kitchenmage

Quick question for the vegetarians, vegans and the like...

I am in the middle of writing a cookbook and would like to include some tips for parents of children who have declared they will no longer eat food with faces. Whether it's nutrition, the meatless recipe that you cooked 3-4 times a week at first, or the delicate handling a child who seems to be rejecting your lovingly prepared meal, parents need help with this. So, two simple questions:

• If you could some advice to the parents of a newly vegetarian/vegan child, what would it be?
• What is the worst thing you can do if your child decides to eat a meatless diet? (Personal experiences from hell are welcome.)

Thanks for your contributions, everyone.

Epilogue: black bean brownies with some MINOR adjustments

...if you have not read the first part of black bean brownies with some MINOR adjustments, please go do so first...I'll wait...

When last we saw Lisa, she and the 6 year-old C had tried the brownies and she said, "C likes them, and I know R & S will eat them."

I asked her to post another update after everyone had a chance to try them out at dinner. Final results after the jump...

"black bean brownies with some MINOR adjustments"

My favorite mailing list has been having a hot and heavy discussion about the Amazing Black Bean brownie recipe that Heidi posted a couple of weeks ago. The thread culminated in one woman, the ever-brave Lisa Whipple, deciding that she was just going to make them and see how they turned out. The brownies are in the oven now just finished and her opinion is at the bottom of this post, but I had to share her email missive with you.

Followup: freckled bananas, cheap!

Some days a rant is just a rant and some days it is actually a wee bit useful. I recently wrote about a vignette from a grocery store in which I saw an employee trashing perfectly good bananas - the ones that were just speckled enough to make bread from - and asked him about it. His response: nobody would buy those!

Fortunately, I also heard from a nice person from their corporate office and a store manager, who assured me that they would not be wasting perfectly edible food any more. Well, here's the proof, captured on my cell phone last time I was in the store. Cheap bananas, just right for baking.

Enjoy your banana bread!

vignette from a grocery store

Yesterday, while perusing the produce in a major grocery store chain in Western WA, I remembered we were about out of bananas. As I approached the almost empty display of bananas, I noticed an employee throwing hands of bananas into a trash box. Bananas that were fresher than the ones becoming banana bread fodder on my counter.

Each cluster of fruit hit the cardboard box with a muffled thump and I cringed in response. Thump, cringe. Thump, cringe. Thump, cringe.

Equifinality and the 30 minute meal

First, since I can't put the link in the title, and I was recently at a writing workshop where it was pointed out that you shouldn't throw out obscure words without enough context to make it fairly clear what you meant: equifinality

While I have been know to snark about Rachael Ray (hereafter known as RR) from time to time, she does have a good idea from time to time. I even laud some of her goals: if 30 minute meals (hereafter known as 30mm) got people "into the kitchen" (whatever that means; is there some study somewhere?) and if CAKE helps get people thinking about some of the problems we've got with kids (and adults) and food in the US (and elsewhere), then brava!

Bûche de Noël: It's done!

Well it isn't the world's best picture and I went for simple decorations, but here it is. A minimalist Bûche de Noël with candied rosemary sprigs. The weather report says there may be snow before it is served. But what do the weather folks know, they predicted mushrooms! Merry Christmas (if you do that) and Happy Tuesday (if you don't) - see you all in a day or so with the rest of the photos of the madness.

Merry, merry, merry!

If you are anything like me, you are just starting a rather complicated dessert and have no time for blogs...and therefore you probably aren't reading this.

Hmmm.

Maybe I need another lede.

clears throat

the cookbook whisperer

As an unapologetically enthusiastic cook, I own a lot of cookbooks. A quick survey from where I sit reveals four bookshelves-one with easily 125 books-and six piles of books in varying states of precariousness. Books with recipes make up the bulk of these, but McGee, Nestle, Pollan, Schlosser, Parsons and others contribute a couple dozen reference books to the clutter in my office. It should be noted that I can only see the dining room and my office.

Out of sight, the guest room has a bookcase of food essayists, designed to be read in small bits: Reichl, Steingarten, Bourdain, the annual Best Food Writing series. Two more boxes, utterly untouched, sit where they were shoved under the entryway bench a few months ago "until we build more bookshelves," an event I expect to happen real soon now. Like next year.

Ewwww! Just ewwww! (and excuse me while I shower off the memory)

We all know how much I adore the gratuitous use of scantily clad bimbettes to sell your product so it should come as no surprise that I am annoyed by yet another Food network chefebrity (like my new word?) who has decided to sell themselves based upon assets (although in this case it's more tit-ets than assets) that have nothing to do with food.

In this case, however, the photo shoot is downright disturbing. And when I say "disturbing" I mean  I just ripped your still-beating heart from your chest and now I am going to saute it with garlic and fresh oregano.

Esquire has its 'women we love to see mostly naked' collection up online and one of the women they lust after but can never, ever have love is Giada de Laurentiis. Who goes all Carrie on their asses in the photo shoot.

Maybe I am wrong, but I believe this set of photos represents one of those immutable gender lines. Some men (and a few women) will look at the photos and get all warm and tingly over them.

My guess is that most women, however, are going to have a different response. Something like "Didn't your mom tell you not to wear white during those special times of the month?"

grokked from someone who snagged it from Slashfood

post-Thanksgiving debrief

Pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink and take a moment to consider what you loved about last week and what you weren't so fond of. Yes, I know you just finished cleaning up and there are still leftovers in the refrigerator. I understand that the last thing you want to contemplate is how to roast the turkey next year, but, like childbirth, you will utterly forget the pain of this year by next November. This will make you believe that brining a turkey in a lot of salt is good idea – it's not – and that you can have too many kinds of cranberries – you can't, we had three...and five people.

