Archive for October, 2011

  |  
October 27, 2011

Mmmm, Orange Corn Syrup

I’ve been a sugar fiend since I was a little kid. Until about age nine, I would spoon sugar into my grilled cheese sandwiches when they came out of the microwave. During grade school, I would usually bake chocolate chip cookies-a big batch of them- on Friday afternoon, and they would be gone by Sunday. Thankfully, I’ve learned self-control and somewhat outgrown the obsession. But this time of year is special. Between mid-October and New Year’s Day, it’s extra difficult to avoid buying and politely decline all manner of sweets (not that I do the rest of the year either).

For extra nostalgia, put them on your teeth like fangs.

Holiday-specific candy is particularly treacherous for me. Candy corn, Toblerones (a Christmas tradition in my family) and Cadbury Mini Eggs are such ingrained pieces of the holidays that I don’t think I could ever turn them down completely. So last weekend, I caved and bought one small bag of autumn mix for pumpkin carving. I’ve been putting off buying any kind of Halloween candy for weeks. We don’t get trick-or-treaters in our complex, so there’s no reason to stock up aside from wanting to indulge my own inner child. My inner child is very persuasive when she’s been given candy, which leads to more candy.

Here’s the crazy thing about this sugary concoction: it doesn’t even taste that good. Sure, it’s fine if you’re eating mindlessly, but if you stop and really taste it? It’s about as sweet as can be up front, a little waxy, with a mild aftertaste of bitter red dye. It reminds me of red licorice. And yet we keep eating it. One small bowl was shared three ways, with my husband and cousin. In more recent years than I’ll admit, I could have downed the bowl myself in an hour. These days I’m a little more conscious and was super aware of the gross taste in my throat and the energy crash that followed even just a reasonable amount of the candy.

So why eat this stuff? For me, nostalgia. Nibbling on candy corn reminds me of being a kid. If I wanted something delicious, I’d get a fancy chocolate bar or a couple of truffles. Autumn mix reminds me of years ago when my biggest concern was this week’s spelling test. One bag for the season is plenty. It has virtually no nutritional value and is only mildly enjoyable, so why bother with more? Give in to nostalgia for a bit and call it a day without faulting yourself for breaking this or that arbitrary rule. The fact that I didn’t enjoy this candy very much is a good sign to me that I’m at least sensitive enough to multiple-sweetener-based “foods” to know when I’m eating them. It’s one of the many benefits of eating a mostly plant-based unprocessed diet—there are plenty more mentioned on 100 Days of Real Food, a blog I frequent. This awareness in itself is a victory over the inner fiend. Now if only peanut butter cups would stop being so delicious…

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Tags: ,
October 25, 2011

What am I Going to Put This In?

When I first moved into my own apartment, my kitchen was basically outfitted, but I often found myself reaching for things I didn’t own. In my mom’s kitchen, on the other hand, there was always the perfect dish for whatever you had. Loaf pans, odd sized or shaped containers and bowls abounded. There was more than one vegetable peeler (Thanksgiving involved something like 15 pounds of potatoes). Mom’s accumulated a multitude of odd dishes and pans, so you’re never at a loss.

Best. Potato masher. Ever.

Since my first place, I’ve managed to collect a lot of the little things I always needed. A few years ago, I swapped out my “ergonomic,” fancy-looking potato masher (who designed that stupid thing—it didn’t work at all!) for one I talked my mom into giving me. The one from Mom has a wooden handle, and a very basic metal mashing surface; I love it. I hope to never need a new one, ever.

I’ve also amassed a number of pans that are not your ordinary 9 by 13. Some of them came from Goodwill; I use them all. There is a set of two, purple Le Creuset, I bought new, and they are my preferred pans for roasted veggies and fruit crisps. There’s a really deep casserole I use for bread pudding and a couple of Corningware pans with lids that are great for Dutch baby (the aforementioned Dutch baby).

I set out for some of these pans knowing what I wanted; others I came across by chance and realized I had to have them. The prevailing trend, though, is that all of these are smaller than your typical mentioned-in-recipes pans. That, I think, is extremely important. They’re the right size if you’re not cooking for a family with children, or if you do mind eating the same thing four days in a row. A couple of them fit in the toaster oven. I could gush about our toaster oven here, but I think I’ll save that for its own post. Back to the pans: seriously, they’re small. And they’re perfect. Vegetables for one person fit easily in the small purple one.

Some of my favorite go-to pans.

Having the right tools in the kitchen makes everything easier. I once tried straining raspberry sauce through a coffee filter, and a tea strainer, because I didn’t have a regular strainer. That was a huge mistake; the next day I went out and bought myself a strainer, which I’ve used countless times since. Tools make a difference, but you don’t need a fully furnished gourmet kitchen to cook simple dinners. The best stuff is probably in your mother’s kitchen or at a thrift store. Then the next time you don’t want to get a whole big pan dirty, you’ll have the right one waiting.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Tags: ,
October 17, 2011

(One Reason) Why Pilgrims Didn’t Need Gyms

Last weekend, my husband and I were invited out to a friend’s childhood home in Sandy for a cider press. Each fall our friend and his family pick the apples in their small orchard and make cider on an old-style press.

We arrived at noon, potluck dessert in hand (an overfilled blackberry crisp right out of the oven) and started picking. We spent a good amount of time scaling trees, testing our dexterity with an orchard picker and looking for level places to put ladders. Not every apple was picked, but for a small number of trees bearing fruit, we collected a lot of apples.

Step one: grind up the apples.

