Child: There’s bacon on my pizza ewww! Poor piggies! Me: Oh no! And the cheese is made from milk stolen from baby cows! D: And the wheat! Have you heard how wheat screams when it goes into the grinder to become flour! Us: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Us: Just eat the pizza.
Category: Edibles
Science! And spaghetti sauce.
Every year about this time we make a metric buttload of tomato sauce. Well, not quite tomato — mine has onions, garlic, peppers and stuff in it too. From a canning perspective this has been a problem because tomatoes alone are only borderline acidic enough to be canned without using a pressure canner and once […]
An encouragement: Tomato sauce
Tomato sauce! We go through so much of it I’ve always thought it might be one those things that’s worthwhile to make in bulk, but so many recipes involved peeling endless tiny tomatoes and/or removing seeds, neither of which sounds the slightest bit appealing. This method involves slow-roasting, which makes the skins more or less […]
An encouragement: Soup stock
Soup! A foundation of winter food in our house for sure. I’m a huge proponent of making one’s own soup stock. It costs pretty much nothing and if you start with your own yummy stock it’s very hard to make a soup that’s not also yummy (as well as being free of excess salt and […]
Libations, election, for the watching of, 2011 version
(H/t to the lovely Melle for finding the photo) Again we ponder the eternal question of what to drink while awaiting election results. Last time around we went with Irish whiskey. It was an excellent choice but it feels a bit ponderous for a May election. Sunshine and daffodils and Irish whiskey? Nah. I’m deciding […]
‘Tis the season for Expert Curmudgeons again
In previous years we’ve had warnings about Santa’s fatness setting a bad example and how we should all abjure cookies and eggnog and subsist on carrot sticks and water at holiday parties. This year it’s eating leftovers and Santa’s sleep (or lack thereof) habits that are under fire: Surely Santa will feel jet-lagged at the […]
Better safe than sorry
Walking up the street today on the way home, M and I were passed by the ice-cream truck, which then stopped a hundred metres up the street by the park. M: The ice-cream truck comes every day in summer! Me: Yep. M: But not in winter. Me: No. M: (thoughtfully) When do you suppose is […]
WWI vs. recession
You’ll probably need to click through to the original site (a wonderful exhibition of WWI and WWII posters) to read this: Eat local. Preserve at the height of the harvest. Keep chickens. Could be 1917, could be 2010.
Random neat stuff from RSS feeds – Tue Jun 22, 2010
Metabolic State Alters Economic Decision Making under Risk in Humans This is actually a more interesting article than one might guess by the title. As one might’ve expected, they find hunger does affect how we perceive risk and make decisions. A few years ago there was a paper on how to get decisions made at […]
Jam: an encouragement, with pictures
I like to make my own jam. Unless you buy the crazy-expensive kinds, store-bought jam tastes kind of blah — over-sweet, too much filler, not enough fruit. I think I was spoiled by home-made jam when I was growing up and as with so many things (air conditioning, dishwashers, high-speed Internet) there is no going […]
Perspective
Thank you, sir, for worrying about the right things: John Williams has been making wine in California’s Napa Valley for nearly 30 years, and he farms so ecologically that his peers call him Mr. Green. But if you ask him how climate change will affect Napa’s world-famous wines, he gets irritated, almost insulted. “You know, […]
Chocolate-mint ice cream
I mentioned this recipe on Facebook and got requests, so here it is. It’s adapted from the KitchenAid ice-cream maker book, but of course any ice-cream maker will work. I should mention that making your own ice cream, although pretty easy, is a vanity project and not a money-saving one. This is REALLY good ice […]
Sensible words from Michael Pollan
Well, you know, it’s very interesting. Since this book came out, where I argue don’t buy high-fructose corn syrup and don’t buy products with more than five ingredients, suddenly the industry is—you know, they’re so clever. I have to hand it to them. But now they’re arguing that their products are simpler, and there’s new […]
Estonian apple cake, an ongoing saga
Once upon a time I tried to make apple cake from my grandmother’s verbal recipe: “It’s a sweet dough, with yeast and cardamom. Then apples and some sugar and flour on top.†Yeah. My sister had the rather more practical idea of going over to Vanaema’s place and watching her make it. That sensible approach […]
It’s a good thing there aren’t many in a package
For some years now various people who’ve spent time in Australia have been telling me about Tim Tams, which are a sort of chocolate-covered cream-filled cookie. It’s not their cookie-ness (although they are fine cookies) that makes people pursue them across oceans, though, it’s what you can do with them. The thing to do is […]
Light!
Tomorrow when we wake up, the sun will rise a bit earlier and set a bit later. Hurray! Light! Happy solstice. To celebrate I made cookies with a very large quantity of instant espresso,* figuring a bit of extra perkiness was seasonally appropriate, however substance-induced it may be. — * which is not ever to […]
Two thumbs up for Supper Solved
M and I went to Supper Solved a week or so ago to make dinner entrees. It’s one of those newish places that’s designed to send you home in a relatively short time with a whole pile of dinners ready for the freezer. It’s set up in stations, one station per recipe, and each station […]
Oh, fine, eat it then.
Me, having picked M up from a birthday party, as she dug into her loot bag: “Honey, don’t fill up on sugary junk. We’re going out to dinner.” Her: “I wouldn’t call it sugary junk.” Me: “No? What is it then?” Her: “Candy!”
Libations, election, for the watching of
A week or two ago we were sitting around debating what form of libation this election might require. Tequila, suggested D. Hmm, maybe. A novel idea, because La Fin du Monde, while entirely appropriate, tastes like licking an ashtray and hey! you can do all kinds of fun stuff with tequila. But then we happened […]
‘Struth.
(Source: GraphJam)