What the Hell's Kitchen?

When one examines the pantheon of cooking video games, from BurgerTime to Cooking Mama and the almost inevitable sequel Cooking Mama: Cook Off, to Happy Cooking...well, one discovers it's a very small pantheon indeed.

The next thing one discovers is that there is much fun to made. (disclosure: I have not played any of these games...mostly because I have a real kitchen if I want to play with food. Also, no dragons to slay or tame so what kind of game is it?) Anyway, on to the digression: Happy Cooking, which is described thusly:

Lisa, a little girl, is having a hard time trying to cook dinner before her father comes back home. Hopefully, an unexpected angel from the Moon will make her meet a famous chef who will help her.

There are so many things wrong with this. Like: Do they have angels on the moon? Really?

But let's start at the beginning with Lisa, the little girl whose adventure we share. There's a picture of Lisa on the box and I kind of like her look. Attractive, but not overly so (if you know what I mean), kind of spunky looking, she's cradling that mixing bowl like she knows what to do with it (although the grip on the whisk is iffy),

Have you looked at that box cover yet? No? And you are waiting for what? Geez! Go look already, I'll wait.

Dear PETA, women are animals too...

Dear PETA,

What is it with the soft porny commercials and naked women? Are you truly so blinded by your desire to save furry critters with faces that you forget women are critters with faces too? Those women were even somewhat furry too, before you made them get all waxed and shaved so they could get nekkid for your tacky ad campaigns. (Apparently natural is good for sheep but not for girls.)

The women in your ads all too often appear to be the victims of some sort of strange fetishized sexualized violence. Naked, vulnerable, marked up like exotic animals, chained and caged. And yet, lovely. Thin, yet curvy. Beautiful, beaten and bound. Sometimes dead.

The gap between this and many a movie you can't see without mom and dad is skimpier than that piece of lettuce that you, PETA, think passes as clothes.

For a group that can work up a head of steam over a goldfish, you sure don't seem to get that women are people too. Seriously, the women of PETA (that sounds like a Playboy layout doesn't it?) are starved, shaved, waxed and laid out for someone's 'viewing pleasure' (surely not mine) like...what am I looking for...oh yeah, a piece of meat. Irony much?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is more of the same old PETA tripe. You have been exploiting naked women in what they say is an effort to stop the exploitation of animals for decades now. But someone sent me a link to this Alicia Silverstone video and asked me if I thought it would help animal rights.

Um, yeah, not so much.

Where in the world is kitchenMage

A shadowy, cloaked and hooded figure clutching just-removed black boots enters the house. Glancing at the calendar, she moves furtively across the room, clearly hoping to escape notice. Entering the kitchen, her cloak catches on the cat sprawled across the threshold. "Ssouri, annoyed  at his interrupted slumber, stretches, yawns, and shatters the silence with an indignant 'Mrow!'

The woman looks up, her sudden movement making the hood slip to her shoulders, and mutters a minor curse at the cat for waking up the house.

Um, hi.

Yeah, I was out really late and I didn't even call to say I didn't get in a car wreck or anything.

I'm sorry!

I know I haven't been here much recently. Don't feel bad, I haven't been anywhere lately. (Miss me while I was gone? Or did you not even notice? sniff)

So where have I been hiding out? Well, you know how, when a friend gets into a new relationship you almost never see them for a while? This is sort of like that, but with a lot more heavy lifting.

Read the rest of the kitchenMage's Apprentice: on seeing another... at Gather.

do you support public radio?

If you are one of those folks who donate to public radio, please consider doing so tomorrow to  KMUN in Astoria, Oregon between 10-12 (west coast) tomorrow. someoneElse will be on All Kinds of Folk and it's pledge drive time so I am angling for quick donations and thus more music, less begging.

There are rumors of me having to speak too. One can only hope the rumors are not true because, while I like music, I know nothing about it. "I gave it a ten because it's got a good beat and you can knead bread to it!" is my fallback position. Again, I think more money=less talk - in which case, I may be writing checks myself!

The KMUN audio stream is available online, either via their preferred method, which involves installing software that lets your machine host bits of the stream (meaning your upstream bandwidth and some hard drive space) or my preferred method of snagging the stream here and plugging it into something like Windows Media Player.

If you decide to contribute, please tell the nice person on the phone that you are a friend of kitchenMage. I'd love to feel a presence from the food-people out there. Sort of like a big invisible hug while I am in radioland, which is so not my usual hangout.

KMUN
Donation info page
Donate here
503.325.0010
1.800.528.0010

climate convergence in skamokawa this week

In the midst of global climate change and with the lack of a sane energy policy at the front of many people in evenTinierTown's minds, there is a bit of hope on the horizon - or at least a great weekend.

The west coast Climate Convergence is slated for this week in Skamokawa, WA (yep, evenTinierTown is on the map!). During this event, a lot of crunchy granola folks will converge on evenTinierTown, talk climate change, party and listen to people like Starhawk speak. (hmmm, are there people 'like' Starhawk?)

There will be educational sessions during the day and keynote speeches followed by live music on multiple evenings. I am planning on hitting the sessions about how climate change is impacting the flora and fauna of the Pacific Northwest (and the rest of the world too) including the food supply, both purchased and homegrown.

Food related sessions include:

• Organic gardening in the pacific northwest
• Food systems and climate change
• Introduction to permaculture
• ABCs of guerilla kitchens

Also, if you have ever wanted to feed hundreds of ravenous folks they are still looking for volunteers of all sorts.

