food museum blog

Panda Cake as Inspiration

 The National Zoo's 4 year-old panda, Tai Shan, whose babyhood antics I followed delightedly via the pandacam, celebrated his birthday today with a cake made of  "water, bamboo, shredded beets and beet juice," according to today's Washington Post.

That sounds refreshingly veggie-appropriate so I am pondering adding shredded beet to some kind of cake. Red devil? Or maybe a striped effect, in an angel food cake topped with strawberries.

And soon, shredded zucchini?

These "healthy" additives do not take away from the decadent cake-taste pleasure we all love, but somehow, the carrots of carrot-cake fame, do, do they not? ( I may be alone on this.)

I draw the line at garlic, onion or carrot in my cakes. Just sayin'.

(Tai Shan's 1st birthday cake--person-type--found here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/19764857@N00/192819747)

Go Away, Sarah! Plus, Ecoffins, For When That Time Comes.

Would someone please utilize a majorly huge hook and remove the amazingly self-absorbed Sarah Palin and her massive ego from the "front pages" of the Internets ? Thank you.

Now we can turn our attention to eco-friendly coffins, a topic on which we all can agree. Seems it is now possible to encase your loved ones or even, looking ahead, oneself , in a degradable coffin handmade from bamboo and/or banana sheaves. Both plants, of course, feed people, and both have multiple uses in construction, with bamboo by far the stronger and more versatile.

The company is Ecoffins and its website oozes eco-appropriate/natural/ sensitivity. Mind you, I became bogged down on the difference between a casket and a coffin, because apparently the company sells Indonesian-made  banana-sheave caskets and also bamboo coffins.  Some sources indicate that "casket" was a euphemism for "coffin," but others insist a "coffin" is wide at the shoulders while a "casket" is just a long box.

Whatever.

Each of these clever containers will degrade in from 6 months to two years, along with the remains, which is as it should be, given the "dust to dust, ashes to ashes" thing, right? The UK website is here.

Someday soon I suppose funerals will have "themes," and one will hire a funeral planner to throw, say a tropical homage to Uncle Al, complete with rum drinks,  roast pig, and a festive yet respectful banana-festooned banana coffin, maybe with a mini Carmen Miranda figure woven into the, uh, rigging.

( Banana leaf and hyacinth coffin in photo is by yet another vendor, Daisy Coffins, in the UK. http://www.daisycoffins.com/talk-to-us.html)

Kale Soup, and Ponderings

 Foodie Spouse made a delicious Portuguese kale and potato soup for supper recently.
Kidney beans and soy "chorizo" sausage were involved as well.   And as I of late have become enamored of Brazil's lime-centered caipirinha drink,  I wandered into a traditional American supermarket, Smith's, to quickly grab some citrus, and was soon pondering Portugal's imperial role.  (Thank you, Prince Henry the Navigator, for getting things started. )

In 1500 this small European country claimed control over the largest cohesive land mass in the "new" world, and stamped Brazil with its quirkily-different-sounding-from-Spanish-yet-similar language, a massive slave trade, and eventually, a mix of people indicative of much mingling among natives, slaves, and Europeans. As well as black beans to die for, selenium-packed B. nuts, and cachaca.

Anyway--There I was, the eve of the Glorious Fourth in a supermarket in America, clutching limes headed for inclusion in a Brazilian drink. No bunting, no flags, maybe 3 flag balloons for sale.  Normally, as we all know, a "holiday" makes a store erupt in decorative items in tune with the theme. I do not even want to think ahead to checkers decked out as witches, fold-up Christmas trees, icky yellow candy chicks, and all that. But it struck me as odd that on our nation's holiest of holy days, there was virtually nothing.

But then--what products can one sell that speak INDEPENDENCE? Baby back ribs? Weiners? Flabby white no-food-value hotdog rolls?

