And later, a movie...Jay and RubyOther things we selected from the dim-sum carts: potstickers, pork buns, almond and mango pudding, three kinds of shrimp dumplings, red-cooked pork, cucumbers in vinegar, sticky rice. Things we wished we could have eaten too: greens, chicken feet, lots of other kinds of dumplings...LuLu'…
Tequila!I am reading Tequila! A Natural and Cultural History by Ana G. Valenzuela-Zapata and Gary Paul Nabhan. Science and poetic description combine beautifully as the author describes the taxonomy of the agave plant used in the beverage, its long history beginning in prehistoric Mexico, and the lives and …
Turkey SushiFor lunch, we couldn't go out for sushi since we still had a lot of turkey and other leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner. So I made Thanksgiving sushi, as illustrated above. Then we got in the car and drove from Lafayette to Ann Arbor where we are safely home. We have no leftovers here so maybe we'll…
Fresh EggsThe whitish green eggs are from a hen named Jello and the brown eggs are from a hen named Marguerite. Jello and Marguerite and another hen all live in the back yard of our neighbors, who gave us these wonderful eggs. We brought them along for our Thanksgiving visit to Lafayette.When I cracked them o…
Dinner!Turkey, cranberry sauce, plum chutney, and several vegetablesReady to eat...Apple pie, chocolate pie, cranberry breadOur turkey centerpiece…
Thanksgiving UnderwayBy the time we arrived here in West Lafayette, the turkey was in the oven and almost everything ready to cook for Thanksgiving dinner, which will be later this afternoon. Also, Elaine had lunch all ready for us. What luxury!After lunch, she recruited Len and Larry to make some roast vegetables on th…
More Thanksgiving MathFrom the incomparable mathemusician Vi Hart, here is another video. She now has 4 Thanksgiving videos, and a Halloween video with a sierpinski gasket made from 6 bags of (triangular) candy corn. …
The End of the TwinkieI had my last Twinkie a couple of years ago for Twinkie Day -- April of 2010. The funny thing, I wrote then, is that I remember thinking they were new when I first ate them as an elementary school child. That was long after 1930 when they were invented. Actually, I liked them. So after twinkieless y…
Calder's ForkIn the Los Angeles Times Today: "Alexander Calder's fanciful kitchen utensils" -- he'd make them for his wife when she needed something. I'm a big fan of his fanciful wire and metal objects, such as portraits and his circus. I wonder if I can find the book, Calder at Home, that these images are from…
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School LunchSchool lunches are much in the news this fall, as recently-enacted nutritional standards are mandating changes. The public schools in St. Paul, Minnesota, have been experimenting with new programs for a few years, so I was very pleased to receive an invitation to have lunch at the Horace Mann Elemen…
Disorder as art in food photosNot all food in art is perfect, as many Renaissance artists illustrated. In a current New York times article, photographer Laura Letinsky's work demonstrates the same principles. Both in her fine-art work and in her magazine illustrations she uses chaotic or at least very informal tables with the re…
McDonald's EverywhereHere: a wonderful illustrated round-up of McDonald's adaptations in other lands. I would love to try some of them, like the Moroccan McArabia -- a cumin-spiced flatbread chicken sandwich (the article says it's beef but the photo is titled chicken). Or like the Turkish Kofteburger -- "the McDonald…
What makes us human?Very early hominids at some point learned to eat cooked food. This allowed evolution of "smaller guts, bigger brains, bigger bodies, and reduced body hair; more running; more hunting; longer lives; calmer temperaments; and a new emphasis on bonding between females and males. The softness of their co…
A Judgement of Foodies"Let's start the foodie backlash" by Steven Poole, a very long and ranting article in The Guardian, condemns many things about the modern interest in food, in food TV, in exotic and excessively innovative cooking experiments, and in a wide variety of what he sees as a new version of gluttony.Straigh…
Artichoke ice cream and other surprisesIn the 18th century, ice cream was a novelty. Not new -- even the Romans had frozen desserts, and the transition to ice cream was gradual. It's another thing Marco Polo might have seen in China (but he didn't seem to have mentioned it). Books about ice cream were definitely new in the 18th century, …
Sunkist Oranges and Birds Eye PeasWednesday night I attended the regular meeting of the Culinary Book Club that I belong to. We read Birdseye by Mark Kurlansky, a biography of Clarence Birdseye. The subject of the bio developed processes for frozen food technology: how to freeze it quickly with a variety of huge devices, package it …
MarshmallowsOn one of the delightful reruns of Julia Child shows, she and Jacques Pepin make a turkey dinner with all the traditional side dishes. As she heaps sweet potatoes into a serving dish, she says something like this to the audience, "These are plain mashed sweet potatoes, but you could make candied swe…
Manifold CookingAt today's Old Car Festival in Greenfield Village, I learned about a cookbox that was made, back in the day, to fit over the exhaust manifold of a Ford Model T. You can see the metal box just behind the headlamp here:At the demo in front of the reviewing stand the beautifully dressed passenger in th…
Food in PoetryI often write about food in novels or other books I have read. I have just found a Poetry Magazine collection of poems that feature food. Other than the famous one about plums by William Carlos Williams ("This is just to say"), or the Ogden Nash short poems published in the book depicted at right li…
Tarte au CitronMy project: to master a recipe for French-style Tarte au Citron. Above: my first effort. The crust and sugared lemons on top were based on this: How to cook perfect tarte au citron. I used a Julia Child recipe for the filling. The crust, especially, needs work, but the result was quite delicious.…
Patty-Pan SquashFor dinner: stuffed little patty-pan squash. Inspired by the Shakespeare cookbook, I spiced the breadcrumb, onion, and insides-of-squash filling with fresh thyme (also from the market), nutmeg, lemon zest, and raisins. It wasn't a Shakespeare recipe, though, just an improvisation.…
Ann Arbor: The Farmers MarketThe farmers market here is a bit sad this year because so much of the tree fruit was destroyed by an early warming period in March followed by bad frosts last April. Moreover, the drought is serious; some farmers have been able to water their crops, but others are suffering.I talked to one farmer w…
What did Shakespeare eat?What did Shakespeare eat?Definitive answers here: The Shakespeare Cookbook by Andrew Dalby and Maureen Dalby, published by the British Museum Press this year. Andrew Dalby is a culinary historian, so this is a work of scholarship, using contemporary cookbooks and dietary advice books that were in pr…
Julia Child RecipesMore spinoff from thinking about Julia Child's 100th birthday ...August 17: Champignons a la Grecque, served with tomato, cucumber, and cilantro.Tonight: a clafoutis made with huge black cherries. I think I last made this in 1965, though I suspect I have made clafoutis with other fruit once or twice…
Happy Birthday Julia Child and EvelynJulia Child would be 100 years old today -- as every food blogger and food writer knows. I first encountered her work and TV show in the fall of 1964, when I was newly married and learning to cook. Marcy, the secretary of the office where I was working was a member of Book of the Month Club, and pu…
