Corduroy Orange

Thanks to Hannah Edwards for this informative infographic, originally posted at www.LearnStuff.com

This morning, Angstrom and I made my cranberry-oatmeal coffee cake for breakfast.

We had finished mixing most of the ingredients and I was pouring the frozen cranberries into the batter when Angstrom told me, “I want a cranberry.”

It wasn’t so much the fact that they were frozen that made me pause.  After all, Angstrom had happily requested—and eaten—frozen blueberries as his snack earlier in the week.  So, I knew he could handle the cold.  I just wasn’t sure how he would react to the flavor—and after trying a raw cranberry, would he still be interested in the coffee cake?  But, if he doesn’t taste the raw one, how will he know the flavor transformation these berries undergo during the cooking process?

“Raw cranberries are very tart,” I told him as I handed him one to try.  “They’ll be sweeter once they’ve cooked.”

He popped it in his mouth, crunched it up, and ate the whole thing.  “Cranberries are very sour,” he told me.  We finished mixing the coffee cake and then read a couple of books while we waited for breakfast to bake.

If you’ve never tried this coffee cake, I recommend making it when cranberries start showing up in the stores in the next few weeks.  Then, buy a half dozen or so extra bags of cranberries and throw them in your freezer so you can make it for the rest of the year.

Here’s a great example of why we need to have clear priorities and conserve resources in order to meet the demands placed by a growing population.  In Colorado, where drought has made water even scarcer than usual, there’s not enough to go around.  Farmers need it to irrigate their crops; drillers need it to frack for gas. In an interesting analysis, one farmer says,

Maybe in a straight financial analysis of return on investment, but that’s still a strange view when comparing natural gas to food.

It will be interesting to see how battles like this play out, especially as gas companies use their resources to buy land with their eye not on mineral rights but on water rights. 

I’ve racked my brain trying to come up with some sort of food-related connection to make this fit in with the theme of Corduroy Orange.  But I’ve given up and am posting this anyway, because this article by Matt Taibbi from the September 13 issue of Rolling Stone ought to be required reading for all voters in advance of the general election.

The reality is that toward the middle of his career at Bain, Romney made a fateful strategic decision: He moved away from creating companies like Staples through venture capital schemes, and toward a business model that involved borrowing huge sums of money to take over existing firms, then extracting value from them by force. He decided, as he later put it, that “there’s a lot greater risk in a startup than there is in acquiring an existing company.” In the Eighties, when Romney made this move, this form of financial piracy became known as a leveraged buyout, and it achieved iconic status thanks to Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Gekko’s business strategy was essentially identical to the Romney–Bain model, only Gekko called himself a “liberator” of companies instead of a “helper.”

[...]Romney and Bain avoided the hostile approach, preferring to secure the cooperation of their takeover targets by buying off a company’s management with lucrative bonuses. Once management is on board, the rest is just math. So if the target company is worth $500 million, Bain might put down $20 million of its own cash, then borrow $350 million from an investment bank to take over a controlling stake.

But here’s the catch. When Bain borrows all of that money from the bank, it’s the target company that ends up on the hook for all of the debt.

[...]This business model wasn’t really “helping,” of course – and it wasn’t new. Fans of mob movies will recognize what’s known as the “bust-out,” in which a gangster takes over a restaurant or sporting goods store and then monetizes his investment by running up giant debts on the company’s credit line. (Think Paulie buying all those cases of Cutty Sark in Goodfellas.) When the note comes due, the mobster simply torches the restaurant and collects the insurance money. Reduced to their most basic level, the leveraged buyouts engineered by Romney followed exactly the same business model. “It’s the bust-out,” one Wall Street trader says with a laugh. “That’s all it is.”

Buy dirty potatoes whenever possible… ‘washed’ potatoes rot more quickly or have been sprayed with fungicide.

Learned from Burgh Bees: only honey and bumble are true bees; honey won’t sting except in defense of their hive.

Dunkin Donuts coffee is really quite terrible.  Faced with the choice, I’d rather get it from a gas station.  I’m just sayin’.

September is Hunger Action Month.  Wear orange 9/6 to show support. http://www.gpcfb.org/hungeractionmonth/calendar.pdf for more to do.

If you have a chance to try a pink lemon, do—they’re fantastic!  Taste like a cross between lemon and lime. http://www.melissas.com/Products/Products/Variegated-Pink-Lemons.aspx

General rule: ugly tomatoes have a great personality.

