Recipes of the Damned

New sister blog, Recipes of the Yum

2009-03-13T10:32:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the long absence; I keep forgetting to make a relay post here when I update Recipes of the Damned. Aren't there supposed to be robots to handle that for me? Anyway, I've been posting new content, and I've also created a sister site, Recipes of the Yum, to show off the good stuff I've been cooking.

Current highlight on RotD: Pigs in a Twinkie. Yes, really.

Current highlight on RotY: roasted chicken, parsnips and Brussels sprouts, plus pearl couscous salad.

Come check them out!

2009-01-18T17:39:00.001-05:00

More updates at the new site. Are you a cooking elitist? I guess I am, depending on how you define it.

New post at RecipesoftheDamned.com: First Work-Night Cooking in Years

2009-01-06T22:07:00.001-05:00

I've just updated Recipes of the Damned with a post about tonight's dinner, Asian Beef and Lettuce Wraps. Not actually very damned, but damned good. Check it out!

Two New Posts at http://www.recipesofthedamned.com/

2009-01-04T22:39:00.003-05:00

One discussion of my current plans to get cooking in the new year, and one exploration of Wonka Tinglers, aka chocolate-covered Pop Rocks. Check it out!

New post on the new site

2008-12-27T19:41:00.003-05:00

In which I look at Cool Whip in a can, pre-peeled and cubed potatoes for mashing, and mini Hershey's Kiss cookies. Check it out here.

New Year, New Site, New Cooking

2008-12-26T16:54:00.003-05:00

I've bought my own domain for this effort, and am going to be updating the blog over at Recipes of the Damned. I'll do some cross-posting for a while, but do please update your bookmarks.

I'm also going to be relaunching my efforts. My work schedule, which has been the bane of my existence for an awfully long time, is changing. Instead of walking in the door at about 9:15 pm, I will be getting home some time between 6:30 and 6:45 pm. Which means I can spend an hour in the kitchen and still have dinner ready before I was usually even logging off at the office. So I plan to do so. Starting in January I will be challenging myself to cook dinner as many nights as possible, with a limit of one hour of labor in the kitchen on weeknights. And I'll write about it: The planning that helps me succeed, the inevitable mistakes, the ways that one can still avoid the trap of packaged mixes and Jell-O. (I have eaten a fair bit of take-out and Boboli pizza this year, but I have not eaten any Jell-O!)

Come join me at the new site, and please jump into the conversation. I'm looking forward to it.

Happy holidays to you and yours!

Amy

Post-Thanksgiving Roundup

2008-11-29T23:28:00.005-05:00

I'm doing a very short post now, but will post more within the coming week--taking advantage of vacation time. I promise that in the not-too-distant future my out-of-control work schedule will be somewhat tamed and I will be making more regular appearances. I'm also in the process of getting my own domain--more info on that to come.

Thanksgiving
This was our fourth year of hosting a vegetarian party, anchored not with Tofurky but with a seitan "pot roast." Much tastier, and surprisingly easy to make; most of the time involved is spent letting it cook, making it a good choice when one is laboring over the many side dishes. Photos can be found here. Despite our best efforts to get the guests to carry away as many of the leftovers as possible we still have a fridge and freezer full of food, and have no excuse for buying any more groceries for about a week.

I had to work the three days before, and spent some of the less-frenzied time surfing pre-Thanksgiving writing. This Slate piece details taste comparisons of vegetarian turkey analogs, though not really an equivalent of my homemade seitan. I'm not that crazy about Tofurky; as the reviewers do, I find it palatable but not great. With the seitan I get a lot more control over the final flavor.

Slate also amused me with this article about why food writers find this such a challenging holiday; it's hard to be truly inventive and write something new when the traditional meal structure is such a powerful force. "It's like redrawing the Kama Sutra when readers really only care about the missionary position," says the author.

Food Books
A bit ago I finally got around to reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. As I had suspected, Pollan rather beautifully lays out the ethical and historical underpinnings of the Recipes of the Damned--even to the point of advising readers to avoid purchasing food at gas stations. Which means I can spend less time elaborating that in my book proposal, and more time making fun of Jell-O.

God's Love We Deliver

2008-11-10T08:05:00.002-05:00

It grows tedious to say my schedule has been out of control, but it is still the truth. I am not quite out of the busy period yet but things are starting to stabilize a bit. For now. So I must seize a chance to write a few posts.

Last week I went with a team of co-workers to take part in our annual volunteering day. We had chosen the New York organization God’s Love We Deliver, which despite the name is a secular nonprofit that delivers meals to people with HIV/AIDS, cancer, MS and other life-altering illnesses. Our office was divided into two teams, one of which did deliveries in the morning and worked in the kitchen in the afternoon. My team worked in the kitchen all day. We got an orientation and a food-safety session, donned our hairnets and aprons, scrubbed and gloved ourselves, and got to work.

It was a blast. Under the supervision of chefs we assembled eggplant parmigiana stacks, chopped leeks, chopped broccoli, and cleaned up our work areas and washed cutting boards and knives before breaking for lunch. We had arranged for pizza delivery, and sat in the boardroom enjoying the chance to be off our feet and talking about the morning’s work.

“This was fun,” said B, a woman maybe five years older than I am. “I’ve never chopped vegetables before.”

I laughed. “How did you manage to get out of that duty?” I asked.

“Well, we never cooked with fresh vegetables when I was growing up,” she said. “Everything was either canned or frozen.”

I thought about that off and on the rest of the day and throughout the week. Had I grown up with fresh vegetables? My mother chopped onions, I remembered, but I’m pretty sure I’d never even looked at bunch spinach until I was in college. Maybe B was not so exceptional. That, I thought, is what the packaged food industry has done to us: in a world of fresh bounty, it has fostered forty-somethings who have never chopped broccoli.

We returned to the kitchen for the afternoon shift. Chopping time again. We cut red potatoes into roastable chunks and cut cauliflower into florets. And then came the carrots, giant bag after giant bag of giant carrots. Our delivery-shift colleagues had come to the kitchen and were clustered around another worktable, and while we were still on cauliflower they had started to peel carrots. B watched them and frowned; it looked tedious, and we were all starting to get a little tired—-especially those who didn’t have much practice with a chef’s knife (only about three of us seemed to really know what we were doing in that respect). “I don’t want to peel carrots,” she said. So when the chef came over with the few peelers that were left, B made sure that she didn’t get one. This turned out to be a tactical error, because those who were not peeling went straight to dicing, which was quite a bit more work. Once those of us with peelers had peeled everything, we too began dicing. The plastic bins filled with little orange cubes. Our gloves became stained with gold. B was getting cranky enough to start to laugh at herself. Few words were ever more welcome to our team than the announcement “That’s enough, we’re done for today, let’s wash up.”

God’s Love We Deliver makes a point of delivering fresh food, cooked with care and by hand, to the whole family of someone affected by an illness. Its goals are to never charge a fee and to never turn away a client. And on clients’ birthdays, they bring a decorated birthday cake.

I plan to go back, and I encourage others to join me, or to find a similar organization in your area, or start one if there isn’t one. There is probably a need.

Batter Blaster

2008-09-11T21:11:00.003-04:00

A friend points me to Batter Blaster, or pancake batter in a can. You must watch the demo video. I have to admit that when I first heard the jingle, I wondered if this might be a parody by the Apple Sisters, but no, it's sincere. Jump to the Press page: They were on "Regis and Kelly"! (But the video is no longer available. I can't be too sorry; about all I can say in praise of "Regis and Kelly" is that it isn't "Regis and Kathie Lee.")

According to the article that accompanies the now-defunct video, the product is available in the Bay Area, at high-end stores and at Costco. Apparently it was hard to get startup funding, though; the article quotes inventor Sean O'Connor as saying "Try telling someone, 'I have this idea. We're going to put pancakes in a can,' and not have them laugh you out of the room." I would imagine.

OK, the batter is USDA Certified Organic--that's something. The can is entirely recyclable. And apparently the propellant is not suitable for huffing. But this product is clearly targeted at the incompetence market. The article acknowledges this, implying that the product might be a hard sell for people who are capable of making their own pancake batter, and noting the price as an obstacle ($4.99-$5.99 per can). O'Connor counters this by comparing the product to pre-bagged salad, which certainly supports his vision from a marketing perspective but doesn't really refute what the article dubs "its contribution to laziness in American kitchens." My initial thought was, I firmly believe that if you are an otherwise healthy and moderately intelligent adult and you find that making pancake batter is beyond your capabilities, you are just not trying. O'Connor notes that the canned batter would be more suitable for singles and empty-nesters. But for that price you could probably go to a diner.

Chicken Go Wraps

2008-09-10T22:45:00.002-04:00

Each wrap is filled with handfuls of fresh chicken go!

I think, anyway.

More Fun With Velveeta

2008-09-06T15:37:00.004-04:00

Ask and ye shall receive: I was wondering what I could quickly find to write about today, and in the mail I found a little “Simple Shortcuts” booklet from the Kraft Food & Family people. Most of the recipes were probably OK to eat and could only be faulted for their overreliance on processed foods (Kraft brands, of course), but this one seems pretty alarming. Oh, it looks harmless enough:

What could possibly go wrong?

Velveeta plus spaghetti sauce. Sure, uh, what? Inasmuch as Velveeta can be considered cheese—and I am not saying that it can, just to be perfectly clear—it does not seem like the kind of cheese that goes with spaghetti sauce. I can grudgingly see a role for it with salsa and tortilla chips, but with marinara and pasta? Uh, no.

Unless the spaghetti sauce doesn’t actually have any flavor beyond tomato, which is true of some commercial sauces. Maybe that’s what they’re going for. I was a little surprised to see no brand being touted here; surely Kraft owns a spaghetti sauce brand? There are other recipes in the booklet that call for similarly nameless sauce, which probably rules out the idea that the recipe creators just decided none of the house flavors really were suited to the recipe.

The nutrition information for all recipes is listed in the back of the booklet. This recipe has 520 calories per serving, 14 grams of fat (7 g saturated), 100 mg of cholesterol, 1,000 mg of sodium, 55 g of carbohydrate, 3 g of fiber, 11 g of sugars and 40 g of protein. Which to me looks like it has too much of everything but fiber. Not too surprising; I’m pretty sure the U.S. RDA of Velveeta is zero.

Cheesy Chicken Italiano
3 cups rotini pasta (1/2 lb.)
4 small boneless skinless chicken breast halves (1 lb.)
1 jar (14 oz.) spaghetti sauce
6 oz. Velveeta, cubed

COOK pasta. HEAT a large skillet sprayed with cooking spray over medium-high heat. ADD chicken; cook for 2 min. on each side. ADD sauce; cover and simmer over low heat for 10 min. or until chicken is cooked [165° F]. ADD Velveeta; stir until melted. TOP pasta with chicken and sauce. SERVES 4.

Turn this dish into dinner just by adding cooked green beans.

From Kraft Food & Family Simple Shortcuts Fall 2008

Short takes for the holiday

2008-08-31T13:33:00.003-04:00

A few quick thoughts as I catch up on other things:

Twinkie, Deconstructed
I'm partway through a fascinating book called Twinkie, Deconstructed. The author traces the origins of the ingredients in processed food, working from the ingredient list on a package of Twinkies. You will never think the same way about cornstarch again. Recommended reading.

Food Cellar
Yesterday I visited a new upscale supermarket in the Long Island City neighborhood, Food Cellar, an offshoot of the Amish Market chain. The store is gorgeous--spacious, well-lit, and not crowded. I cannot stress enough how exceptional that is in New York City, where most grocery chains haphazardly cram maximum product into minimum space and shopping at the Whole Foods in Union Square is practically a combat sport. Food Cellar is clearly aiming for the new population of the gentrifying neighborhood, people who would otherwise be taking the subway to one of the Manhattan Whole Foods locations or ordering from Fresh Direct. There really don't seem to be other supermarkets in the immediate neighborhood, even mainstream ones like FoodTown and Associated, though if you head just a few subway stops east into my neighborhood you can find several of those. For me Food Cellar represents an opportunity to get organic or humanely raised meats without having to schlep into Manhattan and change trains, and if I want any of the frozen foods I can probably get them home without melting. I also wonder how much more crowded it will get after the holiday weekend; New York seems to empty out for Labor Day, so I need to reserve judgment. But Food Cellar has a lot more space for the masses than pretty much any other food store I've seen in the city.

