firearms two weeks ago. In the meantime, I learned details of the event that inspired the post. On December 6, a man who had a long criminal record hijacked a car at gunpoint in downtown Seattle. He led the police on a high-speed chase through several neighborhoods and carjacked a few more vehicles until he got into a shootout and was killed right in front of my church. This occurred about 40 minutes after I left that day.
The following week my minister filled in some blanks about the shooting. Although services were over, there were two meetings and a memorial service in the church at the time. When the shooting began, two staff members locked doors and warned people to shelter in place. One door would not lock, so these two people stood by the door to make sure no armed person entered the building. In essence, they were willing to lose their lives to protect the others.
This episode brings up the issue of freedom vs. responsibility in gun ownership. How did the carjacker get the gun? He should not have been able to purchase a weapon given his criminal record. Did someone buy them for him, or did he steal the weapons? If he did buy them on his own, who sold the guns to him? Do the Second Amendment absolutists believe that this convicted felon had a right to purchase and carry weapons? Finally, why should staff members of churches, temples, or mosques need to have active shooter training – and worse, have to use it? It’s a shameful commentary on our society.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/22/a-few-further-words-on-firearms/
Dec 19
An additional food allergy land mine has appeared among our friends. The youngest member of the Friday night crew has been diagnosed with gluten intolerance and egg allergy. This is indeed problematic, since many gluten-free bread recipes rely on egg protein to provide a semblance of structure. And meringue cookies are now verboten for the youngster. However, we can roll with just about anything around here.
Last week was our annual Latkepalooza Hanukkah party. Since I didn’t want to confuse things by having separate gluten- and egg-free latke batters, I just made glorified hash browns. The following night was my department’s holiday party. I knew one of my coworkers had a gluten issue, so I made a brown rice salad with dried cranberries, pecans, and a maple-balsamic vinaigrette. It was well received by everyone. (The glutenphobe was not in attendance.)
Tonight is the annual Candy Cane Lane party that my former next door neighbor has hosted for at least 20 years. The “known teenagers” from our early days in Seattle are now known twenty-somethings and scattered all over, but many of them still show up for this party. I made the traditional eggnog bread with dried tart cherries, dried apricots, and raisins. (No nuts.) I’m reprising the brown rice salad, but added a little bit of sage to amp up the Christmas feel. I haven’t decided whether to add any pecans to this batch. I can’t use walnuts since at least two of our crew are allergic to them; in addition, Julian has dropped a not-so-subtle hint that he’d like to have pecan pie over the holidays.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/19/feeding-between-the-lines-holiday-edition/
Dec 15
The three main Jewish dietary laws are:
Foods that don’t meet these laws (among others) are considered unclean, or trey. The other night Julian was making a tapas recipe of shrimp with chorizo (Spanish pork sausage) sautéed in butter. Et voilà! He hit the treyfecta!
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/15/the-treyfecta/
Dec 14
Our cats have a thing for catnip. Over the years we’ve utilized the bag method to deliver their fix. Here’s the recipe:
Get a paper grocery bag. Cut off the handles, if any.
Crumble a few pinches of catnip into the bottom of the bag.
Set the bag on its side on the floor, and stand back.
Luka and Neli, getting their fix.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/14/in-the-bag/
Dec 13
Julian was making a recipe tonight and started on a rant: “What do they mean by a clove of garlic? These cloves are of wildly differing sizes. And how much chorizo (Spanish sausage) is one chorizo? You can buy chorizos of different sizes. You should write a blog post about this.” Okay, dear, here it is.
A little extra time spent measuring ingredients properly can produce a better final result. This is especially true in baking, where proportions are more exacting. Cooking is a bit more forgiving; however, some errors can render a dish inedible. Julian tells the story of the time one of his housemates made Welsh rarebit and thought the recipe called for 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper per single serving rather than per recipe. The final dish was way too spicy for anyone to eat.
Recipes published in cookbooks or online can be extremely vague on amounts. Julian went off on garlic and chorizo tonight. My issue of late is vegetable sizes. For example, what is a medium onion? Most sources don’t specify. Given the super-sizing of produce these days, what may have been a medium onion to my grandmother would be a small one today. Fruit size is even more problematic, and this can have adverse impacts on people with diabetes who have to watch their carbohydrate intake closely. It’s hard to find an apple in a grocery store that fits the definition of one carb exchange (15 grams). Here are our suggestions to promote clarity in measurements:
Weight is best. Many baking cookbooks will use weights of flour alongside volume measurements. This is because there can be a high variability in flour measurements, based on how you fill the measuring cup. If you sift or spoon flour into the cup, you’ll have less by weight than if you drag the cup through the container of flour. Unfortunately, most people don’t have scales and may not understand the importance of taring. (What’s taring, you ask? You weigh the measuring cup first, and then zero the scale before adding the ingredient.)
