food museum blog

Post-Christmas Gluttony Confessional

In the past 72 hours or so, in between lavish spreads of shellfish, fish and veg, Foodie and family have partaken of the following:

pumpkin ricotta cheesecake
chocolate pecan pie
oatmeal chocolate cookies
lemon bars
apricot bars
pumpkin bread
blueberry pancakes
buckwheat crepes
key lime ice cream
peppermint stick ice cream with hot fudge
cappuccino, raspberry,hazelnut, mango, etc etc gelati
chocolate brownies
sugar cookies
cinnamon swirl coffee ring
chocolate cake with white icing
dark chocolates

With all best wishes to you and yours during the season of sweet eats!
(Come on, fess up, and deliver your own list in a Comment, fellow foodies.)

The Disappearing Dining Table

International news agency AFP is reporting that the English dining table is disappearing, as more and more people either eat in front of the telly, wolf down take away standing up in the kitchen, or lord knows what. ( Many more people are buying home office furniture than dining room gear.)  The article cites smaller living spaces as one reason, along with increasing divorce rates. A survey of British families found that only 5 percent use a dining table every day. A third of the respondents said the dining table was reserved for special occasions such as birthdays and Christmas.

Foodie, of course, is aghast. Divorce rates are rising specifically because people do NOT sit down to meals together, says she. Parents and children have less opportunity to connect with one another over delicious food.  Obesity rates, too, rise when people shovel in their overly processed, grabbed up meals. Rant, rant. ( She has no clue what similar surveys would reveal about American households. Presumably the trend is to eat energy bars in the car and skip dinner altogether.)

The dining room,  let alone the dining table, is becoming the dodo of home design as well.
Foodie has always wanted to have a library/dining room, with a dictionary stand, dictionary always at the ready for solving vexing issues of meaning that arise from spirited conversations over grilled sea bass.

Boiled Peanuts, Please!

On our recent drive from New Mexico to Central Florida,  Foodie and Spouse encountered multiple opportunities to sample not only citrus but boiled peanuts. We pulled into assorted roadside stands, attracted by the huge roiling cauldrons on display out front, set apart from the satsumas, navel oranges, tangerines et al. One vendor in Alabama was selling two varieties--regular and Cajun. ( Both were so salty as to be practically indistinguishable one from the other, particularly for chile-addicted people from NM who tasted no "bite" in the Cajun version.)

We mused on whether the south was crisscrossed by a Peanut Line, a division between those who boil peanuts green, and those who roast. Years ago we had driven backroads from DC to central Georgia, passing stands boasting " roasted Virginia peanuts " right up to the South Carolina/Georgia border, where the signs changed to "boiled peanuts."

Alert Blog readers may have an answer to this peanut border question. Please weigh in.

Regardless, the boiled peanut story is curious. Depending on what source one checks, the custom stems from people dealing with stocks of peanuts leftover at harvest time, and/or with the Confederate Army needing a portable, unrefrigerated, high protein food.

Here's some input from http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/BoiledPeanutsHistory.htm

"A traditional way that old-timers like to eat boiled peanuts is to drop the shelled peanuts into a bottle of cold RC Cola and gulp down the combo. Southerners will tell your boiled peanuts should always be accompanied by a beer, sweet tea, or a soft drink. Traditionally they are eaten outside where it doesn't matter if wet shells are tossed or spit on the ground.

Boiled peanuts are green or raw nuts that are boiled in salty water for hours outdoors over a fire. The shells turn soggy, and the peanuts take on a fresh, legume flavor. A green peanut is not green in color, just freshly harvested. It takes ninety to a hundred days to grow peanuts for boiling, and they are available only during May through November throughout the southern states. One of the drawbacks of boiled peanuts is that they have a very short shelf life unless refrigerated or frozen."

Here's an extremely moderate ( re quantities of both goobers and salt) recipe for boiled peanuts, 'Bama style, from www.cdkitchen.com:

Ingredients:

2 pounds fresh raw peanuts in shells 3 tablespoons salt or to taste

Directions:

Wash peanuts well. Place them in a huge cast iron pot or the biggest pot you have. Pour in enough water to almost fill the pot. Add salt and stir. Cover and cook over high heat. Bring to a rolling boil. Reduce heat only enough to prevent water from boiling over. Add water as needed to keep peanuts under water. When adding water, increase heat to high until peanuts are boiling again. Boil for 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Test to see if they are done by spooning out a peanut, cooling briefly, opening the shell and biting into one. Boiled peanuts should be soft, not crunchy or hard. Drain, rinse well and cool slightly before serving. Store in plastic bags in refrigerator or freezer.

( Image from www.rpstadlmeyer.de.)

Mango/Pineapple Economic Power

The United States Agency for International Development ( USAID) has Foodie on its mailing list and periodically she receives a newsletter that reports on how "our" money is being used.  ( In 2000 Foodie attended The National Summit on Africa, an extraordinary learning event.)

This recent bulletin is titled "Making Progress in Africa 2005," and we are delighted to report on a fancy bit of business that enables growers of mangos and pineapples in respectively, Senegal and Ghana, to sell their products to South African fresh cut fruit processors who in turn are doing big business with a major British customer that sells across Europe. "Intra-regional trade" has been boosted, and Europeans will get their fresh fruit year round. Pesky details regarding quarantining of pests were all smoothed over by the Southern African Trade hub team of USDAID. 

The money involved at all stages is miniscule compared to the billions aimed at Iraq draining out of US coffers, of course. The simplicity and beauty of this effort for West and South Africans is heartening, along the lines of teaching people to fish, rather than delivering them truckloads of tired mackerel.

New Orleans Update--Restaurants Seek Staffs, Food Banks Needed Can Openers

Antoine's of New Orleans, on Rue St. Louis, claims to be America's oldest family -run restaurant. Continuously run, too, until Hurricane Katrina.  The fabled restaurant where Oysters Rockefeller was created has still not reopened. Its website states:  "Thank you for your interest in Antoine's; unfortunately, we are not accepting reservations for 2005 at this time due to damages sustained by Hurricane Katrina."   ( Okay, it should read "damage sustained because of ..)

Anyway, the statement goes on to ask employees who have not yet contacted the restaurant to please do so.

Foodie thinks the damages referred to really are these--one, the lack of staff,  two, the lack of housing for staff, and three, the paucity of customers. Brennan's Restaurant of the fabled Breakfast at Brennan's also posts on its website  a poignant plea for employees to please contact the restaurant.

It has been a full four months since Katrina and these restaurants are in the French Quarter, an area relatively untouched by the hurricane and its aftermath.

New Orleans is missing its people. ( Even Preservation Hall is missing most of its musicians. )
Evidently the fast food chains are fighting over the same employees--imagine getting a signing bonus from Wendy's??    A recent Seattle Times piece reported that one native of New Orleans who left home for Alaska over two years ago, is returning because she can make about $300 a night waiting table at one of the top restaurants in town. But she wonders where she will live. Apartments that made it through Katrina in good shape are renting for double their prior rates.

You may recall Foodie mentioning the Second Harvest Food Bank of New Orleans--seems that while tons of canned goods arrived for the victims of Katrina,  the food recipients had no can openers. And, this interesting repercussion from Katrina--the Chicago branch of Second Harvest recently had to buy several thousand tons of onions and potatoes--these are commodities a spokesman said are usually donated by Southern producers. Not this year.