My friend, Robert Pyle (or Butterfly Bob, as we call him), will be speaking on butterflies, the region, and perhaps even slug sex. He's always an interesting guy to listen to. There are also several sessions on LNG and other regional energy concerns. Plus great people, activist training, live music...and people like Starhawk. Depending on your perspective, it could be educational, entertaining, or more likely both.

The convergence officially starts Thursday (they are fixing up the local fairgrounds and Grange today) and continues through the weekend to wrap up on Tuesday. If you decide to venture out this way, drop me a note and I can get you in touch with some great bed and breakfasts, point you at the Friday Farmer's market, or other such as you might need.

Featured presenter list
Full schedule grid (pdf)

food thermodynamics: place your bets

Question
How long will it take to thaw a 40 pound turkey in a small refrigerator that is set to 36-38F?

Additional data points

• It is one of those dorm/hotel room sized refrigerators and the turkey occupies ~80% of it. We took out all the shelving and there is a little freezer section.
• It is in my garage, which is warm, probably upper 70s, in the daytime and cools down to ~mid-60s at night.
• It's been about 36 hours so far and I can press down on the breast maybe 1/2 inch before hitting stuff that is solidly frozen. Maybe. (Did I mention this sucker is HUGE?)
  

There's bragging rights, if not much else, at stake here. I'll post a guess later - I think we've got a few days to contemplate this question before it gets much closer to thawed.

Then I have to figure out what to do with it. Hmmm...

totally OT (but funny)

One of the other places I write is a place called Gather.com where my column, the kitchenMage's Apprentice is published twice a month. Gather is carving itself a niche somewhere between social networking and blogging with a smidge of "rewards" style revenue sharing* thrown in. (you get points for stuff and points eventually equate to gift cards or cash)

It's an interesting mix of folks and the topics cover a lot of territory. I have been doing a bit of non-food writing there lately (I was silly enough to write an "Ask the feminist" open question piece. Oh my!) and it has been a lot of fun.

A couple of days ago, I wrote this rant about plastic surgery that has gone too far called "How Do you tell a friend..." and it's currently featured on the home page! (Okay, so I excite easily, but it's the first thing like this I've written for publication in a while and I'm happy.)

Should you decide that Gather looks like an interesting place and want to join, I'd be mighty grateful if you would click on this little link so I get a referral...hmmm, whatever it is we get for one of those. Join me at Gather.

I now return you to your regular food blogging, already in progress.

question for my non-US readers

How do you measure ingredients for recipes?

I have been trying to include all of the useful variations on measurements in my recipes lately but there are so many options! Did you know that there are US, Canada, and metric "cups"? How is that even supposed to work? I can't recall ever seeing "cup (Canada)" in a recipe and I used to live right next to the place. Maybe it's because there is only a smidge of difference (about a third of an ounce vs Europe which adds over an ounce and a half!) but still. (and is it a "Canada cup" or a "Canadian cup"? like the geese are Canada geese, not Canadian geese - although some of them may live there...at least in the summer.)

...but i digress...

Back to measurements.

Having the Internet literally at my fingertips, I thought I would go look at a mass market site like the BBC to see how the Brits do it and discovered that they have only weights. US as well as metric, but still, only weights.

Hmmm.

Does everyone in Europe have a kitchen scale? Are they issued at birth or something because a lot of folks over here, including myself, have been proselytizing kitchen scales for a while now and the adoption rate is kind of slow.

Figuring that I might want to look a bit deeper for clarification, I went to Chocolate and Zucchini. Um, not so much. While Clotide is any number of great things, consistent does not seem to be one of them. I loaded half a dozen yummy sounding recipes and gave up when I found one with grams being translated to ounces on one line and cups on the next. (one might ask whose cups but that's just asking for trouble) In fairness, several sites later I am asking for your advice from the trenches, so all of Europe may have something to answer for here. (I do have a few new recipes from C&Z to try so I'm happy enough with that.)

Further along my clickstream I found all sorts of amusements, most of which turned out to be ephemeral since my computer hung in the middle of it and they went poof. Ah well, such is the nature of the 'net.

I am coming closer to the conclusion that I should go with converting dry volumes to grams and wet volumes to milliliters, but since I insist on including US weights, can I do less for people who want to weigh their liquids? Is it a problem if I have four columns of measurements? Does anybody know what time it is? Does anybody really care? (does anybody get that reference or am I just old?)

A brief mash note to food blogs (in general and specific)

I just want to say that I love the Web in general, and food blogs in particular. They are a valuable, and marvelously fun, addition to the stacks of books and magazines that already clutter my life. While I'd like to say they are a great free source of recipes and such, I am not so sure. I am constantly going to someone's site and deciding to buy something. Like my new ice cream machine (thanks to David Lebovitz for the recommendation), which is wonderful and all, but not so free!

Naysayers, (you know who you are) who swear blogs are all dren run by people writing about their cheese sandwiches lunch and soooo not relevant to the serious media, listen up! There is a reason why food blogs occupy a favored spot in the hearts and minds of a vast readership. Let me tell you a story about why...

I have made marshmallows on a number of occasions including those lovely chocolate coated raspberry marshmallows right up there. What I have not made is chocolate marshmallows and, while that may seem simple, there is actually rather complex chemistry at work between the very few ingredients in marshmallows.

Boil the sugar syrup to a phase other than soft-ball and you get something different - although not necessarily bad, I want to experiment with making marshmallow fluff by boiling the sugar a bit less. Too much fruit puree seems to destabilize the sticky mass just enough that mine stayed a little too soft; too soft to roast on a fire, and that's no good! Worse, the merest hint of oil and the mixture can become totally undone, refusing to whip into a billow of wonderfulness and settling into an sullen, glutinous mass in the mixer bowl.