Paton Oswalt on Black Angus
I saw a variation of this bit on Oswalt's "Comedy Central Presents" special recently; be warned that there is a fair bit of offensive and adult language in this clip. He certainly has a point; some of these chains are pushing food in quantities that go beyond appetizing to frightening.

Sweet, sweet cauliflower

2008-08-23T21:05:00.004-04:00

Once again, I must apologize for protracted absence and reassure you that, as Granny Weatherwax would insist, I aten’t dead. I have just been doing other things. You can accuse me of having my priorities out of whack.

But you cannot accuse me of suggesting that you could pour Coca-Cola over cauliflower and call it food. That crime is ascribable to the editors of Consumer Guide, who in their 1984 More Favorite Brand Name Recipes Cookbook offer this among other less sinister recommendations for working brand-name foodstuffs into your cooking. Sadly, the book does not have many photos, just a few more presentable concoctions in a center-pages insert; I regret this because I would really like to know what this cauliflower mess looks like when ready to serve, but I am not about to waste a perfectly good head of cauliflower to find out for myself.

I’m also utterly mystified about what makes it Japanese. And for that matter I have my doubts about its “pickled” status; to me, the combination of about a cup of sugar and cola with 3/8 of a cup of vinegar and half a tablespoon of salt seems more likely to result in syrup than brine. Perhaps “candied cauliflower” didn’t test well with audiences.

Most of the other recipes in the book are less bizarre than the combination of Coke and cauliflower, but they still include a lot of stretches to include brand-name ingredients where other, less processed foods would probably do just as well or even better. A pork and cheese casserole calls for a particular brand of bleu cheese crumbles, but I’m pretty sure you could substitute whatever kind you had handy. “Chinese Skillet Dinner” lists only one brand-name ingredient, Premium Saltines, half of which are crumbled and mixed in with a combination of butter, celery, scallions, chicken and rice soup, chicken, frozen broccoli, lemon juice and soy sauce; the other half are thinly sliced (yeah, right) and used to scoop up the mixture. Many of the recipes make this halfhearted effort at brand loyalty. Perhaps the editors of Consumer Guide realized what a joke this all was.

The dessert chapters look comparatively good, largely because most of the brand-name ingredients required there are things like Pillsbury flour, Hershey’s chocolate chips and Libby’s canned pumpkin—items that many cooks would already use, or that are easily replaced with better-quality offerings like Ghirardelli. But even in these sections some weird items appear: Superose Liquid Fructose, Butter Buds, Sweet & Low, Dr. Pepper. Significant effort and expense went into producing a book of recipes that would have been far better in the aggregate if readers had been advised to turn away from processed mixes and substitutes and just cook with real food.

Japanese Pickled Cauliflower
1 medium sized head of cauliflower
1 green pepper
½ cup very thinly sliced celery
¾ cup Coca-Cola
6 tablespoons wine vinegar or white vinegar
¼ cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoons salt
Break off each floweret in cauliflower, wash and drain. Wash and remove seeds from green pepper; cut into thin 2-inch strips. In large bowl, combine cauliflower and green pepper. Cover with boiling water; let stand 2 minutes; drain thoroughly. Add celery. In small pan, heat Coca-Cola with remaining ingredients. Pour over vegetables. Toss lightly with a fork, and pack into a 1-quart glass jar. Push down lightly so liquid covers vegetables. Cover and chill overnight. This keeps in the refrigerator for several days.
Makes about 1 quart
From More Favorite Brand Name Recipes Cookbook, by the Editors of Consumer Guide. Skokie, Ill.: Publications International Ltd., 1984.

Completely crackers

2008-08-12T20:40:00.002-04:00

I've been neglectful of the blog because I've been busy with work. NOT because there's any dearth of material, oh no. Two quick notes:

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Crackers
How many times have you said, "I like Cheez-Its, but they taste too much like actual cheese, and they're not bright enough to read by at night. What can I do?" Your troubles are over with the introduction of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Crackers. Yes, really.

Is Cereal Supposed to Be Bad for You?
I spotted this at a local grocery store and could hardly believe it: Chocolate Chex. Next to it on the shelf was Strawberry Chex. No. No, no, no. Chex is supposed to be a decent cereal, a not-so-sweet cereal. It's supposed to be one of the few mainstream brands on the cereal aisle that might be a little bit good for you. Turning it into candy is just wrong.

OK, I'm going to go eat some peaches. I'll write more soon.

Fresh Tomato Shortcake: Bisquick Ick

2008-07-06T19:57:00.001-04:00

I’ve been awfully busy of late, which means I’ve been sitting on a gold mine: A cookbook titled More Favorite Name Brand recipes Cookbook and a 1967 Bisquick cookbook. I’m leading off with Bisquick.

Ah, Bisquick. The convenience food that frees you from the trouble of finding and measuring actual ingredients when you want to make biscuits or breads. I hadn’t thought that measuring flour and leavening was especially difficult, but apparently there has long been a demand for pre-mixed ingredients, standardized, shelf-stable, safe from the annoyingly delicious flavor of dairy fresh butter, replete with partially hydrogenated oils. I know our family had a box of the stuff on the shelf for a while; kind of a long while, actually, as I think my mom was quick to realize that she could do a lot better herself when she chose to. But Bisquick is still available, in Original; Heart Smart; Bisquick Complete, enabling you to make biscuits in the flavors Buttermilk, Cheese-Garlic, Honey-Butter and Three Cheese; and now in a “Shake and Pour” jug to which you add water so you can make pancakes. The Web site suggests this enables you to make pancakes for the family in minutes, but doesn’t bother to point out that the time-consuming part of making pancakes is cooking them.

But Bisquick is so much more than pancakes. It’s muffins, dumplings, hamburger pancake roll-ups, meatball pie, chicken fricassee, and country-fried steak. All these and more can be found in So Quick With New Bisquick, a 1967 recipe book that helps home cooks work from breakfast to dessert with the box of lumpy powder. I’ll be fair: Lots of the recipes in the booklet are innocuous, the basics of short dough and casserole thickener and dessert pastry. They might be better if made from scratch—they would certainly be less likely to contain trans fats—but they’re probably not that bad made with the mix. But 1960s color photography and food design seldom disappoints me for long, and I soon found a glorious image of the Fresh Tomato Shortcake.

I’ve given the recipe below, but I admit the description of the ingredients is more appealing than the picture. Far more scary recipes in the book include Ring Around Tuna (canned tuna, cheddar cheese and biscuit dough), Batter Franks (deep fried in a Bisquick batter), and Oriental Meat Pie, which combines ground beef, chopped onion, cream of mushroom soup, milk, soy sauce, salt, olives, parsley and Bisquick biscuit dough in a casserole. I think the soy sauce is supposed to be what makes it “Oriental”; but seriously, that’s quite a stretch.

Here’s the tuna ring:

Upsetting, isn’t it?

And here’s the Chicken Fricassee and Dumplings:

Which doesn’t look quite as awful but is rather pale. There’s a sauce that says, mmm, flour and milk; white, white goodness.

The booklet is full of breathless, cheerful prose exhorting the reliability and speed of Bisquick, and promising that you’ll become the most popular hostess and a well-loved mom if you spoon up Bisquick delicacies from dawn to dusk. One section titled “Remember Gramma’s?” promises you traditional foods like pancakes, chicken and dumplings, and fruit cobbler, in less time, all thanks to the magic of Bisquick. Gramma probably didn’t have the heart to tell readers that making cobbler from scratch doesn’t add more than about five minutes to the effort.

Fresh Tomato Shortcake
Bacon, tomato and cheese flavors—good with lettuce wedges.

Prepare Cheese Sauce (below). Keep sauce hot over hot water. Prepare Shortcakes from Basic Recipe (below), except—omit sugar. Cut 3 tomatoes into thin slices. Fry 6 slices of bacon until crisp; drain on paper towels. Split shortcakes crosswise; spread butter on halves. Place tomato slices between layers and on top of each shortcake. Spoon Cheese Sauce over shortcakes and garnish each with a bacon slice. 6 servings.

Cheese Sauce
3 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. New Bisquick
¼ tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
¼ tsp. dry mustard
1/8 tsp. ground thyme
1 ½ cups milk
1 ½ cups shredded process sharp Cheddar cheese
Melt butter over low heat in saucepan. Blend in Bisquick and seasonings. Cook over low heat, stirring until mixture is smooth and bubbly. Remove from heat. Stir in milk. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute. Stir in cheese. Cook and stir over low heat until cheese melts. Makes about 2 cups.

Basic Recipe for Shortcake
2 1/3 cups New Bisquick
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled slightly
½ cup milk*
Heat oven to 450 degrees. Mix all ingredients with fork to a soft dough. Knead 8 to 10 times on lightly floured cloth-covered board. roll dough ½ inch thick. Cut with 3-inch floured cutter. Bake on ungreased baking sheet about 10 minutes. Split warm shortcakes.

* If desired, omit butter and add 2/3 cup light cream.

So Quick With New Bisquick: A Betty Crocker Cookbook for Breads, Main Dishes, Desserts. General Mills. New York: Golden Press, 1967.

Appetizers

2008-06-16T15:23:00.003-04:00

A friend lent me Good Housekeeping’s Appetizer Book from 1958, and I thought I’d share some of the findings with you. Let this be a lesson on what not to do when you entertain.

“This is an era of dips and dunks and sticks and picks,” announces the booklet. “And we say ‘hurrah!’” The authors’ excitement may be premature.

Not everything in the book is bad, of course, but a lot of the recipes seem as if they’d be best enjoyed by people who have deadened their taste buds through heavy smoking. Some of these might also be more palatable after the third martini. In fact, the booklet insists on it:

“And when it comes to selecting that drink, don’t overlook the possibilities of fruit, tomato or vegetable juice, hot or cold soup, bouillon-on-the-rocks, hot tomato juice, mulled cider,” the booklet counsels. Yeah, sign me up for bouillon on the rocks. Preferably large rocks that I can use to hit myself in the forehead to condition myself not to do that again. If that’s not enough shock therapy for you, take a hard look at this:

There’s nothing wrong with an appetizer of prosciutto and melon, but this looks as if it’s been sitting out in the sun all afternoon.

And here’s some good old-fashioned nightmare fodder:

Another of the recipes keeps us in the tradition of inappropriate cakes. It’s the Hors d’Oeuvre Birthday Cake, and it combines olive spread and deviled ham and liver pate in a layered fright. And as a special bonus, you can get melted wax all over it! I notice the “cake” serves 12-15, which I’m guessing is a conservative estimate; a little of this would go a long way.

A section of “Slimmers” includes celery sticks filled with a corned-beef and sauerkraut juice mixture. That sounds like a very effective appetite suppressant.

The back cover of the booklet sends us off in style. I’m not sure just what’s in the basket behind the flying shrimps, but once I decided it looked like macaroni and cheese I could not see it as anything else. Yum!

Hors d’Oeuvre Birthday Cake
1 1-lb. round loaf pumpernickel
1 jar or pkg. cheese spread
1 4-oz. jar olive spread
2 2 ¼-oz. cans deviled ham
1 4-oz can liver pate
3 3-oz pkg. cream cheese
¼ cup top milk or light cream
Birthday candles
Red carnations and laurel leaves

Several hours ahead: Cut ½-inch thick slice of pumpernickel from bottom and top of loaf (save these to use next day). Then slice remaining loaf into 5 layers.

Starting from the bottom, put layers together with the following fillings: cheese spread, olive spread, deviled ham, and liver pate. Refrigerate until ready to use.

To serve: Place “cake” on round tray. In bowl, rub cream cheese with milk until smooth; use to frost loaf. Around cake on tray, put candles, securing them with melted wax. Place red carnations and laurel leaves between candles.

Cut cake into pie-shaped wedges. Serve on dessert plates with forks.
Makes 12 to 15 servings

Peanut-Butter Catchup Dip
½ cup peanut butter
½ cup catchup
corn chips

Mix peanut butter with catchup until smooth. Refrigerate until served.
To serve: Arrange dip in bowl, surrounded with corn chips. Let guests dip their own.

From Good Housekeeping’s Appetizer Book: Irresistible Canapes, Hors d’Oeuvres and Nibblers. The Hearst Corporation, 1958.

Breakfast Cake

2008-06-07T20:29:00.002-04:00

I expect to be able to post a little more in the coming weeks while I am on vacation from work. I have a lot of content wrangling to do, so for now here's a quick link to Breakfast Cake, which I don't think is specifically related to Meat Cake, though I don't know for sure.

