As a new segment, I thought of snapping a photo of everything we eat for the week, making a slideshow about it, and posting it every Wednesday. This may become a lot more work than I'm willing to take on right now but we'll see how it goes. Here is week number 1:
Happy holidays everyone!
Good bye, Droste chocolate cake with bittersweet chocolate ganche frosting. Bon voyage, Himalayan honey drizzled over hot, freshly baked cream biscuits slathered with rich European butter. So long buttery coconut brittle mixed into Leatherwood tree honey ice cream. Farewell, honey chili chicken from Chef Jia’s. Au revoir delicately tender lemon macarons with lemon curd filling. I must bid you all good bye. It has been fun these past two months of sugary excess, gluttony of all things sweet. I enjoyed making you all and consuming you all, but now I must don my vestal robes and re-enter the Life. A Life Without: sugar.
A life without simple carbs and refined sugar is what awaits me now. I tried to keep the glorious abuse going until the New Year, but my will could not scale the Wall. I hit the Wall, smashing into its hard crack stage surface, my face plastered against its mocha fudge mousse mortar. I had planned to end this salacious affair by making a pecan pie made with Lyle’s golden syrup and Maker’s Mark whiskey coated candied pecans. I had plans to concoct an Italian meringue frosted lemon curd cake, and the thought of crunchy, warm cinnamon sugar dusted churros dipped into a cup of thick, rich Valrhona hot chocolate was burning a hole in my mind.
No, I can not think of making any of those things any more. I must relinquish and release myself from those thoughts. I must become pure again. I must look with disdain upon that drug: Sugar. I must steel my will and shun all places where the demon Sugar resides and lurks, waiting for unsuspecting fools like me to walk into its sticky sweet trap, its prison bars made of carbs. I will seek not those flakey alleyways and dark coco corridors where that stripper of wills, defiler of good intentions lies. I will forgo the crusty sweet baguettes from the Acme baking company. I will not buy those golden
What do we need to make this go completely over the top? Hmm,
Bagels and cream cheese are pretty much staples in our house, as are onions; and well, capers never go bad - do they? These are things that we literally always have on hand. On occasion, there is some salmon from the night before and with very little coaxing this can become more delicious than it ever was in a dimly lit restaurant du jour.
Seriously, do capers go bad?
Everyone should have onions on hand. Amy: "Why are you buying onions? We have onions." Me: "What is this? Sour Cream? No, it's an onion. If we keep it long enough, it'll grow another one." I stockpile onions like it were
We are moving from San Francisco and had to clean out the cupboard. What we aren't taking with us we are going to have to toss, donate, or give to friends.
We will donate the non-perishable, canned, sealed, jarred, etc. That which was un-donate-able (opened) but otherwise still quite delicious will be passed on to friends in the neighborhood. Here is a collection of what we will miss.
Oh, contrary to popular belief, chocolate does go bad. Especially white chocolate in this house.
I'm no vegetarian, in fact I firmly believe that if God didn't want us to eat animals, He would not have made them so darn delicious. To compound that, have you seen my canine teeth? They're like razors; and furthermore, I do love me some good-good In-N-Out, crisp bacon wrapped around a tender Fillet Mignon, and some Panko encrusted Veal Parmigiana.
The fact remains, that much of the US meat industry is riddled with problems. Government subsidized corn and soy artificially drive down the price of meat in this country to the point where a double cheeseburger costs less than a large tomato. I love double cheese burgers, but still, that shouldn't be so.
Hormones, antibiotics, animal rights. Cardiovascular disease, cholesterol, obesity. Hinduism, Zen Buddhism - even Catholics abstaining from "meat" on Fridays. Mass production, pollution; there's a new pun in "pork-barrel" corruption. Your own health, the overall health of the animals. The reasons to eat less meat are many, why do we consume so much of it?
It is practically "Un-American" not to have meat at every meal. A wonderful Spanish professor of mine, the late Tim McGovern, told me a story about
After about a month of drinking Cardamom Coffee and REALLY REALLY digging it at home I wanted to get my hands on some when I was in the wild. I can't believe I've been drinking coffee regularly for nearly two decades and never knew about this stuff. There's even an eHow about it!
What bland puritan Joe we have here in the US. According to these guys: "Arab coffee is heavily flavored with cardamom—sometimes to the point of having more cardamom than coffee. Some preparations use two teaspoons of cardamom seeds for each small cup of the sweet, fragrant coffee."
