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Everything posted by Lindacakes
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Shelling peas. Preparing (plumping, cutting, etc.) dried fruit or nuts. Mixing anything, including cutting butter into flour. Cutting out cookies. Tasting batters and doughs. Breaking the seal on jarred food, like peanut butter. Washing dishes, flat dishes, not cups, not cutlery and certainly not pots. Rolling dough.
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Perhaps this is why we see whole candied fruit so rarely.
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Strawberries from Mountain Sweet Berry, which went directly into strawberry shortcake with the whipped cream from Ronnybrook. Maple syrup (ok, it's not in season, I'm out), sucrine, fresh garlic, mustard greens in a salad mix, fava beans, English peas, pollack and a egg-o-rama of Araucana eggs, a goose egg and a dozen quail eggs.
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I'm picturing the discovery of waffles is kind of like the Lascaux caves . . . Someone "discovered" them while out doing something else . . . There was a grove of waffles, just beyond the river . . .
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I'm an atheist but I've had meals that were prayers. Once in Costa Rica, someone I'd just met bought a fish, and four of us shared this one fish and I ate it knowing that it was very expensive for him. Another time, I was a guest in a very poor home in Egypt, there was a litter of puppies sleeping under the bed, and I was given a puppy to hold while I waited for the meal. The meal included raw eggs and a variety of other iffy things; I ate it in wonder. My father-in-law is an Episcopal priest and I have frequent occasion to hold hands around his table, staring down into my plate while he prays for us. I consider this also a moment of wonder, and I love holding his beefy hand. Once or twice a year I have occasion to have a meal with my landlord's daughter, and she has a way of praying that I find kind of funny and I always enjoy it. To me, it is an act of grace to be present while people engage in an intimate act of spirituality in my presence.
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There are no pictures -- the De Gouy books that I have are compendiums of recipes and variations. Ice Cream Desserts was published in 1948 and includes recipes for bombes, coupes, frappes, mousse, parfaits and sherbets. Some of the items on my To Do list from it include rhubarb ice, chocolate spice ice cream, concord grape ice cream, date and ginger ice cream, nougat ice cream, prune almond ice cream, snow ice cream, banana marshmallow mousse, blue plum mousse, molasses mousse, banana sherbet, and rhubarb orange marmalade sherbet.
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I just bought my second Louis P. De Gouy cookbook. I already had The Pie Book. I had a Dover edition of The Pie Book and I replaced it with a hardcover version I found. Then I fell for the cover of Ice Cream Desserts for Every Occasion and bought that. On the back of Ice Cream, there's an ad for The Gold Cookbook. I've read the biographical blurb. His father, Jean De Gouy, was Esquire of Cuisine at the Imperial Courts of Austria and Belgium. He studied under Escoffier. He cooked at a variety of grand hotels the world over. He was chef on J. P. Morgan's yacht during it's round-the-world cruise. He wrote for Gourmet magazine. But other than finding his books here and there, I'm not hearing any De Gouy lore. Has anyone actually cooked from his books?
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You don't want to know this due to geographical reference, but I'll contribute it anyway: In a jazz club in New York City, on New Year's Eve, after having heard the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and a short time after Hurricane Katrina, we guests were given large gooey cinnamon rolls to take home for breakfast (a few hours into the future). I've never forgotten it. I'm sure I paid for a dozen of them in the price of the tickets, but it was so unexpected, and so welcome, that it made an impression. I just had afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel in British Columbia. I was given a box of their signature house tea, 10 bags, upon departing. I thought that was rather civil of them.
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Try the Greek yogurt that you get at Titan -- you have to ask the guys behind the cheese counter for it. This is even better, I think, than the lebne at Kalustyan's. Honey, of course, and nearly any kind of jam. I particularly like it with bananas and dates that have been warmed until they are soft, and chopped, with toasted walnuts.