Gummy Popcorn

2008-05-17T17:54:00.003-04:00

You might think that the words “gummy” and “popcorn” do not belong together, at least not as a description of something you might want to eat. But today at a 99-cent store in Queens,* I spotted this product:

It’s not just Gummy Popcorn, it’s Sour Gummy Popcorn. “Wow, that’s even worse,” you may be thinking. “This is the kind of thing that can bankrupt a farmer.” But of course we’re talking about candy here, not corn,** and sour candy lines range from bears to worms to random shapes, so corn is not terribly exceptionable here.

I wasn’t going to buy it, but then I saw this challenge:

My immediate response was, “I bet you can’t!” So I had to get it and find out for myself.

The candy pieces are actually pretty similar in appearance to the pictures on the box.

As you can see, the pieces are a bit larger around than a quarter, and of course much thicker.

Please, don’t feed Sour Gummy Popcorn into the machines at the Laundromat. After wrestling with the plastic bag for several minutes*** I was able to open it and free the candy nuggets. My husband looked alarmed. “Guess which flavor I’m not eating,” he said. “Oh, that’s right—all of them.”

They smell a bit like marshmallows—probably because they contain gelatin—but the first taste impression is sour, sour, sour. I bit into one and chewed and chewed (they’re not kidding when they call these “gummy”), and then guessed the flavor. What are my choices again? Apple, strawberry, watermelon, and popcorn. (Popcorn? Are you kidding me?) I chewed and mused. Apple, I think. Curious, my husband tried one too. After some deliberation, he said, “It’s either strawberry or watermelon. Oh, there’s the aftertaste. Watermelon.”

I can confirm that Sour Gummy Popcorn offers 99 cents worth of entertainment. But I can’t recommend it as something to eat.
---
* Just so you know: Queens is the world champion of 99-cent stores. Our neighborhood favorite has a hang tag in one aisle advertising “Plastic Stuff.”

** But in terms of the industrial food chain it’s still probably corn; see Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma or the documentary “King Corn” for more detailed explanation.

*** Why didn’t I just use scissors? Because I am stubborn.

Sunday Roundup

2008-05-11T22:40:00.001-04:00

It’s been another busy time for me; work continues to be hectic, plus I squeezed in a five-day trip to Portland last week. Mmm, Terminator Stout. But I do want to offer up a few quick looks at food issues in the news.

First, the Bush Administration doesn’t want you to know if your beef is carrying mad cow disease. Speaking as somebody who is barred from giving blood because I ate meat in England at the wrong time, I think consumers should be able to find out the information if they want it. What’s really interesting to me about this case is that as far as I can tell, it’s not about requiring suppliers to test all their beef; it’s about permitting suppliers to test more than the minimum to meet the wishes of customers (e.g., Japanese buyers).

The New York Times spotlights some unlikely farmers, or more accurately gardeners in East New York, who are not only having fun but are also growing enough to sell their produce to neighbors. Which means Greenmarket produce has more “food miles” than these vegetables.

And Brandweek reports that casual dining chains such as Applebee’s and TGIFriday’s are feeling the pinch as consumers take their dining-out dollars to in-store eateries at supermarkets such as Publix and Whole Foods. Is it churlish of me to point out here that most of what you find in the ready-to-eat section at Whole Foods is probably better, and perhaps better for you, than the menu standbys at Applebee’s? Of course that’s just my opinion.

Seen on a diner menu

2008-05-09T23:17:00.003-04:00

Um...maybe I'll just have the soup.

Earth Day Roundup Post

2008-04-22T08:21:00.001-04:00

No time for a real post today, but I’m trying to get back on track. In the meantime, here’s a sampling of things in the news lately.

The Return of the Victory Garden?
In Sunday’s NYT Magazine, Michael Pollan makes a convincing argument that the greenest thing you can do is grow some of your own food. Other writers confirm that not only do you save fuel and reduce “food miles,” you gain flavor. As for me, until I can make my work schedule more reasonable, I’m going to have to rely on the Greenmarket.

The Recipe Flap
Most of us have heard by now that recipes offered up on the McCain campaign Web site as Cindy McCain’s family favorites were actually lifted from the Food Network. In Sunday’s NYT, former White House chef Walter Scheib points out what should have been obvious: The spouse of the next president isn’t going to be doing much cooking.

Calorie Counts in NYC
The New York State Restaurant Association is still fighting it, but new city rules go into effect this week requiring restaurants with more than 15 locations nationwide to prominently post the calorie counts for their food. The Gothamist Web site offers a sampling of calorie counts for chains that have started to comply, and I’m sure I’m not the only person alarmed to learn that a Chiplotle Mexican Grilled Chicken Burrito has 1,179 calories.

Eat Your French Fries
And then drive your car with the oil.

Time flies when you’re having fun

2008-04-12T22:41:00.004-04:00

And, as it happens, when you’re just ridiculously busy with work and a variety of other things. I won’t bore you with the details; suffice to say that it feels as if I’ve been awfully busy getting nothing done. I am trying to get myself organized this weekend so it will be easier to keep up with this and other things that are more fun than my job.

While catching up on the recycling this evening I paused to thumb through the coupon circulars from today’s New York Times. And what to my wondering eye should appear but this processed food offering.

Do you know what it is? I’ll give you three guesses, and I’m hoping you aren’t even close. Give up? Well, it’s not a Twinkie; it’s a bagel. Come to think of it, that may have been blasphemy. It’s a Kraft “Bagel-ful,” which the ad describes as a “Toasty Warm Bagel & Creamy Philadelphia Cream Cheese, All In One!” and which can be found in the “frozen breakfast aisle.”

Go ahead, get a barf bag. I’ll wait.

No, I have no more idea than you do why anybody in their right mind would want to eat something like this. What really mystifies me, though, is why you would bother to market and advertise it in a city where you are seldom more than about a block away from really good bagels, prepared the way bagels should be, with a boiling-water bath and a hot oven, and served with lox. (Kraft Bagel-fuls do not seem to be available with lox, for which we can all be grateful; the flavors offered are Original, Cinnamon, Strawberry, Whole Grain and Chive.)

This particular product goes along with a theory I’m starting to develop. It seems to me as if the processed-food companies rose to prominence in an age when people had more faith in institutions and better living through chemistry, and when it was easier to convince consumers that nobody really had any time for skilled cooking of good food any more. Of course the past couple of decades have seen a resurgence of interest in good cooking, high-quality food and authentic cuisine. A big part of this movement has been the rejection of processed foods. So the processed foods companies have had two choices for response: improve the quality of their offerings to better meet the needs and standards of the new foodies, or aim their marketing at the lowest common denominator.

Which have they chosen? Suffice to say that today I saw a TV ad for orange juice that seemed to be based on the assumption that orange juice is a better choice for kids than fresh oranges because children are too stupid and clumsy to peel oranges. Admittedly, I don’t have kids, but I’d like to think that if I did I’d be up to the task of teaching them how to peel an orange. And how to wash their hands afterward, which is a pretty useful skill as well.

Cookin' With Coolio

2008-03-04T22:43:00.002-05:00

Because when you think "cooking show," the first person who comes to mind is Coolio, right? I rather enjoyed this one, and the spinach does look tasty.

From the Onion's AV Club: Cheeseburger in a Can

2008-02-28T21:22:00.003-05:00

Wow, am I a lousy blogger: Two months without a post! I blame my job. I will try to do better, and to make more frequent short posts even when I don't have time to track down and write up new recipes.

In the spirit of damned food, be sure to check out Cheeseburger in a Can, which is only saved from RotD status by the fact that you don't really cook anything. (Boiling water doesn't count.) The brave folks at the Onion AV Club tracked down the frightening product and tried it so that you don't have to. So please, don't.

Beef Taco Skillet

2008-01-01T17:10:00.000-05:00

Happy new year, and best wishes for a prosperous 2008 to one and all. One of my resolutions for the year is to update this blog more often. (I know, you’re saying, “Could you possibly set the bar any lower, Amy?”) My apologies for my lackadaisical performance. Especially since the recipes show no sign of going away.

I came across this recipe for Beef Taco Skillet in the latest issue of Everyday Food. I could hardly have been more surprised if you had smacked me in the face with a flounder. Everyday Food is a Martha Stewart magazine, and its offerings are usually a lot better than this one. Of course, Beef Taco Skillet is not a recipe from the magazine; it’s from an ad for Campbell’s Soup. I suppose the editors can’t be too strict about what they accept from their advertisers, or they wouldn’t be able to run ads for much more than olive oil and Quaker Oats.

I love Everyday Food. The recipes are all winners, not just in appearance and flavor but in ease of preparation. All throughout the magazine you see beautiful images of fish with chunks of avocadoes, chicken with matchstick peppers and cucumbers, and steamed red potatoes with thyme. In this context, Beef Taco Skillet looks like a pan of Hamburger Helper sneaking in under the radar:

Not too encouraging, is it? Now I must confess that I am a snob about cooking with canned soup. I just don’t do it. When I eat canned soup I prefer Progresso or a number of organic varieties to Campbell’s condensed, but more often I make my own from scratch, which requires more time than skill. It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down to a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup, and I don’t remember ever thinking, “wouldn’t this be yummy with hamburger and wilted tortillas?”

If you want a Mexican-style skillet supper, my recommendation would be to skip the soup, double the salsa (a good fresh pico de gallo rather than a jarred variety), throw in some chopped peppers and onions, and serve the tortillas whole and warmed on the side for dipping and wrapping, Or you could use good corn chips. They can’t be any saltier than the soup would have been.

Beef Taco Skillet
Campbell’s make in minutes
Prep: 5 min. Cook: 20 min.

1 lb. ground beef
1 can (10 ¾ oz.) Campbell’s Tomato Soup (Regular or 25% Less Sodium)
½ cup salsa
½ cup water
6 flour tortillas (6 inches), cut into 1-inch pieces
½ cup shredded Cheddar cheese

1. Cook beef in 10-inch skillet until well browned, stirring to break up meat. Pour off fat.
2. Stir in soup, salsa, water and tortillas. Heat to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook for 5 min. Stir. Top with cheese. Makes 4 servings.

Creamy Mexican Fiesta: Stir in ½ cup sour cream with soup.
Ranchero Style: Use corn tortillas instead of flour tortillas and shredded Mexican cheese blend instead of Cheddar.

From Campbell’s Soup ad in Everyday Food, Jan/Feb 2008.

Tuna Polynesian

2007-12-02T20:15:00.000-05:00

My apologies for having been out of action for so long. I knew that with things heating up at my job, November would be a difficult month, but I didn’t realize it would be that difficult. It was easier than last year in one respect: In 2006 my Thanksgiving week featured a case of food poisoning on Monday, recovery on Tuesday, and the replacement of our gas stove on the Wednesday—except for the connection of the new stove to our gas supply, which despite being scheduled for Wednesday evening didn’t actually happen until Friday. As you can imagine, that made it (ahem) challenging to host our annual vegetarian Thanksgiving party. This year we were more fortunate. No food poisoning, a fully functioning stove, and a truly delicious vegetarian celebration.

But we are not here to talk about good food. We are here to talk about things like tuna and pineapple in mayonnaise. As I write up this recipe I feel like I’m making a sudden change of plan. In the Dole pineapple cookbook in which this recipe appears, The Thatched Kitchen, Tuna Polynesian follows two molded salads and appears opposite a large photo of a rather pretty mold, “Ruby Borscht Salad.” (I have never had borscht, but for a negative view see this Bateman365 animation; note there is adult language.) Anyway, because of this context I have been laboring under the impression that Tuna Polynesian is a molded salad, and so I was relieved to see that it is not. To my mind, tuna and pineapple in mayonnaise is just a tad less spectacularly bad than tuna and pineapple in gelatin. My distaste comes from the fact that I really, really hate canned tuna. I like tuna in sushi; I’m not sure why I’m so picky about canned tuna. Maybe because when you grow up in Indiana you so often encounter it in gloppy mayonnaise mixtures or in starchy baked casseroles, which don’t do the stuff justice. Assuming there is justice to be done.

Also, the idea of using the pineapple syrup to rehydrate the dried onion makes me cringe.

