THANKSGIVING
It's getting nearer to Thanksgiving. I think this must be my favorite holiday of the year. It's a time when people get together with loved ones or close friends. It's the beginning of the Holiday season; it's the kickoff to excess! No matter how hard you try you always go overboard with eating. I think that makes it more important than ever to go to the health club. It's certainly one of the very best ways to keep your health plan on track.

As a kid, we often spent Thanksgiving with my Mom's side of the family. Tati would cook a wonderful dinner,Papa would be waiting at the door. He was always ready to help us kids get out of our winter coats and leggings. The table was always set with a beautiful pristine white linen cloth and napkins. If Uncle Don & Aunt Anne were there with our cousins, us kids would walk around the dining table scuffing our feet on the wool rug. We would stay away from one another because we didn't want to get shocked from scuffing our feet on the carpet.

The table would always have been set already so we didn't get in the way until it was time to put food on the table.

As a new twist on an old holiday standard I was surprised when I was at Central Market. They were sampling something that would be a good substitute for Thanksgiving dressing. They call this Basil & Pine Nut Bread Pudding. I hope you'll try it.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Serves 6
Lavishly butter a 2 1/2 Qt baking dish

1 1/2 to 1 3/4 C half & half
2C heavy cream
4 large eggs, beaten
1 stalk celery, diced
3/4 C diced onion
2T chopped basil
1/2 C pine nuts
1 loaf Challah, torn into pieces
Kosher salt & fresh ground pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and blend well. Mixture should be very creamy. If too dry, add more half & half. Let mixture rest at room temp at least 2 hours, adding more half & half if needed.

Pour into baking dish and bake until top is nicely browned and a knife inserted into center comes out clean.

I hope you'll try this. As mentioned, it is surprisingly good!

Bon Appetit!

Food Memories

September 14, 2008
Think about this. Why is a particular food your favorite? Sometimes it's because you 'had that when you were a kid'. It was something that a family member used to make.

Why anyone would seriously want to have a sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top is a mystery to me. But, sometimes it's because it was something that was always served at the Thanksgiving dinner prepared by grandma or mom.

As kids turn into adults, they may love or hate mom's meatloaf. You end up either loving meatloaf or your are scarred for life and no matter what, it's pretty difficult to change an opinion if you had a bad early experience.

It took my mom a little while to come up with a pretty good meatloaf. "My" meatloaf recipe consists of about a pound each of ground beef and pork. Add in about a box of Pepperidge Farm croutons of choice. Add in a small package of sour cream and a package of Lipton's Onion mix. Throw it all into a loaf pan and bake for about an hour. It's really delicious and how easy is that!

What memories do you associate with food?

Chiles

August 30, 2008

I just returned from Central Market. These past two weekends they have been roasting Hatch Chiles. These are chiles from Hatch, New Mexico. When you arrive or leave the store the smell of roasting chiles is very intense. The man roasting the chiles has on kitchen gloves, the heat from the roaster is pretty intense, particularly in the heat of San Antonio. Everyone setting up and working in the tent is sweating!



I'm not familiar with cooking with chiles of any kind. I guess it's not a big surprise since I prefer dessert. I would like to take a class about cooking with chiles. It's a talent to be able to layer the heat and make something that doesn't just burn your mouth; rather it would be better to just 'experience' the heat. Allow the heat to build, all of a sudden you have a new taste experience.

Ladies at Lunch

Today I had lunch out at a restaurant called 29 Restaurant and Wine Bar. Jeanette Solis from Univision TV was the hostess for Melisa Marcum, my media assistant, and myself. We had a very nice lunch. I had salmon that was perfectly cooked with nice grill marks. Jeanette had a Kobe Beef flat iron steak. I think it was served with frisee. Melisa had pork tenderloin with chorizzo.

I commented that I had started a food blog and Jeanette agreed that so many wonderful things in her life have happened around food, particularly memories of her grandmother and making tamales with her and the other ladies in her family. She said that so many times they will have a meal and think it isn't as good as her grandmother would make. Jeanette was glad that her mother spent time cooking with her own mother so that, hopefully, the recipes that so many women keep in their heads are not lost.

When we were done with the meal we had some really good desserts. Oddly, I thought that the Caramel and Blondie Sundae was refreshing. It had candied walnuts that added a really interesing crunch to the sundae. Melisa had their chocolate cake with blackberries and whipped cream. The chocolate cake was very moist and chocolatey. I wonder if they had added some blackberry syrup to make it so moist. We all had a little of each other's dessert and enjoyed the whole meal. The waitstaff placed candles on the desserts since this was a birthday luncheon.

Birthdays

August 19, 2008
My birthday is on Sunday, my Mom's birthday is Friday. I have had so many birthdays now that I don't think too much of it anymore, I wonder how my Mom feels about birthdays.

My cousin Lisa is going to come over, I think that Sonia and Erika will come over too. I found a recipe for Kung Pao Chicken in Fine Cooking. The recipe appears to be pretty easy. I think we can have fun cutting, chopping and saucing. We would have fun making dinner together.