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I'm fussy about the butter being smeared on the top of the dish, so I hate butter dishes in general. I keep most of my butter double wrapped in the fridge or freezer and I cut off hunks for table use. The hunks go into a thick glass bowl (relatively small, size of an orange) with a cover that has a large round knob. This also gets smeary, but there's not enough butter in there long enough to get gross since I wash it every couple of times I fill it. I think these are usually sold as jam jars and you can get them for about four bucks at Surprise, Surprise, Bazaar or Fish's Eddy. I settled on this solution after trying every butter dish known to mankind. I think it's all about the lid for me, I like the lid to be smaller than the dish and that's usually reversed in butter engineering. What's special about Ben's butter? It looks good.
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Decorating cookies. How else do you get a jimmie exactly where you want it?
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Oh, my God, Cee Dub. I think I could learn to love laughing at that. He actually has a show? On the Food Network? When?
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I, too, cut the cable because the Food Network irritated the hell out of me. Of course, not just the Food Network, but it was the last thing I was watching outside of PBS. I don't miss it, either. My favorite castigating quote: "Besides, she has helmet hair." I'm sure I'm way behind the times, but Paula Dean would cause me to freeze like a reindeer in highlights, stricken by shock and horror. A woman who has made a name for herself in cooking because she uses a lot of butter, what would France say? Two Fat Ladies is my all time favorite television show, ever. It was the perfect template: travel sketch, focus on artisanal food purveyor (long before it was chic), odd conviviality (cloisters and rowing teams), sex appeal (check out the hunting in kilts episode), and funny characters with dry wit. I've watched each episode ten times and have to put it away for a while so that I forget some bit of it before I can watch it again. Why this isn't repeatable, I'll never know. Oh, yeah, I know. Because cooking shows are Big Business and have to appeal to the great mass of people who don't actually cook.
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Mc Donalds slammed by health groups in a joint letter
Lindacakes replied to a topic in Food Traditions & Culture
Can we factor in the fact that Americans spend more hours working than anyone else? And that working means, for most people, sitting at a computer? Under increasing amounts of stress? That we have little time left over for shopping and cooking? I think that if we have an obesity "epidemic" -- a word I hate because it implies you can catch it and if you can, then you can probably catch it from fat people -- then the epidemic has to be considered within the environment that spawned the virus? Going back up to the post by the person whose mother and scale are forever fixed in her mind, they are also forever fixed in my mind and it was much more than a glance -- I have a real problem with Michelle Obama and the subject of obesity. Because she links it with a weight problem of her daughter's. And all I can think of is that poor, poor kid. Imagine your mother + scale problem in a national arena . . . -
This weekend I decided to splurge and buy an ostrich egg at the farmer's market. Wow. Scrambled eggs from heaven. Lighter, fluffier, tastier. French toast from heaven. Lighter, fluffier, tastier. I cannot wait to spring this oddity on brunch guests.
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Mouse House reminded me of how I started my jar fetish in the first place -- I had a landlady that demanded I keep all of my food in jars so that I wouldn't bring a roach problem into her house. I had a pet mouse at the time, and she made me get rid of it. On my way to the pet store (he was going to become one with a reptile), I pushed his glass aquarium into the garbage can on the street and cut my hand so bad I could see the "bottom" under the skin . . . Mouse was in a paper bag, I put him on top of the trash and got in a cab to go to the emergency room. Mouse and bag were gone when I got back. Broke my heart, I'm an animal lover. I like to imagine something good happened to that mouse. I digress. All of my food at that time went into generic applesauce jars. Reagan was president, and generic food was new and everywhere . . . there were entire aisles in the grocery store with white labels and white boxes . . . Been jarring it ever since, but not every scrap. And totally forgot why.