Tuna Polynesian
1 can (1 lb. 4 oz) Dole Pineapple Chunks
2 cans (7 oz. ea.) solid packed tuna
1 cup diagonally sliced celery
1 tablespoon instant minced onion
¼ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup dairy sour cream
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
crisp salad greens

Drain pineapple, reserving 2 tablespoons syrup. Drain tuna well. Chunk tuna; combine with pineapple in a deep bowl. Add celery. Allow onions to stand in reserved pineapple syrup until rehydrated. Blend mayonnaise, sour cream, curry powder and seasoned salt. Stir in onion. Pour over tuna tossing to combine. Spoon onto crisp salad greens to serve. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

From The Thatched Kitchen: Harvest & Holiday Cookbook. Honolulu: Castle & Cooke, 1972.

When You Can’t Have Food

2007-11-29T15:30:00.000-05:00

My father died of colon cancer in 1999. Because of this, I am considered to have a slightly increased risk of developing colon cancer myself, and since I turned 40 this year I became eligible for my first screening colonoscopy. (Those of you who do not have first-degree relatives who developed colon cancer can generally wait until you’re 50.) I scheduled the test for today, knowing that I would be on vacation all week and would be better able to deal with the inconveniences of the exam. Well, the exam itself is not difficult at all, since you're unconscious for it; it’s the preparations that are unpleasant and inconvenient. Your colon needs to be empty, which for most American is not the usual state of affairs. So after a light breakfast yesterday morning I was restricted to clear liquids, with no dairy products, nothing red, and of course no alcohol.

I knew that this might be a challenge for me. As many of you do, I like to eat solid food. I can get very cranky if I go too long without eating something. A stomach full of liquid is not the same as a stomach full of lunch. And while I am disciplined enough to stick to such a regimen when it’s prescribed, I am not quite disciplined enough to keep a good attitude about it without some prompting. I knew I was going to need a strong dose of perspective, and luckily the opportunity presented itself: My New York officemates had voted to donate our 2007 charitable contribution to the Yorkville Common Pantry, and to volunteer for a few hours when we brought the check over, and our volunteer shift was scheduled for yesterday afternoon.

YCP offers a number of services to its community. It gives weekly grocery donations to members who live within a particular radius of the pantry, serves five breakfasts and three dinners per week to anyone who shows up, offers emergency food aid to those who need it, and even has showers available. And the need is great—and growing. According to a recent New York Times article, demand for aid at local food pantries and soup kitchens has jumped 20 percent while federal resources are dwindling. The federal government has cut back on its subsidy purchases, reducing the amount available for donation to the needy. And while various versions of the farm bill propose increases in aid, the bill itself is stalled in Congress.

People who need food aid don’t have time for political negotiations. They need to feed their kids now. Our company’s check was a drop in the bucket, which we knew beforehand, and that was one reason we also wanted to volunteer. We arrived in the early afternoon, just in time to help with the last of the dinner preparations: dishing up applesauce to be handed out as dessert. That done, we were brought to the pantry room, a small warehouse of shelves laden with donated and purchased non-perishable foods, where we assembled grocery bags for the week’s pantry distributions. Talk about a drop in the bucket: A YCP constituent with a family of 5-7 people receives one 46-ounce can of juice, 4 cans of vegetables, 2 cans of chicken, 3 cans of soup, 1 box of cereal, 2 pounds of rice, 1 pound of pasta, 1 pound of dry beans, 2 bags of bagels, plus fresh produce (which is packed separately right before distribution since it’s perishable). That’s not exactly three squares. It’s very sobering to look at the bags. As I walked among the shelves pulling cans, I could see that my relative hunger was a tiny, tiny inconvenience. I could go home and have broth and tea. Within 24 hours I’d be able to eat real food, food that I could choose for myself, with real spices, real variety. I felt grateful for my good fortune, and embarrassed that there are so many who are not so lucky.

A lot of my co-workers felt the same way. I didn’t mention to them that I was going home to drink chicken broth and take laxatives. I didn’t really want to discuss it, not because I have any delicacy about sharing with them but because I didn’t think it was a fit subject for a food pantry. So when we parted ways on the subway later I just smiled and headed home to resume my colonoscopy prep. Lucky me: At 6 I took two ordinary laxative tablets. Then at 8 I took a first dose of Fleet Phospho-Soda, a saline laxative that tastes incredibly nasty—like soured burnt salt, or perhaps like a hyper-concentrated and non-carbonated version of Coca-Cola’s Beverly, an Italian bitter aperitif (aptly described in this McSweeney’s food review—scroll way down to find it). As instructed, I followed this with three glasses of water, which were not quite sufficient to take away the taste, let alone the knowledge that I’d get to do it again at midnight. But the stuff is effective, and by morning I was definitely clean as a whistle and ready for the doctor.

My appointment was for 9:30, and not much more than an hour later I was awake again, dressed, and comforted by the knowledge that everything looked good—no polyps, no other abnormalities. Barring the development of any symptoms, I don’t have to do this again for five years, which is another reason to be incredibly grateful. And so I headed out for breakfast, and thought, I’m lucky to be able to do this. A lot of people can’t.

To find out more about food banks in your area and how you can help, visit America’s Second Harvest.

Almost Ready for the Big Day

2007-11-21T12:50:00.000-05:00

By which personally I mean I have a great deal more shopping, cleaning and cooking to do before tomorrow's third annual vegetarian Thanksgiving feast at the RotD Compound, but at least I am now on vacation through next week and so have a shot at accomplishing what I need to, instead of greeting our guests with a grimy living room and the menu for the nearest Indian takeout place.

In honor of tomorrow's holiday, here's a reminder not to deep-fry your turkey indoors. It's a major fire hazard. Deep-frying is for outdoors, preferably with a considerable buffer zone and possibly a fireproof bunker a la Mythbusters. If you need convincing, click through on the Gothamist story to the Underwriters Laboratories site and watch the video, which demonstrates that deep-frying a turkey indoors will ensure a memorable holiday, as in "In memory of Dad" and "Remember the year the house burned down and we had to go to a shelter for Thanksgiving dinner?"

Hello. stranger

2007-11-13T21:04:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know, I'm a terrible blogger, and I think I'm going to be crazy busy through Thanksgiving Day, so I can't promise real updates before then.

But, hey, Thanksgiving. Anyone have any horror stories?

My senior year of college four of us stuck around in our rented house and made a pretty good feast. Everything was really good except the sweet potatoes; the two of us who were on sweet potato detail had never prepared them before, and didn't really know what we were doing. I'm pretty sure we didn't cook them long enough before attempting to mash them for serving en casserole; then we realized we had nothing to mash with except a blender. Gamely we gave it a try. Undercooked sweet potato granita, anyone? The consistency was simply awful, and the taste not good enough to make up for it (failure to get appropriate spices at the store, anyone?). The crowning insult: Upon dissassembling the blender for cleaning we found the embossed legend "Not to be used for mashing potatoes." Oh, NOW you tell us. Fortunately we had plenty of other good food, and were able to laugh at the sweet potatoes and only feel a little bad about their going to waste.

Anyone else? C'mon, share.

And if I don't get back to you with a new post before then, happy Thanksgiving!

Jane Brody Is a Genius

2007-10-30T08:18:00.000-04:00

Today's New York Times features a column by Jane Brody, "My Diet Strategy? Controlled Indulgence" (registration required, I think). She explains that she manages her weight without fad diets, deprivation or guilt, and enjoys favored treats such as ice cream almost daily. Real ice cream: "Most are the slow-churned reduced-fat flavors, and some are frozen yogurt. But none are fat free or sugar free, which to me tastes ersatz." The control comes in with portion sizes: No more than a few tablespoons or the recommended half-cup serving. "And I made a rule for myself. If I start eating more than that half cup, all the ice cream has to go. Because I would rather have it around when I want it, I stick to the half cup."

Brody then goes on to explain her strategy for other dining occasions: review all the offerings at buffets and choose only the items you think you'll really want, limit dressings, don't bother with foods that don't taste all that good, favor salads and vegetables first before the more caloric dishes. But if something is truly delicious, she says, enjoy it--in moderation. She explains too how she and her husband managed to raise children with moderate appetites for sweets and snacks: Don't keep less-nutritious foods handy as a rule, but don't forbid them when they're available otherwise (such as at friends' houses), and allow regular treats. Making such foods rare but not forbidden made them less interesting, and made the whole family less prone to overindulgence.

"Deprivation feeds desire and can lead to overindulgence at the first opportunity," she notes. I think: Is it any wonder that Americans privilege overindulgence when the language of marketing is all about deprivation? Advertising succeeds when it convinces people that they need something they didn't know they needed. Need stems from lack or deprivation; it's much easier to sell a product by putting it forward as the solution to a problem than to say "This looks like fun, would you like some?" The answer to that may so easily be "No, thank you, not right now." But if you're suddenly threatened with a crisis, a need, a problem to be solved, you will more eagerly accept the solution. And our consumer society has learned well that solutions are found through consumption: A pill, a sports car, the single woman's diamond ring, all are offered as products that assuage a physical or emotional need.

Jane Brody knows she doesn't need the ice cream. But she likes it. So she enjoys it fully, while keeping in mind that if the numbers on the scale creep up she needs to cut back for a while. She doesn't need to replace it with an imitation to keep up a sense of deserved indulgence; substitutions are not satisfying, so she does without for a while, knowing that she is not saying "no" to an emotional desire but saying "yes" to health and enjoyment.

The food marketing culture tries to get us to buy by threatening us with "no," with deprivation. Scarcity mentality makes us grasping, anxious; we want to stock up, to hoard. We can counter this by saying "yes" to good taste, to real food. Blogger Shauna James Ahern, in her blog and her new book "Gluten-Free Girl," is one of the most inspiring people I've seen leading the charge to say yes to life. (Disclaimer: I went to college with Shauna but we haven't been in touch in years.) Shauna has celiac disease, but she doesn't like to focus on the idea of disease. She knows that wheat gluten makes her ill--nobody knows better than she does how ill--but rather than framing her condition as deprivation, she says yes to the immense number of other foods she can enjoy. And enjoy them she does, with her fullest vigor and being. No imitations, no "recipe clones," just savoring of real foods and their real flavors.

That's where salvation lies.

I have not abandoned the blog

2007-10-22T23:48:00.000-04:00

But life and work have been very busy, too much so for me to have had time to compose posts. I will be doing some updates within the next week, though, I promise.

Topics may include these:

My recent trip to Atlanta, which featured hotel food and the World of Coca-Cola
My recent trip up the Hudson Valley to Saugerties and Rhinebeck, NY, and my dilemma: If I tell you about our super-favorite B&B will people overrun it and exhaust the proprietors? Because if we can't get a reservation for next year's festival I will NOT be amused
Some thoughts about what a pain in the ass it is to try to eat reasonably when you have NO TIME AT ALL to cook
And assorted whining

So hang in there. I have by no means exhausted the depths of the damnation.

Bits and Pieces

2007-10-01T08:09:00.001-04:00

A few miscellaneous items:

Oh, good, as long as that's clear
Faithful reader Luann sent me this picture of a gummy-bear package. Where does your snack food originate?

Got that? OK.

Happiness is a Kraft Singles grilled cheese sandwich
Today's New York Times spotlights a new ad campaign for Kraft Singles. The "have a happy sandwich" campaign will feature former foes bonding over the gooey toasted cheese concoction. The creative centerpiece of the campaign is a MySpace contest for video clips that celebrate the grilled cheese sandwich. The goal, of course, is to increase sales of Kraft Singles.

The campaign may succeed as long as a) Nobody figures out that you can make a grilled cheese sandwich more cheaply by using less-expensive block Cheddar and a sharp knife, b) Nobody associates the tagline "happy sandwich" with the slang term "happy finish" (describing the, uh, payoff in certain paid massage services) and c) Nobody uses the MySpace contest to create snarky satires (after the fashion of the 2006 GM "viral ad" program in which participants hijacked the video clips and forum to create anti-SUV videos).

But what about the toy surprise?
The NYT online blog section included this story noting that organic cereals may be lower in certain vitamins than mainstream children's cereal brands. The blog entry opened "Kids who go organic for breakfast may be missing out on their vitamins," and then went on to explain that while cereals such as Frosted Flakes are fortified with a wide variety of key vitamins, some organic or naturally produced cereals are not (but some are). The entry notes, "If your organic cereal is low on vitamins, it doesn’t mean you have to give it up. But it’s probably a good idea to give your child a multivitamin in the morning as well, notes Dr. Susan Roberts, a nutritionist at Tufts University and co-author of Feeding Your Child for Lifelong Health."

