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therese

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Posts posted by therese

  1. Feeling much, much better. These taste nicer than they look.

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    These remind me of a Hostess snack cake from the 1960s called Sno-Balls. They were chocolate cake wrapped in a vanilla-and-coconut frosting.

    But I'm sure that these are not those.

    So what are they?

    BTW: Chain trivia questions! Cool.

    Black sesame buns, part of the stash of steamed buns I laid in for the kids' lunches this week.

    My daughter had her first swim meet of the year (the practice meet, actually, so I didn't go) and she and my husband were gone by the time I got home from work, and both ended up eating at the pool. So my son and I just ate whatever we felt like, and I went to bed early.

    I'm hoping we can manage to have a reasonable dinner as a family this evening. Usually Wednesday night is a bit frantic, as my son's chess instructor comes to the house to give him a lesson, but since school is out he plans to come over at 4:00 and so will be finished in time for us either cook and eat together, or go out.

  2. Had the good fortune to visit the Pegu Club the other night and tried their "Intro to Aperol" cocktail, which was delicious.  Something like a twist on the Jasmine, but with the oranginess of the Aperol showcased right up front.

    Now my question is: who's the importer, and in what states can it be purchased.  Any confirmed sightings in NYC liquor stores yet?  The only chance of getting Pennsylvania to pick it up would be if I could tell them who the importer is.

    Mmmmmm... Aperol, Campari's orange cousin.

    I can't help you with a U.S. source, but here's a picture of a spritz from Venice:

    gallery_11280_1871_462407.jpg

  3. he said....

    "But in my judgement, which way soever they be drest and eaten they stir up and cause a filthie loathesome stinking winde with the bodie, thereby causing the belly to bee much pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine, than men."

    and he was John Goodyer

    about, yes jerusalem artichokes

    tracey

    Yep. Seems like Champlain had something similar to say, but I can't find it on line just now. I may have confused Champlain's first reports of it (it's a New World item) with Goodyer's disparaging report.

  4. inulin has a zero glycemic index, aides in calcium absorption and contains fiber

    So, yes, inulin has zero glycemic index because humans cannot digest it. Even if it's injected directly into the blood stream we cannot metabolize it, and it moves directly into the urine throught the kidneys (assuming your kidneys function well---there's actually a test in which inulin actually is injected into a patient's blood and the recovery of inulin in urine measured as a way of looking at the GFR, or glomerular filtration rate).

    Because inulin stays in one's gut it will act as dietary fiber, holding water there along with it. The wall of the gut stretches and responds to the increased volume of its contents, and well, everybody's generally happier.

    tryska points out:

    ...is also a probiotic enhancer?

    perhaps stonyfield uses it to keep the bacteria happy?

    So, yes, some bacteria can utilize inulin, as they have the enzymes required to break it down into usable smaller carbohydrates. Providing this "probiotic" may be a means of changing the type of bacteria that live in your gut, or at least the relative amounts of the different sorts of bacteria (of which there are bajillions). Some of them are likely to produce gas as part of the metabolism of inulin, and your gut will stretch and respond in a manner similar that resulting from increased water volume.

    This may all sound a little, well, ick, and in fact there is a well-documented early report of an unpleasant encounter with inulin. The report dates from the early 1600s, and is of French provenance.

    Who wrote about his upset tummy, and what unfamiliar, inulin-rich food did he eat?

  5. Okay, back in the blogosphere after most of a really draining day.

    I do want to go ahead and point out that I don't mean to be even a teeny tiny bit crude or insensitive with the whole finocchio/fenouil question. I was just struck by the coincidence (or was it planned? The Sopranos is very well-written), and noted that eGulleteers had already identified the Le Grand Vefour.

  6. gallery_11280_2978_151455.jpg

    That's Chestnut cake, the fried one. You can get it steamed too.

    This one is chestnut cake? Very gelatinous, and unless the chestnuts in question are water chestnuts a very curious texture to the little bits as well, much more like apple or firm pear than chestnut.

    The outside texture seems to result from it having been rolled in something to keep the pieces from sticking together, not from frying.

  7. The American Stonyfield Farm yogurt has added fiber?

    I don't associate dairy products with dietary fiber usually.

    Inulin and pectin are both added to Stoneyfield. I'm pretty sure that pectin's used in a number of U.S. yogurts (as a gelling agent, although it's also a dietary fiber), but inulin's unique (the last time I checked, that is).

    Why does Stoneyfield add inulin to its yogurt?

    I'm following an Atlantan's gastronomic adventures and I have yet to see anything aside from Vidalia onions and rhubarb that I would consider traditionally Southern. What happened to all that?