Volume is a distant second best. (See the previous paragraph.) Use a proper set of measuring cups and spoons, preferably metal, for solid ingredients. Use a clear glass or plastic measuring cup for liquids. Cups of solid ingredients should always be leveled off with a straight edge, but many people don’t bother with that. Brown sugar and shortening should be packed into the measuring cups and then leveled off. Set the liquid measuring cup on a surface and read the volume at eye level, not from above. If you come across an old recipe that called for a tea cup of milk, don’t substitute a coffee mug full of milk.
If the proportions look wrong on paper (or on the screen), they probably are wrong. Recipes are written by fallible human beings, and are often subjected to little or no editing by equally fallible individuals. In this case, trust your instinct.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/13/measure-for-measurement/
Dec 06
I grew up in rural upstate New York. I have family and friends who hunt. They’re proud of their hard-won skills to bag a deer with shotgun, rifle, muzzle-loader, or bow and arrow. (My brother-in-law does the latter two. He actually got a deer during bow season a few years ago.) Sometimes hunting is a form of food security, as a freezer full of venison can get a family through lean times. When I lived in Ithaca during grad school, I’d get periodic gifts of venison from the year’s catch. These were always put to good use in my little kitchen.
As I said, hunting for one’s dinner takes skill. No one in my family uses a semi-automatic rifle or handgun with a high-capacity magazine clip to get their quota of one or two deer a year. These weapons don’t take any particular skill once one learns to handle the recoil from shooting. They are made for one purpose only: Maximum murder with minimum effort. For this reason, I do not believe these need to be readily available for purchase. If they are available, there needs to be background checks on the purchasers.
I recognize that this is not a popular position to take in some neighborhoods, including in my family. The Founders may have written the Second Amendment into the Constitution, but they did not anticipate the advent of semi- or fully-automatic weaponry. My conservative friends point out that freedom isn’t free. I agree; however, with freedom comes responsibility to assure the safety of the community against people who’d do ill. This is where background checks come into play. Gun owners also have the responsibility to secure their weapons and ammunition away from children. Far too many children are killed or grievously wounded by playing with loaded guns left in drawers.
Lest you think that these are the rantings of someone in one of America’s most liberal regions, the Seattle area has had at least four mass shootings in the thirteen years I’ve lived here. The first was a man who shot up an all-night party on Capitol Hill. The second was the Jewish Federation shooting, in which a friend was seriously wounded. The third was at the Café Racer, a coffee shop northwest of the University of Washington. The most recent one was last year at Marysville-Pilchuck High School.
Gun ownership is analogous to having a drivers’ license. While it is a right, it is coupled with the responsibility of owners and the government to respect and protect the rights of others.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/06/a-few-words-on-firearms/
Dec 04
If not, send us an email.
“It was a glitch. It was a… a technical malfunction! Why in hell won’t anyone believe me?”
– Gus Grissom, in “The Right Stuff”
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/04/the-comments-form-should-be-working-again/
Dec 02
On Monday the temperature in Vancouver didn’t get much above freezing. A warm front came in overnight, and the Great White North turned into the Great Wet North on Tuesday. The rain held off until just before we returned to the hotel from Granville Island. Julian took a nap while I worked on the previous post. Once he regained consciousness, it was time to deliberate on dinner.
Granted, the fate of the free world does not depend on where we eat when we’re on the road; however, a bad meal can result in two grumpy humans in one hotel room. Never a good thing. So we look for guidance. First Julian looked at yelp, and was bamboozled by inclusion of a food truck and Tim Horton’s. He realized that he was looking at the US version of yelp. Once he switched to the Canadian version of yelp, we had better options. We settled on a Canadian locavore restaurant called Forage, about five blocks from the hotel.
The ambiance of Forage can best be described as tragically hip. The lighting was as dark as shown in the photos below. Instead of the hockey game, the TV’s above the bar were showing the dreaded fireplace video. The music playing was club, not Christmas carols. We were seated in an alcove that had wall covering reminiscent of the Hudson Bay Company blanket, except without red stripes. The decorations consisted of small juniper plants weighted down by a single red sphere decoration à la “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.
The alcove in Forage.
“It just needs a little love, Charlie Brown.”
Our meal was excellent. We started with two salads, beet-heirloom tomato and kale-caramelized apple. We moved on to roast duck with duck liver-stuffed profiteroles (mini cream puffs) and pasta roulades filled with shredded duck. We opted for desserts instead of a second entrée. Julian had a cheese-filled puff with lemon verbena sauce and gin-soaked blueberries, while I went for chocolate. We asked our server about the similarities between Forage and the now-defunct Rain City Grill, which also served a locavore menu. According to him, Rain City only closed a few months ago and many of the refugees from that restaurant wound up at Forage.
Another tragically hip feature of Forage is the “Meat Raffle”. Patrons put their names on business cards for a drawing of a small piece of meat with a recipe from the chef to cook it. Nobody asked us to fill out cards; just as well, since the Customs agents enjoy getting raw meat that can’t be taken over the border. Speaking of which, Wednesday is travel home day. With luck, we’ll miss the traffic jams at the Boeing shift change in Everett and the ever-popular I-405 crawl.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/12/02/foraging-for-feed/
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