Commenters spat out their porridge and attacked the blog for implying that high-sugar cereals are more inherently nutritious than organic varieties. "How ’bout if we just have our kids eat fresh fruits and vegetables?" asked one. "Looks like the major vitamins added to our kids’ breakfast are B and S," said another. Additional comments speculated about safety issues (contaminants in fortifying vitamin sprays, pesticides in conventionally produced grains), and others took delight in noting that the organics market is just as much a market as any other.

Surf and Turf

2007-09-22T17:02:00.001-04:00

There is a White Castle up the block from us. It's a never-ending source of amusement, because of the disgusting nature of the menu offerings and the occasional spelling or grammar challenges of the staff. Last spring the promo item was "Chicken Rings" (prompting anxious curiosity about which part of the chicken was the ring and whether one would really care to eat it), only the reader board initially promoted it as "Chicken Rins." Chicken Rinds? Chicken Rinse? It was corrected the next day.

So the other day we walked past and my husband stopped, made me go back, and forced me to look at the banner promoting the newest sandwich. I stared at it for several minutes, while the protective mechanism in my brain refused to let me see what was so horrifying. And then my brain gave up and I could see it:

Yes, that's a breaded fish patty stacked with two hamburger patties.

YUCK.

I'm no longer much of a fan of fast-food restaurants. I've never set foot in this White Castle; the smell outside convinces me that it can't be good, and this is New York, where one has to develop a very high tolerance indeed for smells. But even when I was young and would eagerly spend time, money and appetite at McDonald's and Wendy's and their ilk, I knew enough to never order the fish sandwich. Now imagine that fish sandwich with steamed hamburger and extra bread.

YUCK.

Calling it "surf and turf" seems a bit like pouring cheap riesling into ginger ale and calling that champagne. (Oh, wait, that's Cook's. Let me try again.) Calling it "surf and turf" seems a bit like mashing up a Tootsie Roll, rolling it in Swiss Miss, and calling that a truffle.

Just saying.

Shrimp with Black Pepper-Seasoned Corn Pops

2007-09-16T22:28:00.000-04:00

The Kellogg’s Cookbook suffers from the same problem as the Kraft Food & Family publications: It has to try to blend recipes that a reasonable person might want to cook with a heavy dependence on the company’s products. This leads to recipes like this one, where an otherwise plausible dish is spoiled by the addition of a sickly-sweet or over-processed commercial item.

A lot of the recipes in the book look appealing. Who has not used corn flakes to coat chicken for frying, or added a bran cereal to muffins? But apparently there aren’t 200 recipes that use Kellogg’s products rationally. So you find a summer squash casserole with Rice Krispies, meatballs with Rice Krispies, and minestrone with All-Bran. I wish I were even joking about that one. I don’t make these things up.

David Burke is a real chef. What prompted him to come up with this recipe, I can’t begin to guess. I do note that the Corn Pops could be very easily omitted; the rest of the recipe sounds pretty good.

Shrimp with Black Pepper-Seasoned Corn Pops
¼ cup olive oil
1 ½ cups Kellogg’s Corn Pops
1 tablespoon cracked black pepper
1/3 cup minced shallots
1 tablespoon minced garlic
36 large shrimp, cleaned and deveined
6 plum tomatoes, peeled, cored, seeded, and finely diced
2 cups nonfat chicken broth
Juice of 2 lemons
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
¼ cup butter, softened
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives
18 spears asparagus, trimmed, blanched, and cut into thirds

David Burke is one of America’s most inventive chefs. He is known for introducing everyday ingredients into haute cuisine with playfulness and fun, but always with great flavor and taste. Kellogg’s Corn Pops in this dish add an unexpected note, with just the right amount of crunch and a hint of sweetness. The seasoned cereal can also be used as a great topping for salads, soups or chili. Serves 10.

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a medium sauté pan or skillet. Add Corn Pops and season with cracked black pepper. Saute for about 3 minutes, or just until the cereal is well coated with the pepper. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the cereal to a double layer of paper towel to drain. Set aside.

2. Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large sauté pan or skillet over medium-high heat. Add the shallots and garlic, and sauté for about 3 minutes, or until very soft and translucent. Add the shrimp and sauté for 2 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, broth and lemon juice, season with salt and pepper, and cook for another 3 minutes. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until shrimp is fully cooked. (The sauce should begin to thicken.)

3. Beat in the butter. When emulsified, stir in the chives and asparagus.

4. Spoon equal parts of the shrimp mixture into shallow soup bowls. Garnish each serving with black pepper-seasoned Corn Pops and serve immediately.

Note: This shrimp dish is also wonderful served over rice.

From The Kellogg’s Cookbook: 200 Classic Recipes for Today’s Kitchen. Kellogg Kitchens, ed. Judith Choate. New York: Time Warner/Bulfinch Press, 2006.

Know Your Chicken

2007-09-16T22:25:00.000-04:00

This weekend I did a lot of shopping to stock up, and I kept feeling a hankering to get a chicken to roast. I had misgivings; my experience has been that roasting a chicken is a fair bit of work and mess, plus I’m not that good at carving. (But I vandalize the bird slightly less than my husband would, so it’s still my job.) Still, kosher additive-free chickens were on special at Whole Foods, so I threw one in the basket and decided I’d re-check my recipes when I got home.

It’s been a few years since I’ve made time to roast a chicken; the last recipe I used was from the charter issue of Cook’s Illustrated. I love that magazine; I love the way they experiment with every little detail to perfect a recipe and then explain the principles and the variables for readers. I love the reviews of food and equipment, which are always illuminating and often hilarious and snarky. (I bought a Braun hand mixer on the magazine’s recommendation and I love it beyond reason.) And I was quite fond of the roast chicken that results from this recipe, but it seemed like kind of a lot of work. The process is basically this: situate the rack to ensure the chicken is kept above the rim of the roasting pan, easy to accomplish with a V-rack or strategically balled aluminum foil; start the bird at high heat (500 F) to crisp the skin, and breast-down to keep the white meat from drying prematurely; turn breast-up after about 20 minutes; lower the heat when breast is sufficiently browned (325) so meat continues to cook evenly; baste about every 8 minutes; check temperature and let rest before carving.

I think it was the basting that made it seem like so much work. Tonight I consulted Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, which offered similar instructions. Keep chicken above rim of pan, check; start at high heat and breast down, check; turn after about 20 minutes, check; turn down the heat, check; apply thermometer to test doneness and let rest before carving. But there are only two points at which you baste, when you turn and when you lower the heat. This bird was just as juicy and delicious as the ones I’ve made before, and I had time in the interim to clean up and prepare the rest of the food. I browned minced garlic in sesame oil, then added chopped collard greens with a bit of water and covered to let steam for 15 minutes, and I reheated breadsticks I’d made the night before (using a basic pizza dough recipe to which I’d added basil, oregano, and grated Parmesan when first mixing).

I did use a different pan for roasting, which helped; the rack sat more firmly at the right height without the need for aluminum foil. Cook’s Illustrated also advises elevating the breast by tucking foil underneath the bird’s back, which can be tricky for balance. I didn’t bother doing that with tonight’s chicken, and it was just fine. As I always do, I tucked a quartered lemon and some cloves of garlic into the cavity before roasting, which imparts a nice flavor to the meat.

I love Cook’s Illustrated, but I think I’m beginning to love How to Cook Everything even more.

Yet another silly recipe contest

2007-09-10T16:36:00.000-04:00

The Krispy Kreme people are having a contest for best dessert made using "any variety of Krispy Kreme." I guess the Donut Luncheon Main Dish isn't eligible since it's not a dessert. Also it's hard to imagine any context in which it would be "best."

I don't know about you, but I don't think Krispy Kremes are all that. True, I haven't had them straight from the shop; the ones I've tasted have always been at least a couple of hours old by the time they got to where I was offered one. But isn't a fresh donut always going to be better than one that's been sitting around for a while? The best donuts I've ever had were from Presti's in Cleveland, and I know that a big reason for that is that I lived up the hill and it was very easy to get them freshly made.

Of course I don't eat donuts much these days, but if I feel a hankering I'm more likely to go to Alpha Donuts, a little neighborhood place on Queens Boulevard, than to the closer Dunkin' Donuts. I also don't like Dunkin' Donuts coffee. (Pause for half the readers to say "Blasphemy!" and half to say, "Well, duh, it sucks.")

“Chinese Takeout” Lemon Chicken

2007-09-07T15:37:00.000-04:00

The fall issue of Kraft Food & Family is here, and on the first page of text after the contents — the FIRST page of text, mind you — we find this upsetting offering, “Chinese Takeout” Lemon Chicken.

I think the quote marks are supposed to signal that this is about as high-quality Chinese food as the $5 buffet with the scary eggrolls. What makes this chicken stir-fry lemony, you ask?

Wait, WHAT?

They’re not kidding. Run away! Run away!

Seriously, have they never heard of lemon zest? Or maybe they’re trying to faithfully mimic the gloopy consistency of the lower order of Chinese takeout places. There must be an upside…Probably it doesn’t have MSG?

I’m also rather fond of the more-money-than-sense-or-time “shortcut” offered.

The rest of the magazine can’t quite live up to this shocking start. (Jeez, folks, don’t throw the Jell-O dishes at us right at the start! Ease us into the horror!) But it tries. The new-product page spotlights “Oreo Cakesters,” Oreo filling in snack cakes instead of cookies. (Aren’t those basically just round Suzy Qs?) There’s a “So-Easy Stuffing-Egg Bake” using Stove Top Stuffing, eggs, and cheese; I think it’s supposed to be a dinner strata, neatly getting around the economical practice of using stale leftover bread by forcing you to spend money on boxed stuffing. And there’s “Salsa-Chicken Mac & Cheese,” which is pretty self-explanatory. But it’s all anticlimactic after the Jell-O.

“Chinese Takeout” Lemon Chicken
Prep: 10 min. | Total: 19 min.
1 Tbsp. oil
1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips
1 pkg. (6 oz.) snow peas (about 2 cups), trimmed
1 small red pepper, cut into strips
1 pkg. (4-serving size) Jell-O Brand Lemon Flavor Gelatin
1 Tbsp. cornstarch
½ cup chicken broth
2 Tbsp. Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing
2 cloves garlic, minced

HEAT oil in large skillet on medium-high heat. Add chicken, cook 4 min. or until cooked through, stirring occasionally. Add snow peas and peppers; cook and stir 2 min.

MIX dry gelatin mix and cornstarch in small bowl. Add broth, dressing and garlic; stir until gelatin is dissolved. Add to skillet. Reduce heat to medium; cook 3 min. or until sauce is thickened, stirring frequently.

SERVE over hot cooked rice, if desired.

Makes 4 servings, 1 cup each.

CAL 300, FAT 8 g (sat. 1.5g), CHOL 65mg, SODIUM 350mg, CARB 26g, FIBER 2g, SUGARS 21g, PROTEIN 28g, VIT A 15%DV, CALCIUM 4%DV, IRON 10%DV

SHORTCUT: Substitute 2 pkg. (6 oz. each) Oscar Mayer Grilled Chicken Breast Strips for the cooked fresh chicken strips. Heat oil in skillet as directed. Add chicken breast strips, snow peas and peppers; cook 3 to 5 min. or until chicken is heated through and vegetables are crisp-tender, stirring frequently. Continue as directed.

From Kraft Food & Family, Fall 2007.

From the maker of Deep Fried Coke

2007-09-03T15:25:00.001-04:00

The new state fair offering is deep fried cookie dough, the winner of this year's Big Tex Choice Awards. The contest invites fair concessionaires to come up with a new offering; deep frying is a popular technique, since it makes for fast preparation and satisfies fairgoers' desire to indulge.

I'm more curious about the deep-fried lattes, mentioned later in the story, which won Most Creative.

Iron Chef: U.S. or Japanese version?

2007-09-01T10:54:00.001-04:00

Here's a reader-response question: Which "Iron Chef" do you prefer--the U.S. or the Japanese version--and why? (Also curious if you've never seen either, or don't like either, as long as you're willing to explain your position.)