Fortunately for me, I know McAuliflower, just down the road at Brownie Points, is a bit of a mad scientist (and she's got the coolest toys!) and has done all sorts of marshmallow experimentation. Better yet, I know several things about McAuliflower's recipes:

• They are actually tested (I've yet to have one of hers fail) and she is open to corrections and enhancements when she finds a better way.
• If there is a technical reason for something, she explains it.
  
• There are likely to be variations for things she is really into - she has a category for marshmallows!

Knowing that marshmallows are one of those things she is seriously into, I knew this was a great source for what I needed. At her site, it took me two clicks to find this great post on chocolate marshmallows and am no off to make some of my own, secure in the knowledge that it will work and with a solid explanation for why I want to add the chocolate at the end of whipping them. (read it and see for yourself) I'm going to do it with a mixer, rather than by hand, as it seems McAuliflower did, but I know why she did it her way and how to make it work my way.

The entire process of finding the right post took me about 45 seconds. (Last time I needed a recipe for something semi-obscure and went to the cookbooks, I was still there twenty minutes later.)

It's damned hard to provide this sort of 'perfect for me right now' resource without a large pool of talented and passionate people who are free to write about what they love.

And at the moment I love Brownie Points. Thanks, McAuliflower!

TV, training wheels, teaching and trashing...

I think I figured out what's up with those two food tv shows that many of us don't understand. It's all a matter of framing. This is cooking for beginners. Just maybe not the beginners you are thinking of.

What do you think of when you think "beginning cook"? For me at least, I think of children (and adults too, but always children) who are not only unskilled in the kitchen but too young to do many basic things on their own. No sharp things. Limited use of appliances: microwave instead of range, toaster oven instead of standard oven, etc. There is often a focus on assembly of ingredients rather than actual cooking.

You can see this clearly in old cookbooks. I learned to cook as a young child, and while I didn't use many children's cookbooks, I did have a few. Having not done too much shopping for such books in the last decade, I'm not sure if they have changed all that much since then. (other than having TV personalities on the covers) While there have been some notable additions since I was a kid, I bet that the books that have been in print for decades (and many of the newer ones) still use their tried-and-true approach. Duh. Tried and true sells.

Those aimed at the youngest audiences are often little more than combinations of ready-made ingredients. Pigs in blankets, anyone? English muffin pizza? The resulting food is enjoyed primarily because it was made by a small person, not for its inherent tastiness. There is little wrong with this sort of cooking for the very young cook - although if a parental unit made the components (dough for crust or wrapping piggies) it would be ever so much better. There is also often a lot of emphasis on peripheral things: tablescapes decorations, amusing cocktails drinks, giggling with your tipsy three year-old buddies.

But whatever it takes to get kids in the kitchen with their parents in the kitchen  is fine with me. I'd rather a child cook with purchased refrigerator biscuits and hot dogs than not at all. It also offers a chance to teach the little one some things: math (fractions), how to follow a set of instructions, a smidge of cooking skills, and gives you some time to hang out and talk.

With older kids, cookbooks move into more actual cooking, although still oversimplified and with lots of shortcuts and pre-made ingredients. often with a bit of over the top delivery. You know the jr. high school vice-principal or guidance counselor who tried just a bit too hard to be hip? Many books written for 'tweens and early teens are sort of like that...trying too hard: a little brash and use slang they made up just a bit too often. At times, it's like being cornered by an overly enthusiastic cheerleader.

Remind you of any TV shows you love to hate slag?

I will gladly eat, and praise, whatever attempt a child makes at cooking, even if it is truffles that are just peanut butter and canned frosting rolled into balls and coated with cocoa. Which is more complicated than these, which are being sold to adults as something they should be making. I will not, however, endorse teaching adults that this is cooking! At best, it's assembling ingredients.

Don't get me wrong. All stages of a cook's education are valuable, indeed this is the foundational apprenticeship of a kitchenMage. But ultimately, these are cookbooks with training wheels. Something to be used and passed along to the next child in the family, not upgraded and used forever. If you are replacing your training wheels, even with an new version of wheels that are much spiffier, you are still limiting yourself.

This random train of thought brought to you by:

• Tony Bourdain (guest ranting at Ruhlman)
• Simply Recipes
• David Lebovitz
• Village Voice

For a broader view on this, pour yourself a cup of tea, or a good stiff drink, and make sure you read the comments.

Help! My very first Burns Supper

Ever eager to explore new cultural traditions (except, in this case, for maybe the main course) I've happily accepted an invitation to my first ever Burns Supper this coming weekend. This is later than traditional for some reason, perhaps it took a while to type up the three page single-spaced invitation/instructions/tourist guide that we also got. Mandatory tartan, bring single-malt scotch, assigned speeches...all in all it looks like it should be quite the event.

Not being the least bit Scottish myself, I have done some research and feel like I have a handle on the public/common knowledge. I have my work cut out for me: must buy the tartan (and spin a tale about the clan connection...should be fun) and some single-malt scotch, and then prepare some Burns to read. What I would like is personal input from anyone here who has any experience with this thing, particularly:    

• Suggestions of which Burns to read (there are two of us so we need two things, or something for a couple)    
• Something to show we went to the effort to learn something, like a traditional greeting or toast.    
• Good single malt scotches? I don't drink Scotch so I am clueless here. (Can I take Drambuie or is that too chi-chi?)    
• Things to avoid doing/saying so as not to look like the neophyte I am.    
• Good original Scottish yarns.

Thanks for any and all help you can offer. I'll post about the bash afterwards, at least what I can remember after the Scotch tasting.

Our Lady of the Perkiness is hiring!

Clearly, I am just not bubbly enough for this job - I think the effervescence would make my head implode - but for the right person, this would be sweet. Every Day with Rachael Ray is hiring an Online Marketing Manager.

