Potlikker

new favorite snack: Popchips

This taking-the-baby-weight off program gets dull. It requires occasional browsing of sports and fitness magazines like Shape. The last issue I read featured their annual snack review article. Best article I've read in a while. It turned me onto my new standard snack, Cocoa roasted almonds. Yum. Those 100 calorie snack packs were easily found at Target, grocery stores, and amazingly, is available in a 38 oz. "bulk" container from Sam's.

But other snacks tasted and reviewed in the article were not so easily found. I really wanted to try Popchips, but couldn't find them in my state. In my REGION. My only recourse was to order them via Amazon. 

What if I didn't like them?

So I wrote the editor of Shape, Valerie, and told her how much I enjoyed the article, how the snacks left me salivating in vain because I couldn't get my hands on several of them. She wrote back, asked for my address, and said she'd get product shipped to me.

How about that? It's as simple as asking? Her response could make me a loyal Shape reader forever. That's a fabulous example of customer service. And Popchips did not disappoint. A few days later a package arrived at my address containing four bags of salt & pepper potato chips.

What's so great about Popchips, you might ask? Everything. The whole bag/serving, is 100 calories. I'd eat them if they weren't healthy and low-calorie and popped, not fried or baked.

Please. Baked chips? I'd rather eat dirt than a baked chip. On Fourth of July my mom served baked chips. I ate one or two. After we left her house we stopped and picked up a bag of salt & vinegar chips, so I could get my chips fix for the Fourth. Also got a pint of Ben & Jerry's, but that's another story.

What else? Besides the snack being delicious and satisfying to the tummy, it satisfies my eyes, too. The chips are round and snappy, but I'm really impressed with the packaging aesthetics. The steel grey of the bag plus their soothing fonts made the entire Popchips experience superb. Their website is slick, too.

younger food of a younger land

If our lukewarm economy awakened your nostalgia for the good old days, look no further than The Food of a Younger Land. Mark Krlansky stumbled onto a goldmine of lost manuscripts created by Works Progress Act (WPA) workers as part of the Federal Writer's Project (FWP).  As he delved into the files held by the Library of Congress he selected finished manuscripts that stood up to the test of time and clearly met the WPA directive of balancing the focus of the article between people and food. Originally conceived as a comprehensive portrait of American foodways, America Eats was to be arranged by the five regions of the United States. But, before the work could be compiled and printed, the United States entered World War II, and the government focused on the war effort. 

Kurlansky perfectly places these essays into the greater context of the FWP in his introduction to the anthology. Southern states are represented more than others due to several facts. First, the southern region was poorer and had more out of work writers than other regions. Second, the south "generated the most copy, because fifteen projects were reporting" (15). And third, the government got more bang for it's buck by hiring southern writers at $39 a month verses a New York writer who received $103. Black writers, in the south, were paid less than white writers. 

There is something to suit every reader in this book. Whether your focus is on southern cuisine, like mine, or New England, there are plenty of essays to educate and inspire.  Here's a smattering from the southern section: "Coca-Cola Parties in Georgia," The Possum Club of Pole County, Arkansas," "Georgia Possum and Taters," "Mississippi Chitlins," "South Carolina Chicken Bog," and "The Mint Julep Controversy."

Each section offers an introduction to the regional culture and then the entries begin. The first in the South is called "Mississippi Food," by Eudora Welty. It's mostly a collection of recipes "gleaned from ante-bellum homes in the various parts of Mississippi, nothing is held back" (102). Zora Neale Hurston's "Diddy-Wah-Diddy," is a short piece comparing Diddy-Wah-Diddy to Heaven where food is already cooked and everyone has plenty to eat. Both Welty and Hurston essays begin with brief introductions to the author's life and works written by Kurlansky.

mustard making 101

While I was pregnant--and at some point, I realize, I will stop making references to that point in my life, but I really wonder when that might be, years from now?--and waiting in doctor's offices I discovered lots of magazines I had not been exposed to before. Most of them were parenting in nature, but one was a recently launched regional women's magazine called Verve. It's Western North Carolina's "smartest magazine for women."