After lunch, it was time to use the old press. It’s the kind where you put apples in the top and grind them into a wooden barrel frame; if you’re not the weight lifting type, it gets stuck when your cohorts throw in too many apples. Once the barrel is full, you put a cut out piece of wood on top of the ground apples and screw down the top until you need a 2 by 4 for leverage. Our friend’s nephews, ages 6 and 7, were oh-so-cute running the 2 by 4 around until the bigger guys had to take over.

While all of this was happening, delicious juice was trickling into our containers. We tasted several of the batches and made pretentious, mock-wine tasting comments. By the time we worked our way through all the apples, fourteen gallons of cider had been pressed, and there were still boxes of apples deemed pretty enough for regular eating.

I got to take a bucket of apples home and made applesauce sweet enough not to need any sugar. Taking a whole bucket of fruit from someone feels weird, but I remember the days when I was a kid and we had too much produce from our garden. Having someone take it away is a favor. The applesauce is occupying our freezer and will have destinations soon (I see you coming, Christmas).

Step two: press the mashed apples into cider...so simple!

Pressing cider was an entertaining and exhausting way to spend a lovely fall afternoon. It recalled much simpler times and the value of physical labor—it reminds me of Joel Salatin’s (of Food, Inc. fame) new book Folks, This Ain’t Normal, which I am thoroughly enjoying. Fall isn’t only a time for school supplies and new beginnings; it’s also a time to reflect on the products of hard work. Think about all you’ve accomplished this year and pat yourself on the back. Maybe toast with a little cider too.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Tags: , ,
October 10, 2011

A Quest for Milk, Sugar and Not Much Else

I don’t buy ice cream often, mostly because I’ll eat it. All of it, usually within a day or two. So I make a point of not having it in my freezer. Ditto most other sweets known to man (my love of baking doesn’t help). But last week, I had been craving ice cream for about two days and I decided to cave in and buy the stuff for sundaes.

I could have gone to a shop and just gotten myself a cone, but I felt like being “good” and making sure I knew exactly what I was getting. So off I went to the nearest grocery store, which is a giant company, and about six blocks from home. After ten solid minutes in the freezer aisle flipping various pints of vanilla over, I found exactly one brand that didn’t have any objectionable ingredients (the runner up had 3 or 4).

In those minutes, I realized it’s been a long time since I bought ice cream. Most containers have shrunk (again), probably to “fit more easily in the customer’s freezer”—yeah, right. The winner was a pint of Haagen Daz, which had only five ingredients, despite not being from the much-advertised “five” line. But the pint was an actual pint. Then I headed to the topping display.

That’s where I threw my hands up and decided to take my quest to Whole Foods. Not one ice cream topping was made with simple ingredients, with many listing several sweeteners, hydrogenated oils and other chemicals unfamiliar to me. I hadn’t expected many acceptable options, but I thought surely there’d be something I could live with.

So on I went, six more blocks to the nearest Whole Foods. Even there, my choices weren’t as abundant as I’d hoped. They had a few ice cream brands that met my requirements (could I make this without a chemistry degree?), but most were prohibitively expensive. In the end, I settled on their house brand, which has a few ingredients I wish it didn’t, but not a laundry list of unpronounceable who-knows-what.

Finding chocolate and caramel sauces with just a few ingredients was easy, with several of them made by local companies. But the cheapest of the bunch were from a Montana-based company, so I got those for $4.99 a piece.

In all, it took the better part of an hour, lots of label reading and just under $15 to bring home the makings of a sundae with fewer than a half dozen unrecognizable ingredients. The unfortunate thing is that I’m not surprised. It is amazing how many preservatives, colors, emulsifiers and other doodads are in our food, and avoiding them completely is nearly impossible. Fortunately, they have to be listed on packaging, so the knowledge is there for the taking.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Tags: ,
October 4, 2011

Take a Cue from Jolly Old England

A few people have asked what my favorite part of our trip to Europe was. There’s no one answer. Each place we went was amazing and interesting in its own way. But there’s one food concept that I love and I think should be more common here: afternoon tea. Don’t laugh; I’m serious. I’m not proposing anyone wear white gloves, stick their pinkies out or that doilies need to be involved.

Who doesn't love scones?

Here’s why I agree with tea as a concept: what happens at 3:30? You’re no longer full from lunch, you’re still hours from dinner, and you’re fighting drowsiness. By tea, I mean hot tea (rather than a large sugary, milky coffee concoction), and a light snack. Or even just a snack. Scones are customary, muffins or a small sandwich would do. I don’t mean any of these items to be the size of a fist, and avoiding highly sweetened incarnations will stave off a sugar crash at rush hour.

Partaking in tea also helps with getting dinner ready. When I would come home from the office without having had a late afternoon snack, I was hungry enough to grab chips and salsa, then sit down and snack too much. I’d be eating when I should have been getting dinner going, and then lacked the motivation to do any cooking for dinner. Some of these evenings ended in pizza and breadsticks with ranch.

But, have a 4pm snack, and you delay hunger enough that you can get home and (mostly) put dinner on the table before eating immediately is your highest priority. Fruits and veggies work really well; I’m not ordering you to have pastries in the afternoon. And nibbling while dinner’s cooking is allowed, but if you’re not ravenous, it’ll be easier to keep it small and healthy before you sit down.

The afternoon tea my husband and I found in London was generous, and more than I’d recommend on a regular basis. It included a small pot of tea with plenty of cream, and two big scones with clotted cream, butter, and jam, for each person. Given how expensive we found London, I have to confess that late tea was dinner more than once.

You don’t have to get that fancy, and if you’re eating plain fruits and vegetables, you don’t really need to worry about portion size. Some of my favorite afternoon snacks include an apple with peanut butter, baguette with cheese and a side of strawberries, or half a bagel with cream cheese and tomato. Any of these will buy you some time at the end of the day, no doilies needed.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Tags: ,
  |