If you one of the many people who are in sync with her style, and relish the thought of being in your favorite industry and running in hip and cosmopolitan circles in New York City this could be an awesome opportunity.  (it's all so That Girl - and that I would use that reference goes a long way in explaining why it's not the gig for me...)

I am betting that it goes to someone who has a food blog. (Like Madeline perhaps) Seriously. It's a wave, baby. Ride it.

Hell, if i was 25 - I believe I was substantially fizzier at 25 - and less settled I might decide to see if I could effervesce with the best of them... some of you are and should... go... bubble... apply... you know you want to... Good luck. Break an egg!

But EVOO isn't even a word!

The brand that is Rachael Ray strikes again, and this time I really must object. The next edition of the Oxford American College Dictionary will include EVOO as a word and they are crediting RR for the term.

Um, no and no.

First, EVOO isn't a word, it's an acronym and I am concerned that the people associated with Oxford (whom many of us think of as "the dictionary people") don't seem to know the difference.

Next, read this quote from Erin McKean, Editor-in-Chief of American Dictionaries

"In order for a word to get into the dictionary it has to be useful to people. It’s not just enough to be a fabulous celebrity to get your word in. You have to make a word that people like to use. There are words that are connected with celebrities that are not going to make it in the dictionary anytime soon; we’re not going to put in "Brangelina." "EVOO" we see people using. We have a big database of about a billion and a half English words. In that database we found evidence of "EVOO" being used and in more than half of the examples, "Rachael" is also in the same sentence."

I googled "EVOO" and got ~181k hits, while "EVOO -Ray" gets ~127k, which means that ,in the wild, she's only mentioned in a third of the pages with EVOO on them. (it must make it tough to read the page when it has EVOO on it). And Brangelina, a word that is as cringeworthy as EVOO, gets 1.6 million hits, more than ten times as many hits as EVOO, so the argument about people liking to use the word is clearly not true.

EVOO may be a useful acronym for some folks, but it isn't as practiced by RR. For it to be useful, it would have to be a shorter replacement for a longer term. Every time I have heard RR use the term, however, she has said "EVOO, extra-virgin olive oil" proving that it's not only not useful, it simply clutters up the sentence. (Maybe I am just hyper-aware of this because I'm at the author's review stage of a couple of books, which is when the copy editors send everything back with corrections. Corrections like "say 'extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)' once and then just say EVOO." Perhaps RR just needs a good editor. I've got several excellent ones to recommend.)

To sum up:

• not a word
• neither created or used most by the person getting the credit
• not useful as implemented by the person they are crediting with the word
• far less used than Brangelina which isn't in the dictionary because people don't "like to use it"

This would be easier to explain if the dictionary publisher was also RR's publisher, but unless it's part of an upcoming and as yet undisclosed deal they aren't. Which means I should probably file this under "America, dumbing down of via celebrity worship" and get back to writing that other thing. Which will be done any day now. In a computer minute.

Think before you pink

Like many of you, I have friends and family who have died from cancer (or the treatment for cancer, but that's another rant) and wish that 'they' would find a cure. If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we cure... (...what's that? We've not put a man on the moon since way back when I was in a child? Well, maybe that's the problem, let's put some more folks on the moon! I've got a list we could start with...)

But I digress, let's get back to cancer and the pinking of marketing. October is apparently "Buy overpriced pink crap for cancer" month. Largely driven by the Susan Komen foundation, and flogged all over the Internet (which is neither plural "Internets" nor tubes) seemingly by everyone with the exception of a few nay-sayers like me, this month brings us all things pink. Pink kitchenaid mixers, pink knives, pink M&Ms, even pink hard drives to complete the Barbiefication (ouch, that word is gonna cost me!) of your life.

Why does this marketing of cancer bug me? Let me count the ways:

Percentage of profits that goes to actually fighting cancer, and specifics on where that money goes, is often vague. Most companies don't bother to say how much they give, leaving one to wonder exactly how much of their money is being funneled into research v. going into corporate coffers.

When you can find the data, donation per item is generally miserable. Other than Avon, which seems to actually donate a significant chunk of the income (sometimes 100% of net) from pink products, if you can find someone giving 10%, that's a lot. (Avon balances the large % of pink sales donated with this oh-so-tacky 'anti-domestic violence' bracelet...a blue hospital-style bracelet...is it to remind us that some 'blue' people put some 'pink' people in the hospital because they beat them?) As the wonderful site "Think Before You Pink" points out, you would have to eat three containers of Yoplait yogurt every day (10 cents per returned container lid) of the promotion to donate $36 to the cause. And that yogurt might be made from the milk of rBGH "enhanced" cows. That would be the same rBGH that might cause cancer, breast cancer no less. (as a fan of irony I should like this, but I'm less than amused...go figure) American Express gives a penny a purchase, regardless of the amount of the purchase. A penny. How. Appallingly. Cheap.

While we're on the subject of tax-deductible corporate largesse being used to disguise corporate malfeasance — we weren't talking about that? well, now we are — can we talk about the number of cancer-causing (or suspected cancer-causing) agents in the stuff that's being wrapped in pink? Cosmetics companies, like Estee Lauder, wrap pink ribbons around products containing parabens (chemical preservatives) and phthalates, both of which disrupt normal hormone function when absorbed into the body; hormone disruption has been suggestively linked with increased breast cancer risk. (suggestively linked sounds an awful lot like a Foley thing, doesn't it?)

But the big thing for me is that this is just another excuse to tell us to go shopping. Just like after September 11th, when the Dubya told us to act normal and go shopping, it seems that searching for 'the cure' is simply another angle in a world gone marketing mad. Plus it is all designed to reinforce the notion that women shop, cook, and play dress-up. Because that's what the overwhelming majority of the pinkStuff is: traditional girly things.

