Mo's Bacon Bar: Milk vs Dark

One of the happiest days in my culinary life was the day I first realized that bacon could be used in a dessert context. This was when I walked out of Ma Petite Shoe with the legendary Mo's Bacon Bar from Vosges Chocolate. The smooth chocolatiness surrounding sweet and salty bits of crunchy applewood bacon were more than enough to send me over the edge. Wow.

Recently I found out that Vosges has started putting out a dark chocolate version of their famous Mo's Bacon Bar. I was ecstatic, because I much prefer the slightly bitter, more intense chocolate flavor of dark chocolate to the smooth yet slightly tamed down flavor of milk chocolate. The bar is lovely, but here's thing: although I prefer dark to milk, I prefer the milk chocolate bacon bar to the dark chocolate one.

I had to think about why this is the case.

It eventually dawned on me that the things that make me like dark chocolate don't work when you throw the sweet and salty intensity of bacon into the mix. In this case, the dark chocolate and bacon are fighting for your attention. In contrast, the milk chocolate bacon bar really lets the bacon shine. The milk chocolate isn't so much in the back seat as it is in the passenger seat - but the bacon is clearly the one driving. With the dark chocolate bacon bar, the dark chocolate is constantly fighting with the bacon to control the wheel. It works, but not as well as when there's just one driver.

So do try Mo's Dark Bacon Bar from Vosges, but I'm still sticking with the milk chocolate original.

I love The State. I love puddin'. Awww, yeeeah...

$240 Worth of Pudding - watch more funny videos

Food Ethnography on a Budget: Eastern Woodlands III: Sassamanesh Relish

I have done little cooking since Thanksgiving (and since my car's engine, as I have just found out, is officially "shot"). But back in my kitchen I decided to throw together a quick and tangy cranberry relish that caught my eye in Dale Carson's New Native American Cooking. The cranberry is native to New England, so it is certainly fair game for this project. Carson calls it by the Abenaki term sassamanesh. So I am making Carson's very own Sassamanesh Relish.

For this relish as for many of her recipes, Carson opens up the recipe to a mixture of indigenous and non-indigenous ingredients. Added into the indigenous North American foods in this recipe - cranberries, pecans, honey (which is indigenous to both sides of the Atlantic) - are oranges and apples, two fruits that are native to Asia. The recipe highlights how Native Americans, just like all other Americans, have united native and nonnative foods together.

Sassamanesh Relish: the ingredients, and then some

The recipe is very simple: just take an apple (cored, unpeeled, cut up), an orange (divested of seeds, also unpeeled, and also cut up) and two cups of fresh cranberries (rinsed), and throw them in a food processer. Process the whole thing and then add 1/2 cup of chopped pecans and 1/2 cup of honey (I didn't have enough honey so I used half honey and half maple syrup). Mix it all up. That's it. It'll last up to two weeks in the refrigerator.

I took a quick bite and it's equal parts sweet and sour. As it sits, the flavors should mingle. It'll be a nice change from the dressing and sweet potatoes I'm eating with my leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

About to relish the finished relish

Coming up: one last foray into the foods of the Eastern Woodlands, this time looking at one of the most popular foods on the powwow circuit not just here but all over the United States: frybread.

The Benefits of Virtual... FARMING!?

I frustrate my sister and our mutual friends by my stubborn refusal to join Facebook - though I hear they have a separate section where you can create non-personal Facebook pages for blogs.

I'm still not joining "the Facebook," but I admit that I'm missing out on the latest farming craze. Virtual farming.

Huh?!?!?

Atlantic food writer Dave Thier blogs about Farmville, the most popular game on Facebook and the engine through which Facebookers test the waters (er, mulch?) of the strange new trend of virtual farming. He also discusses how different Facebookers express themselves through both the designs and contents of their gardens - that is, how their gardens are arranged and what they plant in them. Thier, unlike myself, is a steadfast New England Yankee farmer, having been a part of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, so he knows a few things about farming. So he must have a pretty unique insight into virtual farming trends, and how closely it parallels real farming. For one, you have to pay real - or virtual - money if you want to go far with it. Sounds a wee bit like SecondLife. From the article:

When you log into the game, Farmville shows you a random picture of one idyllic farm or another--a bountiful field of pineapples, flowers, and wheat next to a little cottage, maybe, or perhaps an autumn scene of maple syrup and bright red trees. The reality, however, is that in order to afford such decorations you must either pay US dollars or plant endless fields of cash crops. Maybe I'm thinking about this too much, but for a simplistic videogame, Farmville offers a curious model for juxtaposing pastoral fantasy with the industrial realities of modern farming.

A fun game, created by the people who brought us The Sims 1, 2 and 3, but with a price? At least it teaches a little about the ins and outs of farming, including cash cropping.

Blogging will be back up soon...

If you've been paying attention to the Twitter feed in the sidebar, y'all know I've been having a very rough weekend. A grand on a new catalytic converter, followed by a major engine malfunction (why does it pour when it rains?) that will cost more money than I have. But I will be posting again soon. Thanks, Cathy, for helping me out. I will be careful, I promise.

AO, ah want craaaabs fer Chrismiss

Youse KNAYOSE we'll all be hearin' dis owin de raydiayo awll Dezember, hons.* From the WMPT show "Crabs" circa 1984.



* Translation from the Bawlamerese: You all KNOW we'll all be hearing this on the radio all December, everybody.

Because it's Eid Al-Adha

Adam "Amateur Gourmet" Roberts explores the Islamic holiday of Eid Al-Adha, the Sacrificial Feast. And he finds out just how much of a foodie holiday it truly is! It's a nice read. And ya gotta love the shots of delicious Pakistani food.

Thanksgiving in Baltimore, Hon

Someone should nominate Avalon as Baltimore's official Thanksgiving movie.

Thanksgiving Chairs

May your Thanksgiving go smoother than Snoopy's starts, and end as well as Snoopy's ends.

Food Ethnography on a Budget: Eastern Woodlands II: Wild Rice and Maple Syrup

My next sample of Eastern Woodlands food - in this case, something clearly from the northern reaches of the Northeastern Woodlands - was a dessert. In her New Native American Cooking, Dale Carson does not have a recipe for "Wild Rice and Maple Syrup," per se. Why should she? It's ridiculously simple to do. All she advises is to take cold wild rice and slather it with maple syrup. She says it is one of the tastiest and most simple desserts one can eat.

But it sounds gross! Doesn't it?

Before attempting this very simple recipe, I had to remind myself that there are various examples of rice used in a dessert context in Asia (yes, I know wild rice is technically not rice but a different grain altogether). Anyone who has sampled the kheer rice porridge at your local Indian buffet knows that rice and sweetness work together. In fact, there are lots of grains that taste great when covered in something sweet and sticky. Oatmeal most readily comes to mind. Still, it sounded weird at first. It shouldn't have, but for someone with little experience consuming either wild rice or maple syrup, I just had to reorient myself to the concept.

I had both ingredients just lying around from the previous night's venison stew, so it cost me absolutely nothing extra.


It was just as easy as Carson made it sound: scoop wild rice in a bowl, cover it with maple syrup to your liking, done.

I am a convert. It was actually quite tasty! It went even better with whipped cream on top.