food museum blog

Spring, Really?, Invades Summit Springs Farm, Maine

The greenhouse-from-Hell is up, fully up and running, and actually occupied by young seedlings as well as baby chicks.  What's not to like! For those of you who live near the Poland, Maine farm, there are still a few openings in the CSA program. ( Contact Sonya, summitspringsfarm@fairpoint.net)

Perhaps more importantly, the garlic ( above) is poking through its bed of seaweed, having finally tossed off the last (?) of the snow.  Don't know about you, but I prefer homegrown garlic, rather than the symmetrical, fully white, perfectly formed heads in wide distribution from our pals in China.

Eat Crap, Win Voters' Hearts and Minds?

In between mel0dramatic reports on lame bowling skills and memories of shooting ducks as a wee lass and all the flotsam and jetsam of American political discourse, I have noted disparagement of Senator Obama's campaign eating style. Apparently he doesn't finish all his waffles!  He shies away from fat-laden nightmares like Philly cheesesteaks ( I may be making this one up) and so on. He's not into multiple brewskies, either.

So the guy is trim, healthy, and against all the odds during this marathon primary season, he wants to stay that way and hold off the carbs. What a nutcase!  What a crappy exemplar of all that is American!

Please, superdelegates, end the agony soon so that Barry O' can take a break to revisit farmers markets and Senator Clinton can hole up in her Georgetown home tossing back whatever she damn pleases.

This tidbit from the NYT a few days back may amuse....

ps  Not getting into the use of "waffle" as a verb...

(Thanks to http://www.easywafflerecipe.com/ for handsome, healthy-looking waffle photo.)

Home Cooking from the Mediterranean

In these troubled times of an expensive out-of-control war, food crises, political shenanigans and more, it is always a comfort to, well, eat. But before that, cook something homey and warming and reminiscent of a more tranquil time.
Armenian-American chef and restaurant owner Zov Karamardian's self-published book  ZOV--Recipes and Memories from the Heart offers up multiple tasty, colorful dishes that fill that bill.  The first entries I checked were under "eggplant" in the index, because one of my all-time favorite pleasures was a bubbling rich eggplant casserole perfected by a friend's Armenian-American Mom. To my delight, Zov presents an inviting vegetarian Eggplant Tagine, made with chickpeas as well, typical of the North African stews that combine subtle flavors with slow cooking. She recommends with it Roasted Rack of Lamb with Pomegranate Sauce --the pomegranate, today's latest health juice item,  reminds us of the possibility of enjoying "new" ( albeit ancient) tastes.
Kooba Hamoud, appropriately an Iraqi dish--a "meatball soup with lemon and mint," reminds me of the garlic, mint and lemony dishes we enjoyed as Peace Corps volunteers in Iran.

Can anyone tell me why human beings waste  lives, money, time, energy, spirit and resources in the archaic pursuit of warfare in the 21st century, when we could be sharing aromatic dishes of food with one another?

Flavored Snapple Antioxidant Power Waters Under-Amaze Foodie

Water, water, everywhere, including from the tap, but Americans choose to buy it in both big and little plastic bottles--or wrestle home the 5 gallon jugs from the water store ( my choice thus far,) or install filtered gizmos at the kitchen sink, or pour tap water into those Brita pitchers...or.....

Now, yes, flavored water has been around a while--and I'm not talking about the Cokes and the Dr Peppers and all those hideously uber-sweetened fizzy things that once were merely made with sugar and now are all corn syrup all the time--the drinks that made Americans Great, and I mean, like, Huge.
No--I am tiptoeing into the topic of , maybe, specialty waters?

A pr person emailed to ask if I would try some Snapple Antioxidant Waters and comment about them on this blog. Sure, I said. They arrived. I tried a half glass of chilled Agave Melon, subtitled "The Power to Restore."  Then I sipped Raspberry Acerola--"The Power to Defy."  Wow. The literary context of these drinks is formidable, maybe to provide the breakfast reading we once enjoyed on the back of cereal boxes, before we shifted to bulk grains in clear bags, who knows?