If you really want to help the search for better treatment, and perhaps even a cure, for cancer, write a check to a group that's doing the work. There are many such groups out there, pick one that relates to the sort of cancer you care about. If you want to do more, get a degree in a field that will allow you to go do the work yourself.

On the other hand, if you want an all-pink kitchen, go buy it now. Because now is the time to be pink. And you would be amazed at how pink you could be.

Just don't buy an all pink kitchen because you think it's helping find a cure for cancer. Because it's really not.

Five things to eat...

It's been a while since I've been tagged for a meme (maybe because I only do them intermittently) but Tara of the Three Tarts pinged me for this and it's one of the more useful memes I've seen in a while. Besides, I have a slightly different take on my answers so I'm going to play. Melissa of the ever-tempting Traveler's Lunchbox has asked for everyone's lists of five foods to eat before you die. The meme has been circulating for a month or so and the collected responses are...holy crap! I just went to grab the URL and it's at 1550 items to eat before you die!  That's one new thing a day for FIVE years! You no longer have an excuse for being bored with your food, go pick something off the list. Then go do it again. And again. And again. And again.

Cookies that you baked with a monstrrr (that would be a child for those of you without crib notes), especially if it's their first time baking their favorite cookies. I've made a point of telling visiting monstrrrs that we can bake any kind of cookies they want, even make something up if they'd like, and it is one of the surest hits ever. I've had twenty-somethings remind me of the day we baked their very special cookies — all of which end up named after the kids, "Kara's extra-cinnamon Snickerdoodles" and "TashiaDoodles" (since perfected on her own time) and such — and what we drank, and how the conversation has stuck with them years later. This is about so much more than cookies, they are simply the vehicle for awakening the knowledge of the wealth of experiences to be had when making and breaking bread with those we love. Plus, you often get a new cookie recipe out of it.

Something slightly unlikely with someone very special. One of my latest examples of this is vanilla ice cream with fresh blueberries. It's not exactly gourmet — although there are no doubt restaurants selling french vanilla ice cream with fresh blueberries for 7 bucks a serving (or would that be freedom vanilla with patriot berries?) — nor is it even unlikely in and of itself, but it was pretty unlikely at the time. And the perfect thing for the moment. The moment being 3am, which found the two of us, having just sent off chapters for the current book project and having a moment to relax, picking the berries by flashlight while some very confused kittens ran circles around our ankles.

Way too much of a favorite food. This is another thing that is perhaps best done with a child. I have fond memories of a couple of childhood food indulgences: strawberry shortcake dinners on the first day of strawberry season, a flat of Bing cherries on the first day of cherry season, the birthday child's choice of dinner and dessert. Oddly enough, we ended up with the same cake several times a year as one child after another chose "that chocolate cake, you know the one"...and we did know "the one" because it was the same as always. I should note that when I had a chance to have "the cake" at the Nut Tree Restaurant, which is the source of the recipe, it was just about identical to the one that we made.

A child's invented dish that makes you go "ick" Every kid has concocted something that they absolutely love and would eat every day that makes their parents retch. theKid's was hot dog and sharp cheddar omelettes with jelly; it had to be cheapish hot dogs (no hebrew national kosher for her) with Tillamook sharp cheddar (black label extra sharp if she could get it) and jelly, not jam. There is some aspect of this that totally squiks me out; maybe it's the insistence on jelly...or the cheap hot dogs...but ewwww, ick! I did have this once, well I had ONE bite of this once, and have managed to escape a repeat performance. Luckily for me, someoneElse was more cooperative and used to make two at a time so he could eat one with theKid...usually while I hid in another room.

Something that stretches your cooking skills  I almost made this 'homemade bread' but that's second nature for some folks and that's so not the point. Think of a food you really love but would never try making, then make it. Having been raised to be utterly fearless in the kitchen, I still find some pastries intimidating and have had to twist my own arm to make myself attempt them. Having lost my fear of danish and pie crusts, I'm moving on to something else...those gorgeous molded chocolates are looking more appealing lately, even though tempering chocolate seems tricky. But tricky is good. No tricky=no feeling of accomplishment.

Maybe you can see a pattern here. For me, food is about much more than food. It's about creation, sharing, indulgence, validation of individual quirks (even the ones that make you go ick). And if you help inspire a child to cook and enjoy good food you are doing a doubly good thing.

I'd tag someone but I am late to this party so most of you have already done this. Oh wait, Miz D. has been moving and busy, I'll be mean and tag her! And Cherry because she has more energy behind her collection of blogs than I can imagine.

Rachael Ray alert! RR does Celebrity Jeopardy

They get three people at a time, right? I would pay good money to see Martin Short, Mario Cantone, and Rachael Ray go at a round of Celebrity Jeopardy.

I must create a drinking game...   evilChuckle Hey, Armchair Cook, wanna help?

OMG, this totally made my day!

Some of my best friends are vegan...

Being neither a vegan nor someone who plays one on TV, I've not commented much on going meatless here. I do, however, end up at a few sites for the non-meat-eaters amongst us regularly, especially over the summer when both the CSA and my bit of a garden are producing a bounty of the freshest and most local of food.

One of my favorite vegetarian/vegan sites is vegblog, which ran a very helpful post on what to do when your vegan friends come to dinner a little while back. I'm not sure I'd agree with all of the advice — there's a suggestion of how to approach an egg-less quiche rather than the "make something else you fool" response that the idea deserves — but there are a number of handy tips and pointers to more data. There is also a page of resources ranging from background on various schools of thought pertaining to veganism to blogs to pretty much everything else you might need to support a vegan lifestyle. Very cool stuff.