We were watching one of the Japanese episodes earlier this week; the ingredient was black pig (or "black pork," as the episode title has it, but it's the animal that looks black because of its hair, not the meat itself). There was a lot to love about this episode. It began with a contrived nostalgic trip by Sakai to his hometown, leading up to a cooking challenge by a former schoolmate turned professional chef, which was clearly not elaborately set up in any way whatsoever, no sir. The cooking was quite fun, but I thought the funniest moment was during the tasting, when the male celebrity guest (whose name escapes me), who had been offering awkward commentary all the way through, at one point said, "I sweat a lot, so I don't usually like to eat pork." Our immediate reaction: WTF? On further thought, I realize that there is a lot of information about how certain kinds of foods affect health and bodily function, especially in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda and the like; this isn't such a nonsequitur as we thought. But that hasn't stopped us from making jokes about it all week. "I got a bad haircut, so I don't want any coffee." I have an ingrown toenail, so I can't have white flour." "I'm nearsighted, so I don't like bell peppers."

Cool ’N Creamy Coleslaw

2007-08-25T19:38:00.000-04:00

When you think of coleslaw, do you think of gelatin? No? Too bad, because the two come together in an unholy union for this recipe.

It comes to us from Best Recipes From the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars, which is a pretty self-explanatory title. Chapter after chapter offers up recipes that appeared on packages of commercial products. The majority of them are innocuous: a pork-chop barbecue sauce using Kikkoman Soy Sauce, corn fritters fried in Planter’s Peanut Oil, appetizers made with Bisquick, dessert toppings made with Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup.

But there are also losers: meatloaf made with Wheat Chex. (I may be unkind here; I don’t like meatloaf, so I’d be hard-pressed to find a package recipe I did approve of.) Macaroni salad made with tomato sauce. (“I bet you never thought of putting Hunt’s Tomato Sauce in a salad, but what goes better than tomato sauce with macaroni?” Oh, I don’t know—cheese?) “Rodeo Hash” with canned condensed mushroom soup. And this jellied coleslaw.

Coleslaw gets a bum rap. It’s sort of the default picnic or sandwich side. At the diners where we like to eat, little cups of coleslaw are offered alongside sandwiches and wraps, and seem to go back untouched most of the time, passed over for waffle fries and dill pickles. Coleslaw isn’t bad if it’s properly spiced and leans toward the tangy side. I have trouble believing that anybody who was bored with coleslaw would really think, “Maybe if it were in a wobbly gelatin cube instead…”

Cool ’N Creamy Coleslaw
If you are tired of “just coleslaw” whip up this special molded version. It’s been a favorite since the recipe appeared on the Knox Gelatine package decades ago.
2 envelopes Knox Unflavored Gelatine
2 Tbs. sugar
1 ¾ cups boiling water
1 ¾ cups mayonnaise
¼ cup lemon juice
4 cups shredded cabbage
1 cup shredded carrots
¼ cup finely chopped onion

In large bowl, mix Knox Unflavored Gelatine and sugar; add boiling water and stir until gelatin is completely dissolved. With wire whisk or rotary beater, blend in mayonnaise and lemon juice; chill until mixture is consistency of unbeaten egg whites. Stir in cabbage, carrots and onion; pour into 11 x 7-inch pan and chill until firm. To serve, cut into squares. Makes about 8 servings.

From Best Recipes From the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars. Ceil Dyer. New York: Galahad Books, 1992.

SpaghettiO Stir-Fry

2007-08-18T22:24:00.000-04:00

The editors of the magazine Men’s Health, who ought to know better, have offered this cookbook that says yes, men, EVEN YOU can cook as long as everything comes out of a can! They start off with the hackneyed “men can’t cook” line, which you may have noticed comes into play any time cooking is a chore but is quickly thrown out the window if you want to argue that all the best chefs are men. The cookbook then notes, “we’ve been charring giant slabs of meat ever since we discovered fire. The difference is that now we have better things to do. Why slave over a hot stove when we could be cooking up plans for a golf outing? Or warming up at the gym? Or making things sizzle in the bedroom?” Right, because obviously no woman is capable of doing ANY of those things.

We all know this line is nonsense, just a way to try to present a playful introduction to a dismal batch of recipes. I have to tell you, guys, if you offer your date some of the dishes in this book, I don’t think things will be sizzling in the bedroom any time soon.

Canned food is not inherently bad. I cook with canned beans and canned tomatoes all the time. But several of the offerings in this book are not that good. “Pigs in a Pinwheel” combines canned ham, reduced-fat cream cheese and refrigerated crescent-roll dough, plus onion and chopped oregano. (The recipes feature vivid color photographs of the commercially packaged products they feature, and “also” additional ingredients like vegetables and spices that didn’t get corporate sponsorship.) “Drunken Corn” has you mix canned corn with peppers, Heineken and butter. Other recipes are simply unimaginative combinations of things like beans, cheese and olives, or beef, tomatoes, cheese and tortillas. The idea that you need a cookbook to tell you how to make these things is what’s killing me.

I’ll admit, this book hits one of my pet peeves. I don’t have a big problem with people who admit they can’t cook. We all have things we haven’t mastered. But I do not find it cute when people say they can’t cook, and it drives me nuts when people try to present their lack of this basic survival skill as a charming facet of their personality. This cookbook, with its big chunky pages (of a thickness usually associated with picture books for toddlers) and its simplistic combinations of brand-name foods, is smug about its intended readers’ lack of skills. You don’t need to know how to cook, guys, just open a few cans and the ladies will be falling at your feet! Yeah, nothing makes a woman want to become your love slave like opening a can of SpaghettiOs for her. I have a better idea. If you want to cook to impress a date, pick up a copy of How to Cook Everything and work your way through it. If you want to impress her with good food that you don’t have to know how to cook, take her to a good restaurant that offers better beer than Heineken.

SpaghettiO Stir-Fry
2 15-oz cans SpaghettiOs
¾ lb extra-lean ground beef
10-oz package frozen broccoli
Also: ¼ cup diced green onion; small red bell pepper, chopped
How to make it: Brown the ground beef in a nonstick skillet. Dump in the SpaghettiOs, broccoli, onion and pepper, and cook for about 10 minutes.
Makes 4 servings.
Per serving: 335 calories, 11 g fat (30% of calories), 4 g saturated fat, 22 g protein, 35 g carbohydrates, 4 g fiber, 898 mg sodium
From A Man, A Can, A Plan: 50 Great Guy Meals Even You Can Make! David Joachim and the editors of Men’s Health. Rodale Press, 2002.

Meat Cake

2007-08-15T20:10:00.000-04:00

A colleague sent me a link to Meat Cake, which he tried at a recent meat-themed party. There's really nothing I can say about it that the cook doesn't already say throughout the post. I love how he went to so much trouble to make it look like a real bakery cake.

My colleague noted that it tasted "decent," especially when accompanied by large volumes of beer.

’Nana Salad

2007-08-14T22:50:00.000-04:00

A dear friend sent me this carrot-themed cookbook among a batch of more obvious sources of damned cookery. It’s a self-published affair, photocopied pages in Courier type, plastic-comb-bound with a tough orange cover, and has coupons in the back for ordering more from “Mrs. Roy E. Fletcher.” (I’m sure Mrs. Fletcher is or was a lovely woman, a fine cook, and an excellent garden club member; it’s just that the “Mrs. [man’s name]” construction sets my teeth on edge, and did in 1982 when I was a mere child of fifteen. Not her fault.)

I set this volume aside for a while after a hasty perusal. Sure, some of the recipes were not fully to my taste, but could I really fault the carrot? It is a versatile vegetable: savory enough for meat and veggie dishes, subtle enough for sweet offerings, an excellent way to sneak fiber and texture into cakes and cookies. Could I really find a Damned-level recipe in the book? Instead of flipping through once more I read the index (feeling a secret affection for the garden club members who went to the trouble to create an index; I rate a good index very highly in any book), and voila: ’Nana Salad. Bananas and carrots, I thought; this has promise. I turned to the page and spotted longhorn cheese, and we were off to the races. Good lord, I thought, what is longhorn cheese doing in a dish with bananas and carrots; isn’t it basically Colby? Why, yes. But they weren’t done. Canned pineapple! Gelatin, an old nemesis! And topping it all with a sort of hollandaise sauce? Oh, the horror.

I bet the finished dish has the same color scheme as a 1971 back-to-school clothing catalog. All oranges and yellows.

’Nana Salad
1 8-ounce package longhorn cheese
6 bananas
2 cans pineapple, grated (save juice)
2 ½ cups grated carrots
1 6-ounce package lemon-flavored gelatin
½ cup sugar
1 cup pineapple juice (drained from fruit)
2 tablespoons flour
2 eggs
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup whipping cream, whipped

Grate cheese and line bottom of 9x11 inch dish. Slice bananas over cheese, then pour drained pineapple over bananas. Spread grated carrots over pineapple. Make gelatin as directed, leaving out ½ cup liquid. Pour gelatin over entire mixture and refrigerate.

For sauce, mix sugar, pineapple juice, flour, eggs, and lemon juice together in sauce pan. Bring to a boil and stir until mixture thickens. When thickened, add butter and stir. Refrigerate. When chilled add ½ cup grated carrots. Add whipped cream and mix well. Pour sauce over salad. Serves 10-12.

From The Classic Carrot Cookbook for 24-Carat Cooks. A collection from the kitchens of garden club members and their friends. Ed. Norma Jean. Arizona Federation of Garden Clubs, Inc., 1982.

At least it's for a good cause

2007-08-13T22:48:00.001-04:00

Red Robin (the restaurant chain) is holding a contest for young burger chefs. A second annual one, even. (The first escaped my notice.) Because God knows there aren't enough ways to make a hamburger. How often do you go out and think, "Never mind what fish is fresh in this region, or what vegetables are in season; why can't I find a really new combination of ground beef, bun and onions?"

Yes, I have eaten Red Robin burgers. I'm still hauling around excess flesh and cholesterol from burgers I ate nearly 20 years ago while downing specialty drinks ("because we care, two's the limit"). We can at least be glad the kids aren't being exhorted to come up with the next zippy rum drink or Long Island iced tea.

Selected recipes from the contest will be used to create a cookbook to benefit the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and that's a worthy cause. Bet you could contribute to it without cooking hamburger if you wanted to.

Depressing News of the Day

2007-08-06T21:41:00.000-04:00

Preschoolers think that food in McDonald's wrappers tastes better than food in plain wrappers. Even though it's the same food.

But children aren't unduly influenced by advertising, nooooooooo.

Microwave Ham Loaf

2007-08-05T20:59:00.000-04:00

I’ll be fair: This is a really beautifully done cookbook. It’s a very comprehensive guide to microwave cookery, with excellent instructions on appropriate cookware, techniques and food safety. The photographs are stunning: colorful, clear, detailed, and perfectly set up to show exactly what the reader needs to see rather than to simply present an artistic or emotionally appealing view of the food. The book dates from 1990, which means the information is current and useful. The type is clear and easy to read. The variety of recipes presented is dazzling.

And yet.

It’s the recipe I chose, not the book. Ham loaf is already an unappealing foodstuff in my view; I’m not big on meat loaves in general. (My mother’s meatloaf was reputed to be excellent, far above the usual standard of the dish; I could never bring myself to like it.) Nor am I particularly crazy about ham. When I do eat meat (which is less and less these days), I like to see browning. Microwaves are not ideal for browning (though the book does offer a lot of techniques for coming as close as possible), nor does a smoked ham mixture seem likely to brown, even with a little bit of veal in it.

See, pink before cooking.

After cooking: pink.

Serving size: pink.

So what we get is a pink meat slab, speckled with olives and pimientos and green onions. Um, yay? Sorry, doesn’t do much for me. You go to town, though.

Also, in our apartment, we can’t use the microwave and the air conditioner at the same time without knocking out a circuit breaker. So I lack enthusiasm for microwave-only meals. Readers whose homes have better wiring may have a different perspective.

Ham Loaf
229 calories per serving. Good source of thiamine, niacin, vitamin C, iron. Begin 55 minutes ahead.
Ingredients for 8 servings
1 ½ pounds fully cooked smoked ham
½ pound ground veal
2 green onions, sliced
2 eggs
1 ½ cups fresh bread crumbs (3 slices)
1 cup tomato juice
¼ cup diced pimientos
5 pitted ripe olives, sliced
2 tablespoons dry mustard
2 tablespoons steak sauce
1 ½ teaspoons celery salt
Lemon slices and parsley sprigs for garnish

Microwave cookware
8-cup ring mold or Bundt pan

1. With sharp knife, cut ham into chunks. Place chunks in food processor with knife blade attached or in meat grinder; finely chop.
2. In large bowl, combine chopped ham and veal. To meat, add green onions and remaining ingredients except garnish. Stir until well combined.
3. With spoon, firmly press mixture into ring mold or Bundt pan; smooth top with back of spoon.
4. Cook loaf, covered loosely with waxed paper, on High (100% power) 5 minutes. Rotate pan. Reduce power level to Medium-Low (30% power) and cook, covered, 15 to 18 minutes longer, until a meat thermometer inserted in center of loaf mixture reaches 150 degrees F.
5. Uncover; rotate pan. Increase power level to High and cook 5 minutes more. On heat-safe surface, let loaf stand, covered loosely with foil, 10 to 15 minutes.
6. To serve: Invert loaf onto warmed serving platter. Garnish with lemon and parsley sprigs.
From The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Microwave Cookbook. New York: Hearst Books, 1990.