    The week is young.

  8. Therese

    Earlier you mentioned being asked to stop taking photos in a food market.  I know this happens from time to time, but I have never been entirely clear as to why.  Is the answer obvious to everyone else and I am missing something?  Does it have to do with the competition or what? 

    Lee

    I really don't know, and it might be different reasons in different places. DFM has historically used staff that might have some immigration issues and so might be camera shy, but I think it's mostly the whole "industrial espionage" issue.

  9. Dinner quandary solved by not entirely satisfactory compromise involving picking up daughter from friend's house (where she'd already dined) and having her run into Panera buy some of the worst bread on the face of the earth. Panera does have a decent sourdough, but their French baguette is atrocious, and so although my daughter had been instructed to buy sourdough she had to make do with French.

    This was served with pate (of undistinguished origin), taramosalata (similarly undistinguished), and tomato and arugula salad.

    gallery_11280_2981_654119.jpg

    Oh, and remember the potato salad from Publix? I didn't have to offer it to my husband (and thereby feel cruel), he asked for it. So it all worked out very nicely.

    Hideous work day tomorrow, so I'm hitting the hay early, but I'll leave you with a trivia question:

    The first time I ever heard the word arugula was in the context of a fairy tale. Which one was it?

  10. As for rhubarb, what is the season for rhubarb in the south?

    There isn't one, at least not once you get out of the mountains. We're in the piedmont of the Appalachians, literally right at the edge, with the northern suburbs of Atlanta being hillier than the southern ones. My grandmother (whose farm was in Appalachia proper, in the Blue Ridge of Virginia) could grow it, but farmers I've talked to here at the Morningside Market never seem to have it and say that it doesn't grow well.

    The rhubarb in my picture was purchased at DFM, labeled as organic, from California.

  11. Vidalia onions have changed in appearance since I first saw them (probably 20 years ago). Back then they were they were virtually always pretty small, and "flatter" than usual onions, so there was much less yield of usable onion per item and per pound. They also went bad much more quickly than other onions.

    Is this due to better genetics? Has it come at the expense of flavor?

    In the midwest, a number of boutique organic farms produce a variety that is often called 'cipollini' that is very similar to what you describe as the Vidalias from years ago. Flat and small with a very nice round sweet flavor. Excellent grilled. They are most often sold field fresh as opposed to storage onions.

    I don't know if "better" is quite the term, and I'm not in a position to say whether the Vidalias today are as good as the Vidalias from way back when. I don't eat raw onions too frequently, and that's where the difference will be the most marked. The term "Vidalia" basically means that the onion is grown in a particular part of Georgia, so there's an element of "terroir" involved.

    I do know that Vidalias were seen as pretty odd back when they were first being shipped. A friend of mine is a vegetable broker (yes, a vegetable broker) and he apparently had trouble with a load of them being turned away by Canadian ag inspectors who thought there was something wrong with them.

  12. A topic that comes up pretty frequently on eG is yogurt, specifically the difference between European (particularly Greek) and U.S. yogurts. The biggest difference, I think, is that U.S. yogurts generally have added gelatin or other "stiffeners" that give them a creamier texture. The added gelatin will bind up some of the water that yogurt otherwise gives up.

    The other way of dealing with extra water is to drain it, and Total Greek yogurt is a good example of this type product.

    I tend to prefer U.S. style yogurt for sweet applications, and Greek-style drained yogurt for savory ones. I also like goats milk and sheeps milk yogurt for savory things. I don't like commercially-flavored yogurts, and make my own.

    Anyway, I've generally got two different sorts of plain, fat free yogurt on hand:

    gallery_11280_2981_23725.jpg

    Apart from the differences listed above (as well as price, packaging, name brand, provenance, and specific bacterial cultures), there's something else about these two yogurts that's different. What is it?

  13. Dinner quandary ahead.

    I was planning on grilling corn on the cob and okra and Vidalia onions and eggplant, and serving it all with tomato and basil salad. Not only would this have been a great means of processing the contents of my fridge, but I'd have leftovers for lunch this week.

    Unfortunately my husband is presently lying supine on the floor of the kitchen, resting up before returning to finish our two-thirds stained deck. So not only will the grill not be back in service in time, but the entire outside smells like a solvent factory.

    Documentation of the work in progress:

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    Husband has just cast a vote for "take out." I don't think he cares too much what sort of take out. Hmm, maybe I could get him to eat that nasty potato salad he brought home from the Publix the other night. Oh, hold it, that wouldn't be very nice, would it?

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