I do have one question though: What's with the faux meat?

I can understand it if you don't eat meat for medical reasons and really miss the flavor. From what I hear, soy-based meat analogs have come a long way in recent years and they actually taste meatlike. (Here I pause for a moment to note the irony of the faux meat tasting more like real meat at the same time that the "real" meat is tasting more like some cheaply made soy-based amalgam every year.)

But if you are a vegan for ethical reasons, I can't see how you could eat faux steak. You're not eating a cow because it's ethically wrong so why are you pretending to eat a cow? What's up with that?

of course, right afer I posted this I discovered vegblog is down so the links are dead... wih any luck they will be back soon!

Being irregular...uh, a regular

An article (and posts about the article, whatever they are called..."antePosts" maybe) is making the rounds purporting to hold the secrets to becoming a regular at your local eatery. The theory here is that if you act a certain way you will become a regular and then you will get special treatment. (The writer that lurks in my head wants to know why it's called a being a regular if the goal is to be treated irregularly.)

Sure, it's nice to be a regular at Cheers, I guess, if you want everyone to know your name, but what's really in it for you? 

Urban Monarch lists a few benefits of being a regular thusly (my comments inline):

• Ability to order special items (out of season, non menu) (this strikes me as a pain for the staff and I can't see doing it without calling ahead.)
• Immediate seating (oh, so you are those jerks who like cutting in line? I don't want to be a regular at a place that does this to new customers)
• Complimentary drinks / desserts (As a small business owner, I can see how this works. I comp work for people on occasion.The moment it looks like someone expects it, I am done.)
• Discounts (see above)
• Recognition and social proof (OMG the ego... I had to look up social proof and once I did I decided that it's not something I'd ever claim as a positive...it's got two bullets for common applications: marketing and seduction)
• Dependable location to entertain guests / meet up with friends (I'll give them this, but only to a certain point; get a new waiter or a cook having a bad night and all that dependability goes away)
• Warmly received and well respected by staff (Maybe the first, don't count on the second. I once worked at a place where the biggest tipping regular was greeted with smiles while we tried to hand him off to someone else through our clenched teeth, because he was a self-enitled snob who had very high expecations of what his "big tipping regular" status bought him)
• Having the server bring you the ‘regular’ (how much trouble is it to order something? Besides, the only place I order the same thing often enough for it to be my regular is an espresso place)

Moving on to the "how to" portion...   

If I ran the Food Network...

Let's talk. Pull up a chair, pour yourself some tea, perhaps you'd like a slice of cake?

I was over at eGullet, snickering at the (twitter) oh-so-awesome (flutter) project's ideas for some new Food Network shows
and it triggered this thought that has been floating around in my head ever since the last round of eating competitions hit my radar and left me ranting. Now, I realize that when it comes to thoughts on the Food Network I am a rank amateur compared to some people, but I do have a few ideas I'd like to put forward.

a pound and a half of chocolate pastry filling

Those cherry blossoms were out in Seattle about two weeks ago. In January. In one of the rainiest Januaries in a really, really long time. I barely got the picture between squalls. It has little reason for being here, no attachment to the rest of the post, it's simply a lovely cntrast to the rest of what I've been looking at lately. Like the kitchen.

The kitchen is littered with brown golf balls. Puffy, irregular, cracked, chocolate golf balls. Looks like a chocolate Easter bunny played 9 holes before getting distracted and wandering off. A dozen or more — actually a lot more — discarded chocolate-espresso puffs, mostly torn to reveal gummy insides (gasp) cover much of the counter. What's left is either smeared with chocolate filling or dusted with chopped praline. Except for the pile of drying orange zest. I'd take a picture, but I'd just get the camera dirty.

When I made the big batch of the Mud Puffs yesterday, I guessed at the actual quantity of filling that would be needed. Apparently I guessed high. Quite a bit high. Leaving me with a pound or two of disgustingly rich chocolate orange pastry filling pressing need to make it go away to a place that doesn't make my jeans tighter.

What to do. What to do.

blenders of the gods...

The current Utne magazine has a recipe for Xocoatl from a group of folks at Chocosuisse. According to the article, Chocosuisse researched the Aztec chocolate drink and are attempting to recreate it with this recipe.

They offer an interesting sounding concoction of chocolate, crushed almonds, milk, honey, lemon juice, rum, arrack (a cocount palm liqueur which I've obviously been missing out on), allspice and ginger. (What? No cinnamon? No chiles? No vanilla?)

They go on to describe a method of making the drink that involves melting the chocolate wih the almonds and milk, then chilling it in the refrigerator. Did the Aztecs really drink their chocolate cold often enough that it is the authentic way? Wikipedia indicates that it was served at all temperatures, so maybe I am being a purist, but I am thinking hot chocolate. Maybe it's the endless rain.

The final step in the process includes this: "...place in a blender or shaker..."

But, but, but... (she sputters)

What about a delightful carved wooden molinllo? Yes, I know this is totally inauthentic, being invented by the Europeans who came over and "found" a continent that was not lost, being full of lovely people as it was. But it's pretty well associated with chocolate from south of the US border over the few hundred years it's been around and they said a blender! A blender!

One of these things is not like the other

Imagine, if you will, a kitchen. It's a typical kitchen, perhaps like yours, the mess from the half-made peanut butter cookies spills onto the counter near the remnants of some snacks: fragments of chips, a smidge of hummus, the usual. Tea has just been poured and you're looking forward to putting up your feet for a minute before you tackle the mess.

is "adorable kittens" a niche?