Roundup of interesting tidbits

2007-08-01T23:47:00.000-04:00

How I love RSS. I would never have come across these stories without the feeds.

Coffee may prevent skin cancer. By which I mean, a study of ultraviolet radiation, exercise and caffeinated water on mice showed that mice who'd taken in the caffeine and exercised had some increased defenses against pre-cancerous cells as compared to mice who'd not exercised or who'd had less caffeine or who'd had neither. Which is certainly not to say that there is any evidence it works the same way in humans, or that coffee works the same as caffeinated water, or that an increase in the ability to eliminate damaged or cancerous cells is the same as preventing or curing cancer, or that this would be applicable to any sort of cancer other than skin cancer. But I fully expect to see all those ideas floated as "scientifically proven" in the media in the next couple of weeks.

Sample American regional cuisine at its best by going to NASCAR. This fun story from the Toronto Globe and Mail combines things I'm into -- good food and fun people -- with things I am so, so, so not into -- car racing, cars, and visiting places as hot as Florida during the summer.

OK, this one has nothing to do with food. I just adore the headline: Stoner Plots Campaign From Farm. "Dude, did you ever notice, the turkey really is in the straw, man. Whooooah."

It's the water

2007-07-31T22:54:00.000-04:00

Sorry to be absent so long. I'm still catching up from time on the road and my return to work after a rather glorious six weeks of liberty. I expect to post an actual recipe, a truly damned recipe, this weekend.

Until then, I just wanted to comment on this story about Aquafina, a leading bottled water that is considering more clearly disclosing the fact that by and large it's tap water. It's interesting to see that there are rising concerns about the growth of bottled water as a retail beverage category; those plastic bottles have significant environmental impact before and after sale, in their manufacture and disposal. It takes a lot more petroleum to get the bottles to your neighborhood than to get the water through your pipes to your kitchen, where you can obtain it far more cheaply as well. Few of the major commercial brands are any cleaner than municipal tap water; some hold to much lower standards than those enforced by your local water authority. (Which makes Aquafina start to look like a winning candidate with this disclosure, actually.) Of course, if your home's pipes are in bad condition, your tap water may not compare well to what's in the bottles, but you're probably better off calling the plumber than stocking up on the plastic versions. True, plastic is more convenient to carry around than a hose trailing back to your kitchen, but that's what reusable sport bottles are for.

I could start to natter about how in my day we didn't waste all our money on plastic bottles of water when we could get perfectly good water from the tap, but I don't want to sound like a total curmudgeon. Plus, I have a somewhat costly coffeeshop habit, so I'm in no position to judge. But it does seem funny how much these companies earn from what they're admitting is tap water.

Peanut-Butter Cutlets

2007-07-22T12:29:00.000-04:00

I'm still on my travels, but am taking a few minutes to make a post for today. My wonderful sister-in-law has lent me some cookbooks with great RotD candidates; there's an appalling microwave ham loaf that will be going up as soon as I have access to a color scanner I can use for non-work purposes.

For now I offer Peanut-Butter Cutlets, from the 1930 cookbook New Delineator Recipes. Author Ann Batchelder presents a range of dishes that exemplify the era when elegance and process were considered more important than flavor and texture. The book includes suggestions for sandwich fillings; two are "Equal parts olives, peanut butter, celery, mixed with a little salad dressing" and "Cottage cheese and pickles, olives, nuts or pimientos." Nothing perks up a brown-bag lunch like a cottage cheese sandwich! There are also scary directions for cooking vegetables, such as an asparagus recipe that says "Cook in boiling water until tender, keeping the tips above the water for the first ten minutes," by which point you have already been boiling asparagus for approximately nine and a half minutes too long.

Peanut-Butter Cutlets are included in a chapter of vegetarian dishes that help ensure vegetarians get their minimum supply of starch, protein and fat. And possibly meat; a recipe that includes kidney beans notes, "A ham-bone or a piece of bacon cooked with them adds to the flavor." Well, yes; specifically, it adds the distinctly non-vegetarian flavor of ham or bacon.

I chose Peanut-Butter Cutlets because I couldn't stop imagining the tremendous mess that must result when you try to fry a peanut-butter mixture. Enjoy!

Peanut-Butter Cutlets
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
1 1/2 cups hot milk
6 half-inch slices of bread
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper

Mix peanut butter with hot milk and seasoning, mixing together thoroughly. Dip slices of bread into the peanut-butter mixture. Saute in hot fat. Garnish with pickles and olives.

This dish offers both adequate protein and iron.

From New Delineator Recipes, Ann Batchelder, Butterick Publishing Company, 1930.

A few miscellaneous things

2007-07-13T16:01:00.000-04:00

New at the movies
Or new to me at least, which may tell you how often I get out. At the cinema concession counter we spotted a CinnaBon Cinn-a-Pretzel. It didn't look as good in real life as it does in the picture on the Web site (and I don't think it looks particularly good there). I can only imagine the next sure-fire cinema snack combo: Nachos topped with Milk Duds? Your soda poured directly over the popcorn? A hot dog lovingly layered with Sour Patch and Gummi Worms?

Cranberries
I see that Ocean Spray is having a contest for the ultimate cranberry recipe. When I saw the announcement I could only think of this Brian Regan routine (at about 3:46 in the clip). Slow down, Cran-Man! OK, I do love cranberries, but after watching Regan's routines I can't help laughing at the prospect of the contest even as I wish the entrants well.

State fair watch
I know the summer is only about half over, but I wanted to put everyone on alert: Before you know it, it's going to be state fair season, with all the almost-like-food offerings a tent and some deep fryers can serve up in 95-degree weather. Last year's perverse concept was Deep-Fried Coke (which a friend thought was just a joke I'd made up until someone else mentioned it too). What do you suppose the next big thing will be? Please send me alerts!

Hitting the road
I'm about to travel for 10 days, combining business, pleasure, and the time wasted in airports that can't really be called either. I intend to keep up with the blog while I'm on the road, but there may be significant lags in posting or in publishing comments. Please bear with me.

Movie review: "Ratatouille"

2007-07-11T18:01:00.000-04:00

We went to see “Ratatouille” today. It’s a very fun movie on its own terms, and a really good foodie film. The premise (in the unlikely event you’ve managed not to hear about it) is that Remy is an aspiring chef—and a rat. Through a dramatic and wonderfully animated series of events, he arrives in Paris, where he helps guide gawky garbage-boy Linguini in the ways of cookery at Gusteau’s. There are plenty of cooking lessons offered: trust your nose, learn to work with economy and precision, use the best ingredients you can find for optimal taste, wash your hands. The story is engaging, the voices skillful, and the dialogue mostly sharp and only occasionally cheesy. (Insert pun about rats and cheese here.)

New York Times critic Frank Bruni had a piece in Sunday’s paper arguing that the movie “affirms the triumph of food snobs and fetishists.” I’m not sure what Bruni considers snobbery. There’s a subplot thread about a villainous chef trying to cash in on the Gusteau name with frozen foods such as “Tooth-Pickin’ Chicken” and “Corn Puppies.” And a dramatic foil of the piece is the highly elitist critic Anton Ego, who is astonished to learn that the once-fading restaurant is popular even though Ego hasn’t rated the new chef’s efforts. But the attention-getting cookery is built on whole ingredients such as fresh herbs, cream, vegetables and salt, with only passing attention given to luxury items like truffle oil. And Remy labors to convince his brother, Emil, that fresh food is really better to eat than garbage. This happens to be a key principle of Recipes of the Damned. If that’s snobbery, I’m proud to call myself a snob.

But then, the character of the late chef Gusteau is a sort of secondary hero, muse, and Jedi tutor in the movie. And his motto is “Anyone can cook.” Wow, that’s some rampant fetishism. Bruni argues that the film focuses on Remy’s highly refined palate, and notes “perhaps the last big-budget movie protagonist with an appetite as refined as Remy’s was Hannibal Lecter in ‘The Silence of the Lambs,’ from 1991.” This argument only works if you ignore “Ratatouille’s” valorization of rustic cooking, and if you set your palate and budget standards high enough to disqualify cookery-focused films like “Big Night” (1996) and “Eat Drink Man Woman” (1994). High culinary standards are not that new a theme in the movies, though as a lowly rat Remy may make the longest journey to culinary excellence.

I’ll also add that it’s rather perverse to eat middling theater popcorn while beautiful images of tomatoes, garlic cloves, leeks and bread dance across the screen. Sneak in a baguette and some cheese if you go.

The New York Unfancy Food Show

2007-07-08T18:27:00.001-04:00

I spent a little while this afternoon at the New York Unfancy Food Show in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A direct response to the Fancy Food Show taking place at the Javits Center today through Tuesday, the Unfancy Food Show featured local artisanal cheese, pickles, grass-fed beef, honey (from South Bronx bees), coffee and tea.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the premier event. What I found was a pleasant bar, situated in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, whose backyard held an assortment of tables. For a suggested $5 donation, attendees could sample the goods. There weren't quite enough vendors for a grazer to make a meal of it without being kind of obviously rude, and I was too hungry to trust myself to get a beer and still retain enough self-control to hang onto any of the cash I have allotted for the week, so I stayed for less than an hour. That was time enough to learn that there really is a huge flavor difference between grass-fed and corn-fed beef; that honey harvested at different seasons will be quite different in color and flavor; that bees have a range of three miles and the bees of Bronx Bee Honey include the Botanical Gardens in their territory; that you sure can pickle a lot of different vegetables and have them taste good; and that if I had consulted only my own appetite I would have eaten an outrageous share of the cheese that was available to sample. Conscience prevailed; other attendees were in luck.

I do hope this is the first in a yearly series, or even two or three times a year, and that they can sign on more vendors. I also hope other cities can follow this example; it's really fun to find out what kinds of local, natural foods you can find in the local farmer's markets, shops and restaurants.

Beef, Vegetable and Shells Skillet

2007-07-07T21:52:00.001-04:00

This recipe comes from a quarterly magazine sent out by Kraft, ostensibly to help busy family cooks (read “moms”) make quick and tasty meals that the family will enjoy, but self-evidently to sell lots and lots of Kraft products. So recipes tend to call for ingredients like Kraft salad dressings, Kraft cheeses, Philadelphia cream cheese, Taco Bell salsa, Bull’s-Eye barbecue sauce, Oreo cookies, and so forth, even to the furthest ends of the supermarket.

This means you get a lot of recipes that direct you to cut corners in ways that are extremely convenient for the corporate overlords, but that can tend to shortchange flavor or nutrition. For example, a pizza-stick appetizer recipe directs you to take a frozen pizza, add some more cheese, cook it, and cut it into strips. For about 10 minutes’ additional effort (plus some waiting and cleanup time), you could make your own pizza crust instead, for far better flavor and texture and less sodium. Or you’re directed to marinate chicken in bottled salad dressing, when you could probably mix a better-tasting marinade from less expensive ingredients.

To be fair, not every recipe in the magazine is bad. Many sound pretty tasty, such as one for a dessert ice cream cake that involves stacking ice-cream sandwiches, Oreos and Cool Whip. (Though I would substitute actual whipped cream for the Cool Whip and probably a homemade chocolate cookie for the Oreos. Maybe not. I like Oreos. But the Cool Whip’s gotta go.)

Not every processed food is bad. But convenience foods should make it convenient to get good food and good flavor, not just to get something into your mouth for God’s sake no matter how much it tastes like cardboard.