Save your ballpark $ for beer… PNC Park will let you bring in food. http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/pit/ballpark/information/index.jsp?content=food_and_beverage_gate_policy

Farmers @ Firehouse 10th Anniversary Party 9/8/2012: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e686w3d7f57b93f6&llr=asntqqcab

Newspapers had ‘twit’ columns well before twitter: see Garry Brown (Hitting to all Fields, Springfield, MA) or Norman Chad (The Couch Slouch, syndicated).

Say hello to your mom for me.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by the Slow Foods tent at Farmers@Firehouse today!  I had a great time cooking.  Two of the dishes I made were featured in the Farm Stand Project recipe booklet; this dish was not.  One of the samplers asked me what I call it.  “I call it onions, garlic, mushrooms, and corn,” I said, “but you’re welcome to help me give it a better name.”

“I think you should just call it Amazing,” she said.

So, without further ado…

Amazing Corn and Mushrooms

♦ 1 onion, diced
♦ about 8 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
♦ 4 oz. crimini mushrooms, sliced
♦ about 3 oz. chicken of the woods, diced (or substitute other wild mushroom; or crimini)
♦ 4 ears’ worth of corn, sliced from cobs
♦ canola oil for sauteeing (about 3-4 Tbl)
♦ salt, pepper, and ginger
♦ fresh oregano and rosemary to taste, minced

1. Heat a pan over medium-high heat.  Add the oil, let it get hot.  Add pepper, ginger, and onions.  Stir onions to coat with oil and spices, then add a pinch of salt.
2. Cook onions, stirring occasionally, for 5-7 minutes or until they start to brown.
3. Add garlic, cook for 1-2 minutes, or until it softens and starts to brown slightly.
4. Add mushrooms.  Turn heat down slightly to medium-low to medium.  Cook mushrooms, stirring occasionally, for about 7-10 minutes or until they look like they’re about done.  Don’t hurry them, but don’t burn them either.  When it comes down to it, getting the most out of your fungus is more art than science; but here is my current best advice for cooking mushrooms.
5. When the mushrooms hit their stride, add the corn.  Turn the heat up a bit.  Cook it for 2-3 minutes, stir in fresh herbs, and serve.

Come down to the Farmers@ Firehouse farmers’ market this Saturday, 8/25, from 9 am-noon to taste some of my cooking.  I’ll be manning the Slow Foods demo tent in support of Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank’s produce initiatives, which include the Farm Stand Project, volunteer-based Gleaning and Urban Agriculture initiatives, and distribution of produce through the Produce to People program.

Can’t make it to the market on Saturday?  Visit Phipps Conservatory’s Tomato & Garlic Festival on Sunday from 11 am-5pm.  Admission is free with the donation of a bag of fresh produce for Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.  I will not be there, but there will be some other fantastic chefs providing demos throughout the day.

I ordinarily try to be oblique on this page about where I work, because this is an outlet for my personal cooking efforts and opinions on food.  But, I am Nutritionist for Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and see every day the tremendous need for healthy foods in our communities and the tremendous impact that Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank has in closing the gap in access to nutritionally sound meals.

Our efforts consist of more than just sending food to where it is needed.  We also provide recipes and information about how the ingredients we have available can be used to build healthy meals; and demonstrations of the cooking skills that go into preparing fresh fruits and vegetables.

People who need food assistance are our friends and neighbors.  People who struggle to get by, especially in our current recession/ depression.  Poor nutrition is tied into poor overall health: when your body doesn’t have the building blocks it needs to fight disease or build new cells, your health suffers.  Beyond high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity (which, counter-intuitively, is a form of malnutrition)—poor skin, hair, eyes, teeth; general fatigue; and illness all flow from lack of access to nutritionally adequate food.

Helping people to get more fresh food is a key component of the solution.  Even just incorporating fresh produce into a processed meal can make a big difference in nutritional quality, as this informational sheet demonstrates.  By providing practical advice and suggestions such as these, Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank helps provide solutions.

Please consider showing your support for fresh food for all by visiting one or both of these weekend events.

So, Angstrom is turning out to be quite interested in the goings on in the kitchen.  Not that I’d wish him to become a pro (Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be line cooks!), but I do hope he’ll have the skills.  Shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.  He uses his bamboo knife to slice things and is an active sandbox chef (his specialty: apple-spaghetti cake, which he covers with a bucket to “bake for two months.”)

Yesterday, when we came home, I offered to get him set up with a snack so that I could start cooking dinner.  He went to grab his big, yellow stool (”Want your big yellow stool,” he said) and started dragging it in from the dining room so that he could reach the counter.  It toppled over.  He continued to try to drag it, even as he told me, “you need help.”