Verve featured a story about a woman who makes mustard. That issue also featured women who BBQ, too, but that's not what this is about.  I read all about Lusty Monk mustard at my OB's office. Kelly Davis is the woman who makes Lusty Monk. She's an historian and bartender who translated a medieval recipe for mustard and started a cottage industry. With Lusty Monk rattling around my brain pan I opened the February Savuer "Home Cook" edition and found Stout Companion and told Ian how easy it would be to make our own mustard.

He was all for it. The trouble was finding enough mustard seed. I had a small bottle in our spice cabinet, but that was not nearly enough. The recipe called for 10 oz. Happenstance, pure luck, it was that I found at least that much at Earthfare. But it was yellow mustard seed, and not the brown. Oh well. We tried it with yellow mustard seed, since that was all that was available.

The fabulous thing was that we used the food processor. I've wanted one for years. Ian bought it for me last year at Christmas. And I used it for the first time just before Christmas this year. I know. I couldn't get it to work. I can't explain it. Really, it was silly. User error. I'm great with computers, terrible with appliances. I christened it with cheese straw dough, and then we made mustard in it a few weeks ago.

Actually, first, you let the Guinness stout, mustard seed, red wine vinegar, kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice sit at room temperature for 1-2 days. This lets everything percolate and lets the mustard seeds soften. Then you process everything and transfer it to a jar. You can keep it refrigerated for up to 6 months. Its flavor mellows as it ages.

When Ian first tasted it, he said it made him feel a little Funky. Or Loopy. Or a little bit high. Like maybe there was still some alcohol content in there. But then that went away. 

I returned to Earthfare for more mustard seeds in the intervening weeks to no avail. And even spoke to one of their people about when they might get more in, but they seemed rather clueless about the whole stocking of mustard seed in bulk problem. Luckily, we stopped in at our locally owned Natural Foods Market for a special medicinal item that Earthfare doesn't stock either, and they have both brown and yellow mustard seeds and so we scored there. Yay!

Ian likes our home brewed mustard it, and eats it regularly. I don't love it, nor do I hate it. I might like it on a nice hot dog. But we've only eaten those nasty fat free hot dogs of late, per our diet. Yuck. So maybe on a real porker of a hot dog it would taste swell. Our next batch, that we bought the last pound of seeds for, we plan to add about a cup, or half cup of honey.

kingdom for a brownie

Even though I don't love chocolate, I made brownies Sunday morning. Each month I look forward to "The Last Touch," the final column in Gourmet.  This month (June) it featured four brownie recipes. Actually, the first, Coconut Blondies, is perfectly my speed, my taste. And someday I'll make that recipe for certain, but it's not what tugged at my apron strings Saturday afternoon as I browsed magazines on my back porch and ate strawberries straight out of the pint container.

Peanut Brittle Brownies. Yeah. It's deceptively simple. You make your brownie batter, pour it into your pan, and bake for 25 minutes. Pop open oven door, pull out rack, and sprinkle peanut brittle crumbles on top. Shove rack back in, close door, and bake another 5 minutes. Viola! You have yummy brownies.

By the time Ian arrived home Sunday morning, they had cooled enough to cut. Ian suggested that I cut and keep aside all the corner pieces for him. We are so compatible when it comes to baked goods. He likes the corner pieces, while I prefer the inside pieces that have absolutely no hard crusty edges.
Sigh, isn't it great when relationships work out like that? The only thing we usually fight over are black olives when we get that large shared salad at Olive Garden. Have to equally distribute the olives between us.

The brownie was yummy. I used 4 ounces of  Ghirardelli chocolate morsels I bought ages ago with Laura at Sam's. First time I opened its bag, actually, and was glad to have it. No doubt the Ghirardelli quality infused those brownies with an undeniably rich chocolate flavor.

I packaged up most of the brownies and as we made our Sunday rounds, I dropped off a half a dozen or so at my mom's house and and Ian's parent's house. It's best to share brownies, any sweets, really, so that those who are tempted and cannot control themselves do not have so much a temptation to overcome.

how do i love brie?

brie with date & melba toast on a sunny day

How do I love brie? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the edge and center and rind

My tongue can reach, when feeling out of mind

For the ends of Aroma and ideal Taste.