I was looking through some blog stats the other day and noticing a lot of traffic to two images recently, all of it through Google searches. Well, I just googled and it seems that two of my weekend cat blogging pictures are currently at #9 and 10 on a google search for "adorable kittens"...ummm, so can I claim this as my niche du jour?

I am only glad River isn't human so I don't have to deal with an actual ego...or demands for royalties.

not exactly New Year's resolutions

While reading Dawn's admirable New Year's Resolutions, I was inspired to make a few of my own although, being me, I am going to have to modify the terms a bit. To wit:

First, a year is entirely too long. Maybe I spent one too many afternoons in a meeting at behemothSoft but I want a much shorter cycle on this.

Next, let's examine the whole "resolution" concept — it's so officious sounding — something which I doubt I'd pass as, even at my most corporate. It also sounds like it takes a meeting to get a resolution appproved, or at least an ad hoc committee. Way too much work. Way too much.

Metrics are another issue. New Year's Resolutions are usually assessed on a pass/fail system, while most people operate on an incremental scale. Black and white v. shades of gray — or maybe even actual colors —  I vote colors! Well, adults deserve as much of a grading scale as schoolkids, plus style points. Gotta have style points.

Coca Sek: the real "real thing"?

We all know that Coca-cola used to contain a bit of cocaine, even though Coca-cola now denies it. Other soft drink companies are a bit more honest, one might say refreshingly so, about the not-so-secret ingredients in their drinks. Coca Sek, a new offering from a small business in Colombia (yes, that Colombia), is essentially bottled coca tea. Yep, that coca.

Know your ingredients--the cheese edition

Ahhh, more news you couldn't make up. Gleaned from today's news, we have yet another reason to get in touch with the food you (and your neighbors) eat.

In an unusual case of mistaken identity, a woman who thought a block of white cheese was cocaine is charged with trying to hire a hit man to rob and kill four men. The woman also was mistaken about the hit man. He turned out to be an undercover police officer. Jessica Sandy Booth, 18, was arrested over the weekend and remains in jail with bond set at $1 million on four charges of attempted murder and four counts of soliciting a murder.

According to police, Booth was in the Memphis home of the four intended victims last week when she mistook a block of queso fresco cheese for cocaine - inspiring the idea to hire someone to break into the home, take the drugs, and kill the men.

I once had a conversation with a four year-old who said "drugs are white" with a certainty that led me to think that he believed all white things just might be drugs, but I was pretty convinced that it was a stage. Apparently it's a stage that some folks don't get through very easily.

Being happy that she was stopped doesn't stop me from wondering what she would have done had they just stolen the cheese (which would have been easy, because really who protects their queso fresco with deadly force?) and then discovered it was worth a few bucks a pound on the open market. Excuse me while I laugh.

Feeling the doubletall love

Our Sam may be a star, but Sambuck's is not Starbucks's...and I doubt anyone would confuse the two. Well, anyone other than a corporate attorney, that is. Just down the road in Astoria, a hole-in-the-wall has fought the (strip)mall and the mall won. Sam Buck, the owner of Sambuck's Coffee House in Astoria just lost a court decision in which a federal judge ruled that she was willfully infringing on the coffee behemoth's trademark by naming her coffee shop after herself. Note that she did this in 2000 before there was a single coffeeBehemoth store in Astoria. Apparently when they arrived in town in 2002 they decided to care about Sam's little place and sue her.

Let me pause for just a moment to say that any business that names itself after a character in a classic book that was written long before they were incorporated and then claims that character's name as if they'd invented it needs to take a good look at itself. Whats next? No more Moby Dick readings because they say the word? I've hung in there with coffeeBehemoth through a lot of stupidity--even when they responded to criticism of their inclusive stance on coffee cup quotes by adding one that was anything but. (For some reason I thought that it might get a homophobe to think, "well, the coffee's good, maybe being gay is okay too" and lighten up. Silly me.)

I must admit that I haven't been into Sam's place yet, even though I get espresso everytime I go to Astoria, sometimes at coffeeBehemoth. Not anymore. Next time I will go to Sam's coffee house and I shall avoid coffeeBehemoth like the avian flu. Although I may stop by, cup of Sam's coffee in hand, to tell them why I am not shopping there anymore.

Odd that a company that claims to support small business in the form of farmer's overseas does its best to squish small business here at home. Fair trade, indeed.

Not the targeted demographic

I've been trying to watch more Food TV lately, including some shows that I normally avoid like avian flu (do we really "avoid the plague" anymore?) and I have some thoughts. One advantage to having a blog is that I can come here and rant instead of just snarking at the television. Add that to my recent dearth of posts and this is what happens.

First, I am clearly not the targeted demographic for the network. I find this really odd because I am a serious cook who works at home and has time to do all sorts of cooking. I don't live near a grocery store where I can buy individually wrapped vegetables, nor would I buy them if I did. I care more about the taste of my food than the 'scape of my table. I think that good food is worth taking a little time to create and never buy something I could make in less time than it takes to drive to the store. (45 min). I have a freezer and am not afraid to use it...for homemade food and bulk purchases, not commercially prepared things.

I have to wonder about editorial staff. Have they nobody to explain to their on-air folk that if you say an acronym followed by the meaning every time you can just skip the acronym. (meaning it's silly to say "EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil)" instead of one or the other). Better yet, how about just "olive oil" and let people get their single bottle of olive oil off the shelf without inquiring as to its virginity, because, really, how many of the people watching that show — you know which one I mean — have more than one kind of olive oil on the shelf? Heck, how many of you have more than one kind of OO (say it with me, "oooooo!") on your shelf? I am a food-nut and I have only two...and both of them are extra-virgin. (I want a bottle of "bit of a