I tried to set him up on his own patch of counter top, but that didn’t fit his image of the afternoon.  He wanted to join me on the butcher block so that he could watch me cook.  I was a little concerned about this idea, seeing as much of my work was going to consist of chopping vegetables with a 9-inch knife and most of the time that he’s set up there with me, our work consists of measuring and stirring.  But he was insistent, and I’m not one to discourage him from learning, so I relented pretty quickly.

Before we could get started, though, we had to figure out what to make.  “How about omelets?” I suggested.

“Don’t want omelets!” he replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t like eggs!”

I knew that wasn’t entirely true.  I also knew that he has to be in the right mood to enjoy them, so I moved on.  “OK, how about beans?”

“Don’t like beans!”

I knew that was entirely false, so I scooped him up and suggested that maybe he wanted to come to the basement with me to choose what kind of beans we ate.  No sooner had I said the words, “black beans” than he gave his vigorous approval.

We came back upstairs with two cans of beans; I pulled the coffee cake out of the toaster oven and gave it to him on a plate.  As he shoved it in is mouth, I grabbed two onions off of the counter to dice.  One was yellow, one was red.  “What is that?” he asked, pointing to the red onion.  I told him.  He corrected me, “It’s a beet.”  I was eventually able to convince him otherwise.

Once the onions were in the hot pan, I asked Angstrom what else we should cook with the onions.  “Cinnamon,” he told me.  That’s his first answer to any cooking question.

“How about tomatoes?” I asked.

“Don’t want tomatoes!  Want apples!”

Now, that was cooking advice I could use.  “Sure,” I said, “That sounds good.”

“And cinnamon.”

At this point, I had to decide he knew what he was talking about.  Into the pan went some cinnamon.  I also used some black pepper (”Angstrom loves pepper!” he told me) and some ginger.

I peeled the apples each in one strip.  With the first apple, I rolled up the peel into a rose.  “What is that?” Angstrom asked, then answered his own question.  “It’s a flower!  Angstrom loves flowers.”

He also loves apples, and he did me the favor of eating half of an apple as I was preparing them to go in the pan.  He never reached toward the knife, though, always asking for a piece when he wanted some more.  He even said please.

Once the apple went into the pan, I started asking what else should go in.  “Beans,” said Angstrom.

“I meant before the beans.  Do we want any more vegetables?”

“Angstrom wants tomatoes.”

“Wait, no, you’re the one who talked me out of using tomatoes.”

“Angstrom loves tomatoes.”

This was one piece of advice I didn’t heed.  “Actually, Mr.,” I told him (I often call him Mr. Sharrard), “I think you were right the first time.  I like the idea of using apples instead of tomatoes.  How about we add some peppers?”

He was all right with this plan, so I went ahead and chopped up half a bell pepper and added it into the pan.  “Anything else?” I asked the chef.

“Beans.”

He was right, it was about time to add the beans.  I drained and rinsed the two cans of beans, and put ‘em in the pan along with a cup of stock.  While dinner simmered, we sat down and read a book.

Hey -

A friend / co-worker just had a baby. What’s a good dish to bring them? The husband doesn’t like green veggies & they have a 2 yr old. Ready….go!

Lasagna.

With some spinach in it so that he can set a good example for his two-year-old by eating a full spectrum of colorful foods.

Pierogies are a prime example of classical Pittsburghian cuisine.  Pierogies are little pasta pockets, generally containing mashed potatoes plus something else.

Flavors that have a place in the local canon are: potato and cheese; potato and onion; and potato and sauerkraut.  A ‘modern classic’ is potato and jalapeno.  These 4 flavors are represented in the “Great Pittsburgh Pierogi Race N’At” during every Pirates home game by the mascot characters Cheese Chester, Oliver Onion, Sauerkraut Saul, and Jalapeno Hannah.  Basically, pierogies are a part of being a Pittsburgher.

Everybody’s grandmother makes them around here, whether at home or as a fundraiser for their church (going price at one local congregation: ~$8/dozen).  I think it’s the long tradition behind these fried potato raviolis that made me hesitant to try my hand at making them before now.  But, with a college reunion approaching for which attendees are supposed to bring a food that represents their current region of residence, I decided that the time had come to make my version of this local delicacy, and I’ve got to say, I was quite pleased with the results.

I made 2 versions–potato and cheddar, and my own twist on the theme: sweet potato with sauteed mushrooms, kale, and prosciutto.  The pictures are from the potato and cheddar pierogies, but the technique is the same no matter what type of filling you use.

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