Two teaspoons may be excessive. My new jar of ground cardamom from McCormick's is far more potent than
Deep maroon beets. Bright orange orange wedges. Snowy white fennel slices. Tender green greens. The earthiness of the beets and fennel is balanced with the sweetness of the oranges and of the beets themselves. This hearty salad is both wholesome and healthful; and can be a meal all by itself.
It is really quite easy. Roast the beets (start this at least 45 minutes beforehand). They are ready when they are
I'm a big fan of soups. They are usually easy. They can be done quickly. They are often cheap. Who doesn't like cheap, fast, and easy? Only communists. That's who.
This "Tortilla" Soup only requires about 30 minutes when you use one of those pre-cooked chickens from the supermarket. I always stock onions, carrots, and celery and this whole thing, albeit delicious, was an afterthought.
Ingredients:
A half an onion, one rib of celery, a large carrot, salt, pepper, oil, cumin, coriander, paprika, chicken, and water - oh yea, and tortilla chips. A knife, a pot, and a
Craft Beer?Artificial pork made from pig's stem cells. Boy that sounds delicious. Don't hold your breath folks, scientists say it will be at least 5 years before the meat is suitable for sausage... but what about bacon? Could that process be expedited?
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| We Did It! - Artificial Meat | ||||
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I'm nuts. You're nuts. Isn't everything better with peanut butter? Savory Thai dishes command it. Vanilla ice cream is made divine when it is combined with peanut butter and fudge. Bread and jelly are elevated to the heavens when they come together forming the holy sandwich trinity PB&J. Sometimes I wonder why the pious Job was smitten with boils, when he could have simply been cursed with a legume allergy instead.
It may be a Rhode Island thing, or else my mom is a culinary genius. Ever since I've been young, peanut butter was the condiment of choice on our BLT's. While you peons settle for mayonnaise, we have been relishing in the creaminess that the salty, earthy, depth of flavor that peanut butter adds. Nothing else will do.
You think that's nuts?
Try it. Here may be
photo by richad ling
We've all seen them but for most of us Lionfish seem reserved for aquariums; sometimes in public places, sometimes in the homes of friends bold enough to pull off salt water boxes. Unfortunately for other fish, people have been seeing them in the Atlantic (where they are not native). Unfortunately for us, we are not seeing them enough on our plates.
In a recent article in The Economist called, Eat for the Ecosystem, that's exactly what Sean Dimin, one of the owners of a firm called Sea to Table is proposing. In order to help fend off the invasive species - eat them. Sea to Table "partners with local fishermen from sustainable wild fisheries, finding better markets for their catch."
The problem is not just that Lionfish are non-native, it is that they eat nearly everything.
Mark Hixon, an Oregon State University professor of
Wow! I don't think Rachael Ray herself could have thought of a lame-er name for a recipe, I'm gloating. With such a poor choice of words constructing a name for this pumpkin bread, it does taste quite delicious. The recipe filled up a small baking pan and a muffin tin. Dan and Heather were stoked that we had extra.
I got the starter recipe from the Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread recipe at allrecipies.com. I can't bake to save my life so there will always be a starter recipe when it comes to flour, egg, sugar, etc...
The instructions were followed more-or-less with the following minor changes:
1) I didn't have a full cup of vegetable oil so
A little background is necessary to explain this. I'm a HUGE fan of Alton Brown's Tofu Mousse Pie; it's easy, it's pretty healthful, it's chocolate, and it's delicious. What more do you want? A holiday variation? Well, that's where I got the idea.
Disclaimer: This is not the most delicious dessert I've ever made. With that being said, it is still healthful, easy, inexpensive, and not that bad. If you like Pumpkin Pie, this is similar and is a drop in the bucket in comparing their prep times. You should have not problem giving the kiddies seconds of this stuff, it is low in sugar, high in protein, and packs a wallop of vitamin A.
One could crumble some ginger snaps
I was reading Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking the other night about spices. While many people know that Saffron's sweet earthy stigmas are the most expensive spice, commanding up to $5,000 USD/pound - I didn't know that Vanilla was the second at $200/pound and Cardamom was the third at $22/pound.
McGee mentions how Nordic countries often use Cardamom in baked goods. Supposedly the Vikings fell in love with the stuff a very very long time ago. I thought briefly. I know it goes in Chai Tea, and Garam Masala... but what else has Cardamom in it?
Apparently, 80% of the annual Cardamom crop (which is picked by hand - ergo the price) goes to Arab countries mostly for use in Gahwa, Cardamom Coffee. This is a big part of the culture, which was hitherto unbeknownst to me. From MapsofWorld.com:
The ritual of presenting gahwa begins when the host places a set of four coffee pots, called della. Next to an open fire he pours the coffee beans onto a mahmasa,
