Corduroy Orange

I just got back from lunch at the Three Rivers Arts Festival and much of it is the same as it always is: vendors similar to what I’ve seen in the past several years are selling art that’s similar to what I’ve seen in previous years, flanked by food booths similar to what I’ve seen in previous years. The big change at the Arts Festival this year is how they are handling the waste generated through the sale of food. In past years, recycling has been either nonexistent or spottily enforced, resulting in comingled waste streams: it didn’t matter what the bins were labeled, they likely contained preety much the same cross-mix of food, paper, cans, and bottles.

This year, there are three separate waste container areas: composting, recycling, and trash; trash by far represents the smallest percentage. In order to ensure that the waste streams are being treated properly, begloved volunteers monitor festival-goers as they dispose of their waste and rifle through the bags to police their contents. In other words, they’re making certain that the recycling bags are recyclable and the compost bags are compostable.

The breadth of what is being composted is quite impressive: all food waste, both from inside and outside the festival; paper products, including waxed; the corn-based plastic flatware being distributed at festival food booths; corn-based plastic cups (recycling number 7). Doesn’t leave much in the category of ‘trash’; those bags were practically empty even as the other categories filled.

The composting stream is being handled by Indianola-based Agrecycle, Inc. (no website available). They have picked up one load of compost from the Arts Festival and are processing it today: grinding it to reduce the particle size and putting it into one of the composting windrows at their Washington County composting site.

It’s thrilling to see that the Arts Festival is doing so well with making certain that the waste inevitably generated by feeding so many people in an open air market is being handled in as sustainable a manner as possible: until everyone starts carrying their own napkins and cups, strictly enforced public composting and recycling is a beautiful sight, indeed.

When you see ‘raisins’ in a recipe, feel free to think beyond dried grapes. Look at that word as a placeholder for ‘dried fruit’ and think of all the variations that are possible.

Larger fruits, such as the apricots and plums, should be cut into smaller pieces for most purposes (who wants to get a cookie with a whole prune* in it?), but once chopped down to raisin-esque size may be substituted and/or combined without hassle. Apricots are known to match well with pistachios; prunes I tend to use in conjunction with other fruits in order to add a new layer of flavor. Tart cherries and cranberries have almost endless possibilities in my mind, and I’ve taken to including them in many of my salads.

Perhaps the classic manifestation of raisins where few people ever think to make substitutions is in the Oatmeal-Raisin Cookie, which most people make with just plain old raisins. Last night, I made a batch that included a mix of raisins, golden raisins, cranberries, and tart montmorency cherries. My recipe: the supposed Neiman Marcus $250 cookie recipe with dried fruit substituted for the chocolate chips

Pittsburghers have several options for where they can find good selections of dried fruits at bulk prices. My favorite three are (in alphabetical order): the East End Food Co-Op, Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, and Trader Joe’s. We tend to ‘cherry pick’ as it were, choosing which fruit to buy where based in large part by how well priced it is. For instance, raisins tend to be the best deal at the Co-Op; cherries at Trader Joe’s, and cranberries at Penn Mac.

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Footnotes:

*At this juncture, i think it prudent to put in a word in defense of dried plums. Admittedly, not every prune is good (Dole, for instance, packages a prune which I find to have a somewhat slimy texture)—but a good prune has very sweet flavor and a somewhat chewy texture. Fresh plums aren’t associated with grandparents and regularity–so why are the dried variety? I recommend the ones sold in the bulk section of Pennsylvania Macaroni Company to any Pittsburgher who enjoys this delicacy.

+ Should you decide to make this recipe as a chocolate chip cookie recipe, I strongly suggest that you either omit the Hershey bar or substitute a higher quality chocolate for it. Any recipe with the supposed price tag of twelve and a half scores of dollars ought not include such a low quality chocolate.

Whenever you’re using lemon juice for something, zest the lemon before squeezing it and keep the zest frozen for the next time a recipe calls for lemon zest. Also, anytime you have a little leftover lemon juice, freeze it and keep it on hand for recipes. I find that a few seconds in the microwave will thaw just enough of the lemon juice to use in a particular recipe and the rest goes back to the freezer.

Submitted by: Clara Lee Sharrard

Addendum from Jesse:

Obviously, this tip would work for limes and oranges as well.  Also, whenever I zest a citrus fruit, i wash it with soap and water—it makes me feel better about ingesting something that’s been exposed to so many chemicals during the growing process.

Do you have a tip that saves you time in the kitchen that you’d like to share with the readers of Corduroy Orange? If so, email it to me for consideration as a guest post.