The recipe below commits several offenses, in my view. It directs you to use a Velveeta product. I am anti-Velveeta. I want my cheese to really be cheese, not cheese-product more or less equivalent. Further, it directs you to combine this Velveeta with meat that has been browned in bottled Italian dressing. Because goodness knows the meat needs additional fat along with the spices. (Yes, it’s reduced-fat dressing, but seriously, even extra-lean hamburger renders up sufficient fat for browning.) It directs you to add more cheese at the end (I thought the Velveeta might not deliver all that was hoped for!). And in the unlikely event that you restrict your serving size to the recommended 1-1/3 cups, it’ll give you nearly a quarter of your recommended maximum daily saturated fat, nearly half your day’s sodium, and half your day’s protein, but a measly 3 grams of fiber (far below the 25 to 35 grams you should get in a day).

Now you’re saying, “Amy, be reasonable. Of course I’ll control my portion size, and eat this with a side salad, and eat mostly vegetables and fiber-rich grains the rest of the day.” Sure you will. You’re too smart to take the expedient route and make a “skillet supper” serve as the entire meal. Of course, if you’re that smart you can brown your ground beef without salad dressing, drain off the fat (you’re not wrong: that instruction does not appear in the recipe) before you add half again the vegetables, and serve it over whole-wheat noodles or brown rice with a light grating of real sharp cheddar cheese to add lots of flavor with less volume. Damn, you are smart.

Beef, Vegetable and Shells Skillet
This easy cheesy skillet dish is a smart dish option that’s a breeze to make.
Prep: 15 min | Total: 35 min.

1 pkg. (12 oz.) Velveeta Shells & Cheese Dinner Made With 2% Milk Cheese
1 lb. extra lean ground beef
½ cup Kraft Light Zesty Italian Reduced Fat Dressing
1 bag (16 oz.) frozen vegetable blend (red peppers, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower), thawed
1 tsp dried basil leaves
½ cup Kraft 2% Milk Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese

PREPARE Dinner as directed on package.
MEANWHILE, brown meat with dressing in large skillet on medium heat. Add vegetables and basil; cook 5 min. or until heated through, stirring occasionally.
STIR in Dinner; sprinkle with Cheddar cheese. Cover; cook 5 min. or until Cheddar cheese is melted.
Makes 6 servings, 1-1/3 cups each.
CAL 330, FAT 10g (sat 4.5g), CHOL 60 mg, SODIUM 1030mg, CARB 33g, FIBER 3g, SUGARS 6g, PROTEIN 26g, VIT A 35%DV, VIT C 50%DV, CALCIUM 30%DV, IRON 20%DV
SUBSTITUTE: Any frozen vegetable blend will work in this easy skillet meal, so use your family’s favorite.
From Kraft Food & Family, Summer 2007, Kraft Foods.

Book review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

2007-07-06T07:45:00.000-04:00

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

Where does your food come from? How many thousands of miles has that pink, grainy tomato traveled to reach your grocery store? A ridiculous amount of America’s food supply is trucked, shipped and flown thousands of miles from its point of origin to the point of sale. This means consumers can have iceberg lettuce and red grapes when their own cities are buried in snow, but it also means that more than 300 gallons of oil per citizen per year is consumed to get us these out-of-season edibles. When novelist Barbara Kingsolver and her family decided to move from Tucson back to a family farm in western Virginia, they also decided to cut their culinary petroleum consumption by building their diet around the food available to them locally, favoring the organic, free-range and sustainably produced. This book is an account of the first full year of their effort.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle takes the family from spring to spring as they base their diet on local sources. The farm garden and cherry orchard provide a large share of their vegetable and fruit consumption. In the poultry barns they raise chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat. Farmer’s markets, neighbors and local grocers provide meat and produce from within a 120-mile range. And they allow themselves a few items they simply can’t find within their local limit, such as organically grown whole-wheat flour and fair-trade coffee and spices. They aim not for perfection but for a significant change in their eating habits and their attitudes toward food.

The book is engaging, touching, inspiring, and frequently very funny. Kingsolver recounts long hours spent weeding in the garden, canning tomatoes, and finding ways to deal with the overwhelming zucchini harvest. She is reverent and unapologetic as she describes the September day they kill and dress the turkeys and chickens destined to be food in the coming months. She explores her own attempts to be a more knowledgeable and responsible eater, whether that means shunning meat from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), making her own cheese, or learning firsthand about turkey mating and reproduction habits. Steven Hopp contributes informational sidebars about genetically modified crops, community-supported agriculture, fair trade and food aid, and Camille Kingsolver offers reflections on growing up in a vegetable-focused household, along with recipes for taking full advantage of local, seasonal bounty.

The book packs in a lot of information and points the reader to resources for further education. Many informed foodies will already be familiar with some of the info (I already knew feedlots were bad and that egg from free-range chickens are much lower in cholesterol than those laid by battery hens), but there’s still plenty to learn. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is well worth reading, and will likely inspire you to hit the farmer’s market or the local garden center after you’ve turned the last page. I don't think I'm going to be investing in laying hens any time soon, but I am thinking of trying the recipe for homemade mozzarella.

Buy it here

Evil Mad Science

2007-07-04T10:33:00.001-04:00

This wouldn't normally count as a Recipe of the Damned, because it's not really offered in good faith as a way for people to cook food. But it's still very funny and well worth reading. It's the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories technique for cooking hot dogs via electrocution. In the interests of safety I must reiterate the site's warning: DON'T DO THIS. Just read and wonder.

My husband and I both vaguely remember a 1970s appliance that cooked hot dogs more or less via electrocution, only without the possibly-killing-yourself-and-burning-down-your-house downsides of the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories technique. Do any of you remember that? It was sort of akin to the Presto hamburger cooker, only it was for hot dogs.

Happy Independence Day!

It's watered-down vodka, people!

2007-07-03T23:24:00.001-04:00

I just saw an ad for Smirnoff Source, which is a mixture of Smirnoff and "pure spring water."

That's right, folks: They're selling us watered-down vodka.

Enjoy!

Next they'll be objecting to tomatoes

2007-07-02T22:56:00.000-04:00

I can talk all I want about bad ingredient combinations and bad cooking techniques, but I’m always going to find some recipes “damned” simply because they include an ingredient I don’t like. I try (sometimes) to be rational about this. Just because I don’t like canned tuna doesn’t mean that a dish that calls for it is bad; well, no, I can’t quite go that far. Dishes that call for canned tuna are bad. But you see my point.

It looks like some chefs in Italy are carrying this single-ingredient aversion to a rather un-Italian extreme: There’s a rising movement against garlic. This may sound ridiculous, but the critics are gaining ground, and count former premier Silvio Berlusconi among their number. Arguing against its objectionable smell, the anti-garlic forces complain that it’s a matter of fairness: “They put garlic in almost any dish — with meat, with fish, everywhere. It’s not politically correct to impose garlic on everybody,” says the leader of one of Berlusconi’s media outlets.

I love garlic, but I don’t put it in absolutely everything. I suppose if you don’t like a food that happens to be a star of your national cuisine, you might get a bit touchy about it.

Noel Eggnog

2007-07-01T21:21:00.001-04:00

I came to eggnog late in life. My parents weren’t crazy about it, so I was an adult before I learned that eggnog was a really fun way to pack on about 15 extra pounds during the holiday season. Even the non-alcoholic version is rich and decadent. I like how the recipe here specifies “Noel Eggnog,” to make absolutely clear which holiday we’re talking about. Though in this case you would be justified in confusing it with “April Fool’s Day Eggnog,” because this eggnog has pineapple juice in it.

I’ll just stand aside while you spit out your drink.

Seriously. Pineapple juice. It curdles the blood to think of, nearly as much as it might curdle the cream. OK, the eggs might help mitigate that. But still. Pineapple juice! It’s upsetting.

What would make somebody think of putting pineapple juice into eggnog? This recipe comes to us from The Thatched Kitchen, a cookbook focused on Dole pineapple. Single-ingredient cookbooks like this are fun; there’s always a recipe that just pushes the bounds of taste too far. You can decide that a cookbook can be complete if it leaves out the recipes that really don’t suit the featured ingredient, or you can offer things like pineapple-juice eggnog. Too often, the wrong choice is made. This book is from 1972, so it also has a lot of photos in that sick-making process color popular from about the mid-sixties to the late seventies. There isn’t a photo of the eggnog; given some of the things the book does show, that should be seen as a warning.

Noel Eggnog
Rich and smooth, the fruit base keeps it from being too heavy.

6 eggs, separated
½ cup powdered sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark rum
1 cup brandy
1 can (46 oz.) Dole Pineapple Juice
1 can (6 oz.) Dole Frozen Concentrated Pineapple-Orange Juice, thawed
1 quart whipping cream
Nutmeg

Beat egg whites with powdered sugar until light and fluffy. Using same beater, beat egg yolks until well whipped. Beat in sugar until thick and lemon-colored. Gradually beat in rum and brandy. Sir in pineapple juice and pineapple-orange juice concentrate. Pour over egg whites, folding to combine well. Stir in one pint cream. Whip remaining cream until stiff. Fold into pineapple mixture. Pour into large punch bowl. Sprinkle with nutmeg to serve. Makes 25 (4 oz.) servings.

From The Thatched Kitchen: Harvest & Holiday Cookbook. Honolulu: Castle & Cooke, 1972.

Recipes of the Damned

2007-07-01T20:56:00.000-04:00

It’s back, as damned as ever

In 1999 I started writing essays making fun of recipes. With my husband’s help, I posted them on a sub-page of his Web site under the heading Recipes of the Damned. And much to my surprise, I got readers, who enjoyed my barbs at the expense of such morsels as brawn, Mexican spaghetti and shrimp salad surprise.

At the time I was a freshly lapsed vegetarian, and an about-to-lapse doctoral student in Victorian literature. I had spent a fair bit of time researching Victorian attitudes toward women’s eating and toward cookery in general. I had also just tried and given up on the Protein Power diet, one of numerous low-carb-high-protein fad diets that were particularly hot then. As a result, I was as ready to laugh at game dishes and beef marrow as at the inexcusable union of Jell-O and cauliflower. Several weeks of cleaning up bacon grease, eating eggs for breakfast every damn day, and blowing my meager grocery budget on stew beef and hamburger had done very little to stifle a decade’s instinctive response of “eww, meat, gross.”

So I wrote. I hunted out vintage and ephemeral recipes and wrote about them more weeks than not for a little over a year. Then I got a full-time job that I sensed would take up most of my time and mental energy, and put the column on indefinite hiatus. That was six and a half years ago.

I’m still in the same job, and it does take up an astonishing amount of my time and attention. But I have decided that is no excuse. The recipes are still out there.

Even now, years later, I get mail from visitors to the site — some amused, some confused, and some just wanting to know where they can get HyPower canned chili. (Short answer: They don’t make it any more.) I’m still on the alert for disgusting recipes, but I’m no longer as amused by Victorian meat dishes as I used to be. I’m more interested in ridiculing recipes that would be revolting in any era because of fundamentally misguided approaches to ingredient combinations, cooking techniques or shortcuts. Some of these come from older cookbooks or pamphlets, but some are fresh from the pages of today’s coupon circulars and women’s magazines. There are still things you shouldn’t put in Jell-O. (Including, in my view, a spoon.) There are still cookbooks organized around a single ingredient such as pineapple, which yield a few good recipes and a few that are self-evidently the result of crazed desperation, a misguided attempt to have complete chapters for every course no matter how un-dessert-y or un-salad-y the ingredient in question. There are still people who think that Minute Rice is an edible food.

The new blog is going to be a little bit different from the old one. For one thing, it’s actually set up as a blog, complete with the ability to leave comments. I will be moderating comments as long as I decide that’s necessary. But I don’t intend to suppress differing points of view; I just want to maintain a minimum level of civility, so I’ll only be blocking abusive comments and spam. Feel free to trash the recipes, or to criticize my arguments; don’t go trashing me personally or the other participants. And I don’t care to wire money to any strangers overseas, thanks ever so much for asking.

I’ll also be posting more often; I don’t promise daily updates, but I’ll definitely be aiming for a greater frequency than the weekly posts of the old site. Sometimes I’ll do recipe columns (just like the old days!), and sometimes I’ll be reviewing books or discussing things I see in the news or that have otherwise caught my attention. Feel free to send me suggestions for recipes, point me to news stories, or help me in other ways. This damned is your damned too.

So, whether you’re part of the old guard or whether you’ve stumbled upon my attempts at humor for the first time, welcome to the new Recipes of the Damned!

Watch this space

2007-06-25T20:12:00.001-04:00

The Recipes of the Damned site is going to make a comeback. More information soon.