Ok, so--the restorative one is presumably for use after working out. The defiant one is aimed at keeping me, ( me?) "young at heart." Oy. Even worse, it "wants to keep my mind spry." And it contains a heckuva lot more "protective anti-oxidants" than the Agave Melon.

The taste? Like very diluted regular sweet juice. Curiously flat. Reminiscent of the watered-down  juice  we gave our kids back in the day, after realizing they were getting crazed on the full-fledged liquid.

The waters arrived in a box containing absolutely zero product info. Dutifully, I went on the Internets and enjoyed an amazing fantasy website put up by the Snapple people--a plane flying over lovely landmasses and such, but the hard facts were elusive. In fact, when I clicked on "Real Facts," the first thing I learned was that a goldfish's attention span was three seconds. Now this did not surprise me, given that my childhood fish, Joe, swam around ALONE in the same bowl for 12 years until being flushed down the toilet by my mom. He was dead at the time. ( In later years, I became fairly certain that numerous "Joes" had entered and exited that bowl during my happy childhood. )

Note to Snapple: wha???

But I digress.

Finally, driven by the need to be a responsible recipient of free drinks, I looked at the labels of these not really waters.  Modified corn starch???  And Epigallocatechin Gallate. ( Among many other ingredients.) OMG!  I'm off to have a slug of a real health drink, Cabernet Sauvignon.

Good luck, Snapple. Thanks for the Nutrient Enhanced Water Beverages you sent me. Full disclosure: a friend of mine walked off with the Mango one, and the other one, whatever it was.

Price of Rice Hits Home While Gas Price Keep Diners Home?

"You can't charge enough to keep up with food prices."  So said Tavee Yaparwong, owner of my favorite Thai restaurant in Albuquerque, who just told her customers she would  be closing down the $7.43 lunch buffet in favor of $7.95 daily specials. "Rice alone, jasmine rice, has gone up 150% in the past month, " she added.  And apparently the buffet was starting to have excess food going to waste on a regular basis.  Fewer people driving the extra miles to eat out, due to gas prices? Fewer people eating out at all, due to the need to put extra cash towards gas?

Fat David, Plus, Foodie is Baaaack; Also, Usage!!

Back, at last, after a long time away, and a road trip across these USSSS of A from St Petersburg to Albuquerque, a journey not noted for its fine cuisine, alas. So while I organize my foodie thoughts, experiences and pix, and prepare to resume, I thought you might enjoy this lovely image at left, forwarded to me, origin unknown. Clearly Dave has returned to his pillar in Florence after a few weeks holiday in the U.S.

Oh--also---consumed with following the Dem primary on line, I am once again urging all bloggers and posters to understand that "loose" means untied or unconfined,  while "lose" means go down to defeat. Also--"led" is the past tense of "lead", as in "she led in the PA polls by 20 points a few weeks ago."  And "lead," the noun, is the stuff appearing in all those Chinese-made toys. Thank you.

Of Islands, Hunger, and Yes, We Have No Eggs

Haitians are apparently not satisfied eating mudcakes for survival---in Port Au Prince they are rioting, and looting, and demanding the resignation of president Rene Preval in part because global food prices  have risen 40% in the past year, a fact particularly affecting islanders who import most of what they eat. Their staple, rice, is expensively imported more than it should be, thus diminishing local production. Taxes on food, too, appear to be an issue. Food that is on shelves in cities is too costly for the poor to buy. According to today's AP story, about 80% of the people struggle to survive on about $2 per day.

Many of those who marched on the capital chanted "we are hungry!," according to a report from The Canadian Press. Haitian riots followed protests in Egypt and elsewhere, prompting a UN official to state that "food insecurity" is a major threat to world stability.

Meanwhile, speaking of islands, when we recently visited family in the Abacos, Bahamas, we stayed in Hope Town, a place filled with well-off vacationers. Food, and most other domestic goods available at local groceries, was outlandishly expensive when compared to prices for the same items on the Florida coast. Even eggs were not raised locally for sale---people are dependent on small ferry boats for everything, and during a three day period of stormy seas, the hunt for eggs became paramount. Not, mind you, for human survival.  It was Easter weekend, you see.