The most important thing to make might be a coconut cake. When I was a kid, we could always have whatever kind of cake we wanted. I always wanted coconut cake from Sander's. The cake was white, it had a lemon filling and a 7 minute frosting smothered with coconut. I haven't had one of those for quite some time... maybe THIS is the year to make one. then again, maybe individual Ding Dongs would be better! We'll see which direction the spirit moves me!

random food thoughts: Special Cakes

random food thoughts: Special Cakes
Liz - I agree w/you - nothing better than the taste of a fresh raspberry that you've just picked after it has been warmed by the sun. It's warm and the raspberry just has a wonderful aroma and taste. Nothing better! I had my bottle of raspberry juice form Finland as long as I could.. I kept the bottle after it was empty but threw it away when I moved. I wondered what could I do with it anyway BUT, it reminded me of being in Finland when we all stopped and had a 'raspberry break'... sitting on the edge of the lady farmer's field with G'ma, your Dad & Meg. It was wonderful. It would be nice to return!

Special Cakes

August 14, 2008
A few weeks ago I was in Michgian having lunch at Debby's. Elizabeth was there and I'm not exactly sure why but she rememebered the birthday cake that I made for TJ's 16th birthday. The thing that she remembered was the raspberry flavor of the cake.

Since it was his 16th birthday and he was getting a driver's license, I made the cake in the shape of a car. I concentrated a raspberry puree and added this to the cake, the filling and the frosting. Even turned the frosting pink with the raspberry flavor. I got carried away with the chocolate decorations. The license plate was "TJ 16". I put 'his' face in the front window, on the side window and he could also be seen in the back window. It was a great taste and that was what she remembered.

Elizabeth liked the raspberry intensity of the cake. Any time you make something, flavour is paramount. I always try to figure out how to intensify flavour... toast nuts, concentrate fruit puree, layer different forms of the same flavour.

My Mom and I went to visit Wendy in Ann Arbor. After lunch at Zingermans, the most fabulous delicatessen on the planet, we stopped at a small bakery called Big City Small World. They make a childhood favorite - Ding Dong's. They had intense chocolatey goodness.

The filling was able to stand up to the summer heat of Michigan. I'm assuming that they had Crisco, eumpemistically known as shortening, in the filling.

I've been contemplating making a Ding Dong birthday cake for someone at work. I just need to get my mind adjusted to the idea of using Crisco in the filling. It's just such a difficult thing to accept when you're trying hard to use the 'best' of ingredients. Of course, Crisco is "the best" itself... you don't really want to buy the generic version of Crisco.

I'm planning to make the cake sometime in the next week or so - I'll keep you posted.

Me and Cindy

August 9, 2008

I told Cindy that I had started a food blog. She asked what I had written about. She agreed with me that food is always one of the ways to prompt memories or more conversation. She found a suggestion for family reunion planning included a family cookbook. What a great idea.

We agreed that it would prompt someone to remember the family reunion from 1958 when "Great Aunt Ethel" brought her potato salad and her sister Fern's dog, Harry, jumped up on the table to get a taste. Of course, as luck would have it, "Great Uncle Ed" tried to chase Harry away. Harry instead jumped on Uncle Ed, knocked him over and when he fell, his toupe fell off too.

Of course that scenario is fabricated but you get the idea. There are so many things that can happen in life where food prompts a memory. It can be a good way to preserve family history or memories that are unique to one person. Everyone has their own perspective on the exact same event. I guess that's why the police often come up with different culprit descriptions... everyone has their own idea of what the perpetrator looked like.

Speaking of potato salad, really good potato salad is often hard to find. Once you find one that is to your liking, you generally stick with that recipe forever! I don't like potato salad that has pickles in it. I don't like pickles - why should you allow them into your food, they contaminate the whole batch of whatever you're making.

I recognize that others would strongly disagree with that statement but that's okay - I know I'm right; they can live in ignorance. Ignorance is bliss.

first thoughts

August 7, 2008

I love to think about food. I love to talk about food. Not just any food. Nine times out of ten the topic needs to be dessert. While dessert is the BEST part of a meal and also the most fun to make, food in general is a fascinating topic.

One of the best things about food is that it's something about which everyone has an opinon. Food can be good or bad. It can transport you, through memories, to a good time or bad. It can be a conversation starter; if the conversation goes bad, you sometimes don't feel like eating anymore.

One of my favorite foods is a hamburger cooked outside on the grill. I LOVE grilled burgers. Why is that? Aside from the fabulous taste, I don't really know. When I was quite young, my Dad and Uncle Bob (my Dad's best friend) built a grill in the backyard. The grill was pretty big, they got a HUGE pile of bricks and went to town. It turned out pretty well as I recall. At any rate it served many meals in the summer.

I remember one of my birthdays, maybe number 7 or 8, where I invited several friends and they came at dinnertime. We played for awhile and then had grilled hamburgers. When it got dark we had fireworks. All of us little girls loved that, it was a BEST birthday ever. Maybe memories have some influence on how you feel or think about food.

Who doesn't love fireworks? The beginning starts out small, building toward the end... the fireworks get bigger and better as you near the end. Usually there's some big splashy finish. Living in Michigan, that was somewhat commonplace. Now that I'm in Texas, with no rain to speak of, fireworks are a rarity.

Last week I had a wonderful burger at Cappy's here in San Antonio. there is something different about a burger you get in a restaurant. This burger wasn't just any burger, it was made of Kobe beef and was topped with blue cheese. The burger wasn't particularly thick but it was just the right thickness. Everything about the burger - including the company - was great. I had lunch with a tv sales rep. Afterward we went to the Twig Bookshop and bought books. How great was that? Great burger, great company and buy a book!!

I'm interested in what the thoughts of others are about food and how it works or doesn't work into their life. What do you think about food, how do you feel about it?