Meanwhile, we still have plenty of the soup, inspired by a Cape Cod recipe based on what early visiting Portuguese fishermen from Cape Verde and the Azores were eating.  ( Note: this recipe does not contain fish so the fishermen evidently were storing sausage on board, and there were no potatoes growing readily, so...) The ingredients vary---but a spicy sausage is key. As is kale.

So this year at our house, to honor America, we are celebrating the major affront to George III by going Portuguese. Bom dia!

( Tks to this site for kale soup pic--http://www.capecodtoday.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=080)

Fat States, Non-Fish- Appropriate Companies.

Dubious Distinction Foodie Awards: The " fattest state" continues to be Mississippi, with ' Bama making a run at being number one. All that fried chicken? Colorado is the skinniest. ( Vermont??)  Fat, salt, and corn syrup over all.

Meanwhile, those who try to eat fish to keep the pounds off need to be wary of where they buy. The just released Greenpeace report titled Carting Away the Oceans wallops Trader Joe's and Costco bigtime, as having no seafood sustainability programs, a "willful disregard for our oceans," and no apparent desire to improve.  Whole Foods does well on this point, as do SuperTarget stores--even Walmart is not too shabby in this area. Read the report here.

No Jelly Beans in This White House

 Gotta love it. A bowl of apples, a slice of bees, and a veggie garden at the Peoples' House. Vitality, thoughtfulness, and common sense prevailing on many levels.

              

Commercial Raw Cookie Dough Addicts, We Are Soooo Sorry!

Who among us does not recall "licking the beaters" when Mom (in her quaint apron) had been baking?
Who has never run a finger inside a bowl used for making, say, muffins, and licked off the uncooked dough residue?
We know you're out there!
Now--- acknowledgment of this happy and innocent indulgence many years ago led to the creation of ice creams containing, supposedly, "cookie dough." As in Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream.
(In the course of my intense research for this post I came across this hilarious, off-the-wall rant from 2004 on "How Much (C.Dough) Is In Cookie Dough Ice Cream?")

Anyway!

Across this great nation,  people who stand in front of their fridges inhaling uncooked c. dough straight from the packaging of Nestle's Toll House Cookie Dough  are getting freakishly ill and tummy achy from E.coli bacteria contained therein. 25 have been hospitalized.

Please do not do this, even with another brand of c.dough. This is a revolting and no longer hidden habit of yours, and  we regret that you have become really, really ill from pursuing it. 

You might look into purchasing and consuming library paste,  if it still exists. Oddball kids at school used to eat it, back in the day.

Today I Will Eat Persian Food

Today I will go to Pars Restaurant in Albuquerque where I will eat stewed eggplant with cinammony overtones, along with aromatic rice. I will have yogurt with chopped veggies on the side. I will have tea in glass cups without handles, but before that I will sip the yogurt , mint and fizzy water drink known as "dugh."

If I decide to indulge in what we once ate regularly in Iran, as Peace Corps vols, I will try chicken kabobs, the chicken marinated overnight in a tasty yogurt concoction. ( We became veggie-fishitarians in 1975...) The rice will be served with grilled tomatoes, a tiny dish of sumac, and a raw egg. I will mix the egg into the rice and sprinkle some sumac on top.

I will likely finish up with two tiny pieces of baklava, seasoned with rose water.

I will wear green.

America Awakes To, Duh, Veggies

On and on roll the foodish stories:

1--Michelle in the veggies, cutting lettuce
2--Seed company sales soar as more Americans "discover" veggie gardening
3--Urban dwellers grow food on their rooftops
4--Kids eating healthier foods at McD's??

5--The healthy role model Prez buys burgers? Is that allowed?

And more.

But somehow all this breathless excitement over what many people and institutions have been encouraging for decades is irritating me.

You mean there's a link between what we eat , how much we weigh  and how we feel? No way.

There's a link between healthy eating and lower healthcare costs for all Americans?  Who knew?

Cooking veggies properly makes them appetizing to young and old alike? Amazing!

Front lawns are a waste of land, soil, time, wildlife, money, and they pollute as well? Wow.