Inspired by Elizabeth Barret Browning's Sonnet XLIII "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."

just the facts, ma'am

portobella sammich from Alta Cucina, yummm

Since Nikki tagged me, I'll play along.  The rules as Nikki explained them:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

Five food related facts about me:

1. I eat arborrio rice mixed with butter and sugar almost every night for dinner. It's an addiction. I love my rice cooker. I love the simplicity. And sometimes, I love the redundancy.

2. Should you invite me for breakfast, or a special occasion, I like my eggs over easy, or deviled, or not at all (though that cauliflower & feta omelet in the latest issue of Gourmet tempts me).

3. Cherry-flavored drinks are my downfall: Diet Cheerwine, Diet Cherry Coke, and Jones Black Cherry Soda (it's sugar free!), yet I mostly loathe cherry flavoring, especially in cough syrup.

4.We bought a tub of Nestle cookie dough last week. I dipped my spoon in and ate a bunch of it despite having no sense of taste at all with my sinus issues of late. I threw it out before it was finished because it was too much of a temptation for Ian and I found it yucky tasting when my sense of taste returned. The best cookie dough is homemade, but if I have to rely on the manufactured kind, I prefer Pillsbury in the big sausage-link-like packaging. There's something so satisfying about squeezing out a blob of cookie dough from a that tubed-like container that represents the eating-of-cookie-dough experience.

5. My favorite meal, of late, besides the pseudo-rice pudding supper, is cheese and fruit. The cheese in question is brie. Brie, I hardly knew ye! I regret the years that I didn't appreciate brie. And surely, brie deserves a blog post all its own, in due time.

I'm tagging these folks: Bad Fortune Cookie, Dawn Houser, Gotta Knit, Golden Loving Knitter, and Write Kudzu, but I'm breaking rule number 4 and not letting them know it, just cause I think they've all been tagged before and may not want to play. Will rely on serendipity to so move those tagged.

you are what you grow

Scary. I'm reading an article called "You Are What You Grow" in the NYTimes about why it's cheaper to eat a Twinkie than a carrot, and cheaper to wash that down with a high-fructose corn syrup-laden soda as opposed to a good-for-you glass of orange juice.

Here's why:

A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

finding foody balance

Ina Garten is one of my favorite celebrity chefs. Every recipe I've tried from her books comes out marvelously.

In a NYT article that questions her nonchalance about expanding her ventures in the same manner as her friend and mentor, Martha, she says:

“There is a balance between having a life and having a business,” she said during a recent day spent at her home and in her offices.

So the interesting thing I learned is that there may be hope for me yet. Garten is one of the slew of food personalities who has accomplished a great deal of success without having run a kitchen or been a chef.

She got her start selling comfort food, and suggests that you stick to those dishes when having the boss over for dinner.  The success of her first cookbook was largely in part to it's "lush photography."

Really fascinating article. It goes on to describe her three-book deal and how the industry norm these days is for a celebrity chef to crank out a cookbook per year. Seems like lots of hard work thinking up new recipes and testing them.

And, Garten has plans for a new set, built inside a barn on south of her property  in the Hamptons.  And you wondered what this had to do with anything southern. There is is; had to wait for it.

do's and don'ts

Great post over at delicious days about foodblogging. Lots of suggestions for improving your content, design, etc.

tending an East Tennessee truffle orchard

Image from http://www.holidaybank.co.uk/images/

Should I begin each post with "It's not everyday that East Tennessee..." Seems that way. There is always something unusual happening in my backyard. But really, how often does something about food in East Tennessee appear in the New York Times, The Newspaper of Record? Maybe once a year, at that.

So here's the scoop. The delightful, yet blogless, Amy sent me a link to this story about Chukey, Tennessee and an amazing crop of truffles in a most unexpected place.

A quote to whet your whistle:

Chuckey is not the sort of place one expects to find the holy grail of the food loving world. But on the edge of town, perched on a south-facing slope overlooking the birthplace of Davy Crockett, an orchard of 350 hazelnut trees has begun to sprout Périgord truffles, the fragrant black fungi that can send epicures, as well as routing pigs and dogs, into fits of frenzied greed.

There you have it. Truffles in East Tennessee. I may have to visit that orchard. It's owner, Tom Michaels, is also a Scrabble tournament competitor. And most people who know me in real life understand that Scrabble is a serious passion of mine, though I cannot convince anyone to play me. Sore losers.