Early one morning, still in my robe, I walked from our seaside abode onto a small road heading into the lush undergrowth, following the sound of a rooster crowing, hoping  to locate at least one local source of something to eat. After a bit I turned back on reflecting that my inappropriate garb might have caused the rooster's owner to have me arrested by the constabulary ( one guy) for some form of peeping or stalking or other addlepated old dame behavior.

Even the mere threat of " food insecurity" has me pondering( not for the first time,)  where to live,  what to grow, how to harvest enough water for growing, and how to get "off the grid" in time to do all the above.  Perhaps my Jack Russell might be cajoled into trotting along on some kind of power-generating treadmill so that I could maintain my link to the Internets, too.

Glorious Grandiose Greenhouse Weathers Another Storm

The hard-working and frost-bitten farmers on Summit Springs Farm in Poland, Maine have reported in positively that the friggin' greenhouse they labored to erect last fall now is up and sporting  2 layers of plastic sheeting. The monstrous growing environment measures 100 by 30 feet.

Someday, maybe in July, plants will be thriving inside. Apparently it snowed for the umpteenth time just after the plastic was installed.

"Cooking Light's" Gargantuan Opus

Eleven million readers! So claims Cooking Light magazine on its website. Established by Southern Progress Corp, Birmingham, AL,  in 1987, the magazine's aim is to scale back the fat in not just fried chicken--( NB--fried chicken empire KFC apparently is now offering grilled hens)--but in a wide range of traditional as well as global recipe favorites. Its approach is readable, practical, and utterly specific. And younger cooks in my family have praised the magazine's suggestions over the years.

Yesterday the company launched Cooking Light Complete Cookbook--A Fresh New Way to Cook, published by Oxmoor House, $34.95,  part of the Southern Progress group. Again, the practicality of the approach stands out. The 5-ring binder book containing 1200 recipes allows for easy removal of pages. Its surface is washable, for messy cooks like me, and the book comes with a DVD labeled "Bonus--Cooking Light Dinner Tonight Cookbook" featuring 100 recipes and multiple how to's.
( Yes, I have printed up recipes from the Internets but I have never allowed my laptop anywhere near my cooking arena, lord no. ) Calories, fats, carbs, etc., are listed at the end of each offering.

But, and here come the "buts," where's the joy? The exuberance of eating well --oops, that's another food mag---the taste, the aromas, the cultural background? Not here.

The layout begins with a section on In Season, all well and good. Then it gives a primer on what Healthy Eating is about, according to the authors, who must be congratulated on a thoroughly vetted, complicated project, mind you.   Next up are Entertaining and  Appetizers & Beverages, thereby making me feel I had stumbled into a 1950's  tome from Betty Crocker. Wha? Maybe the 21st century has reverted to home entertaining on a big scale while I was blogging--maybe gas prices are thrusting us back on cocktail hour with the neighbors. Maybe?

But having to flip through a major cookbook in search of main courses??  See-- after doing the Wasabi Bloody Marys--OY!-- and Mini Black Bean Cakes--yum, we are really salivating for dinner, and yet the cookbook offers us mega pages of BAKED GOODS next--breads, and cakes, and cookies and, and...

OK, I am possibly making too much of a fuss, but the fruit and veggie sidedishes are smack dab at the end next to substitutions and what a cup is and whatnot. The fish section neglects to inform the reader about the health benefits/sustainable issues of fish, but I suppose there's no room, sadly. And, alarmingly, an entire section of luscious looking fare is labeled Meatless Main Dishes. Please! This is so..........Betty Crocker?  Mushroom Tamales, Tomato Basil Tart, Corn Fritatta, yes. I think 21st c. Americans can handle Vegetarian Main Dishes, I really do.

I realize this is not intended to be the kind of cookbook one gets into bed with, red wine and oozing cheese on the night stand, for a sensual romp through phantasmagoric foodland.  Sitting bolt upright at my desk,  however, I utterly fell for the recipe for Swedish Limpa Soda Bread--it's seasoned with anise and orange rind. Excellent.

Congratulations, Cooking Light, on a major opus many will find perfect--the superlative recipe for Grilled Fries ( white and sweet) on p. 381 has been duly noted.