If you don't ever introduce little kids to fast food joints, you have eliminated a major negative issue for all eternity?  You don't say...

Bombs, Food, and All That

Afloat on my raft (bed), (thank you, Colette,) due to a recurrent back pain thing, ( grrr...), I have been laptopping this morning, and was just guided by the Internets to two stories with a perverse food linkage.

First, a car bomb exploded in an Iraq market among early morning shoppers, doing the usual horrendous damage.  According to the WaPost, "Body parts mingled with vegetables lying in pools of blood. Fires burned afterward."

Tuesday an explosion at a ConAgra plant in North Carolina that turns out Slim Jims killed at least two people.

I have written more than once here about the obvious contrast between people out and about buying food in order to nourish their families and bombers out and about in order to maim and destroy their fellows. Alas, here we go again. My sect/tribe/family/political party/region/religious belief is superior, so therefore you, whoever you are there randomly fingering the cucumbers, must die!

Anyway--the thought of people dying in pursuit of the creation of Slim Jims revealed that 
this ubiquitous American jerky product is made from, among other unknown ingredients, "mechanically separated meat ( MSM,)" in this case, surprise, chicken! According to Wiki,  in MSM bones that might have a bit of meat still attached are forced through a sieve-like machine that separates the meat from the bone and extrudes a paste-like substance.

Mind you, when Mad Cow or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy started to appear in humans, this MSM process involving beef was banned in both the US and the UK. Apparently bits of bovine spinal cord were turning up in hot dogs and such, so...

Sound yummy? Jerky is an ancient form of food preservation, traditionally involving strips of meat, often seasoned,  dried using low heat, or sun, or air.  Simple, basic.

BTW  Eating chicken spinal cord bits is evidently ok. As far as we know. Have a Slim Jim.

Wildly Assorted Food ( and Drink) Notes

Hmmm.

•  I am glad the Obamas enjoy dining out at tasty places, worldwide, absolutely. Just thinking of the B's huddled within the WH walls, munching away, prisoners of Dubya's policies, puts me off my feed.

• Spam making a comeback in these troubled economic times is so nauseating that....you may recall there was a Spam Cam trained on an opened can of this junk a few years ago, waiting in vain for it to "go bad."   Lentils anyone? Cheap, healthy protein.

• Depressed? It could be a food allergy, in particular, gluten.

And now, the happy food news from my bin garden here in the American Southwest.

First of all, the spicy Asian micro greens have been superb.  My cukes are climbing up their helter-skelter trellises, the tomato plants are robust, their protective marigolds gleaming. The eggplants are looking healthy, and the zucchs, plus two unknown squashes, show great promise.  I seem to be too late for the carrot seeds I had on hand, I recently decided I was not a huge radish fan, so other than a basket of mesclun coming along nicely in the shade, more or less, that's it.

No chiles! Who knows why not...? I completely forgot about my love of banana chiles and pasta. Damn. Maybe the Home Despot still has some of those plants.

We do have basil, sage, chives, mint, and nasturtiums. And I may grow some radishes after all, so as to harvest the spicy flowers for use in salads.

Meanwhile, I am buying up two huge clusters of chard each weekend at the Farmers Market, while they last. And garlic, lettuces, cherries, and strawberries, honey,too, all local, of course. Did I mention blueberry turnovers from the Swiss baker there?

As for Drink----the joys of Brazil's national drink, caipirinha, were introduced to me recently at still terrific Zia Diner in Santa Fe. How I missed this when actually in the country of Brazil several years back is beyond me, other than that our little foodie family was on its way "around the world in 5 weeks" and not spending wildly on hooch.

In any event----yum.  Several pieces of crushed lime, sugar,  ice cubes, and cachaca, alcohol always described as rum-like rather than rum, perhaps because it is derived from fresh sugarcane juice, as compared to molasses, itself a by-product of sugarcane.

This simple beverage is so delicious and refreshing the woman I was dining with had to restrain herself from finishing my drink when I went to the loo. Now that's friendship, people.