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I haven't read every single post, forgive me if I repeat, but I know that there is a problem with farmer's markets being invaded by people who buy "regular" produce and sell it at the farmer's market. Market managers have to be on the lookout for that sort of thing. If there wasn't a markup at the farmer's market, why would they bother? I think it probably depends on where you live. If you are shopping in the middle of New York City, it's going to be more expensive. In general, it's going to be more expensive. The one place I can think of that it's cheap is when someone plunks what they've grown on a stand by the side of the road with a jar for money. This is my favorite way to shop, and a cheap way, but they don't do it much in Brooklyn.
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Yeah, okay. Sometimes I eat Fluff.
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The jars with plastic lids comment reminded me: Fluff jars. I have a large amount of Fluff jars because they say "Fluff" in the glass and have nice red plastic lids. I don't use them for food -- I use them for hardware and various art supplies. They do have one drawback. Sometimes over time the jar lids disintegrate and come apart. This doesn't happen to all of them and has nothing to do with wear and tear. It just happens. Shame. Because they are funny.
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Jar fetish here. I have an arsenal of the blue mason jars with zinc lids from my grandmother, and I have the Le Parfait French canning jars. I also save jars from products that I use, if I like them. There's a nocino bottle I like and it's the devil getting the label off but worth it. Makes an excellent infused liqueur gift bottle. The current jones is for Trader Joe's olive oil. Comes in a squat square bottle, carries no odor. I'm going for one for every kind of oil and every kind of vinegar so I'll have a real OC set. They have a thick cork stopper. The olive oil itself is not the best, not the worst, cheap.
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I would recommend looking at Martha Stewart's annual cookie magazines. There are three of them and you can get them on eBay. She does a nice job photographing them.
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Well, there is a sad end to this story. I did not have the heart to photograph the Agony. I let the fruit sit for a month. During which time all fruits collapsed in on themselves. When I opened the jar, there were some small white spots I assumed were mold. I cut open all the fruits to see what happened. They were stringier than the photo above, and in spite of the mold, I tasted them. Not good. Not horrible, but not good. I threw them all out. I'm just now starting to heal and feeling like candied lemon peel would be just the ticket. I am through with whole fruits for the time being. I suspect my problem was not enough punctures in the skin and/or too high a concentration of glucose. I did buy three half citrons intending to make a fruit cake that I decided not to make. So far I have made Modena Rice Pudding from Lynn Rosetto Kasper's Splendid Table, which was splendid indeed. Next I'll try a chocolate spice cake from Joy of Cooking. The fascination with candied fruit continues if the ability to create them does not.
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It has been my experience at Murray's that they will try to push the cheese they need to get rid of. I don't like that their counter set up precludes your being able to actually see what you are buying. More than once I have bought cheese there for a gift and then discovered that it was past its prime when opened.
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I spend way too much time shopping for food because I enjoy hunting it down. I rarely go to the grocery story any more -- most of my food is coming from fruit and vegetable delivery from Urban Organics, basics from Trader Joe's, and certain items from the Union Square Farmer's Market. At least once a week I add a favored specialty shop into the mix -- Kalustyan's, Titan, Coluccio's, Buon Italia, Patel Brothers . . . I also order certain items online like candied ginger and grits and Rancho Gordo beans. If it's not food, it comes from Costco. But recently I discovered a Bravo half a block from my house, which is the grocery store nearest to the projects. When I need to go to a grocery store, like for cat food for the landlord's cat, I go to the Bravo. They have a very interesting meat section and a panoply of "ethnic" foods. Like the jelly roll cakes that have guava jelly. I can remember that it really wasn't that long ago that access to any sort of food in New York outside of Key Food or Associated and the 24-hour Korean deli/vegetable stand wasn't possible. If I had to go back to doing weekly shopping in a regular supermarket (which I once did at the A & P in Washington Heights) I'd be very unhappy.
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It's about the quality of the milk. I can't drink grocery store milk and I like it from a bottle, I think it picks up a taste from the carton. I've been drinking Milk Thistle from the farmer's market. Nothing washes down a brownie quite the same way. And it elevates oatmeal to dizzying heights, especially if full fat and properly dressed with muscavado sugar and dried white peaches . . .