Royal Wedding Cake? Really?

I should officially smack myself right now (beat y'all to it, City Paper) for even uttering the phrase "Royal Wedding" on this blog. However, I just could not pass up this absolutely gorgeous photo that purports to be the official wedding cake for today's big fête in Westminster Abbey. It comes from Twitter tweeter Robert Popper:

I should post the photo myself but I'll let you click on the link. Sumptuous! Simply sumptuous!!!

It's no longer Mary Sue season

It's that time of the year again. Easter is over and it's gettin' tougher to find Mary Sues. I was lucky to find some of the individually wrapped ones up at a Royal Farms in Bel Air near Churchville, but by the time you read this they will probably be gone. And since they're Easter candy they've been seriously reduced in price - I got maybe 10 of them for 25¢ each. Ohhhhhh what a find. But I stopped there tonight and there weren't very many left. I should've snagged them before they were all sold out.

Snacking State-by-State: Travels So Far

As a guide to what states and recipes I have explored so far in this new effort to teach myself about the flavors of every state in the Union, I am posting a handy index of what I've made and eaten so far since I started this project, now about a quarter of the way through. Starting with the next state coming up - Idaho - I will be dividing these rather lengthy posts up into individual recipes - instead I have been doing a post per state (two posts for large states). Eventually, the goal will be to repost the first twelve states (eleven states plus DC) in the same way.

Intro to the Project (originally posted November 12, 2010)

Alabama (South / Deep South - originally posted November 21, 2010)

Fried Fruit Pies (Source: The Homesick Texan blog)
Fried Catfish with Hush Puppies (Source: Fannie Flagg's Original Whistle Stop Café Cookbook)

Alaska (Northwest - originally posted December 5, 2010)

How to prep a cedar plank for cooking (Source: eHow)
Oven Roasted Cedar Plank Salmon (Source: The New Alaska Cookbook, Alder Plank Roasted Salmon)

Arizona (Southwest - originally posted December 19, 2010)

Machaca Breakfast Burro with Salsa del norte (Source: The Border Cookbook: Authentic Home Cooking of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico)
Nopales con huevos (Source: AZCentral.com)

Arkansas (South - originally posted January 2, 2011)

Hoppin' John (Source: Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden)
Ozark Chocolate Gravy (Source: Saveur Magazine)

California (Southern and Northern) (West - originally posted January 16 & 23, 2011)

Cheese Quesadilla (Source: the author)
California Roll (Source: Sushi)
Date Shake (Source: Saveur Magazine)
Oven-Roasted Squash with Garlic and Parsley, with a salad of fresh greens and shallot vinaigrette (Source: Chez Panisse Vegetables)
Surefire Pork Shu-Mai (Source: Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking, Surefire Chicken Shu-Mai)

Colorado (West - originally posted January 30, 2011)

Western (Denver) Omelette (Source: James A. Beard's American Cookery)
Best Bison Burger, New Mexican-style (Source: High Plains Bison recipe section)

Connecticut (Northeast / New England - originally posted February 13, 2011)

Semi-Clear Clam Chowder, Southern New England-Style (Source: The New England Clam Shack Cookbook)
Indian Pudding (Source: Food on the Food blog)

Delaware (Mid-Atlantic / South - originally posted February 27, 2011)

Easy Baked Chicken with Peach Vinaigrette, with Delaware Spoon Bread (Sources: Delmarva Poultry Industry recipe section for the chicken, About.com for the vinaigrette, A Collection of DelMarVa Recipes for the spoon bread)
Oysters on the Half-Shell (Source: the author)

District of Columbia (Mid-Atlantic / South - originally posted March 13, 2011)

US Senate Bean Soup (Source: Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook)
Doro Wot with Korean GamJa Salad and Curtido (Sources: Washington Post for the doro wot, YouTube user Tamar1973 for the GamJa salad, Epicurious.com for the curtido)

Florida (Northern and Southern) (South / Gulf Coast - originally posted March 27 & April 3, 2011)

Florida Barbecued Gulf Shrimp (Source: The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie)
Iced (Sweet) Tea (Source: the author)
Cuban Sandwich (Source: Three Guys from Miami)
Key Lime Pie (Source: The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie)

Georgia (South / Deep South - originally posted April 10, 2011)

Boiled Peanuts (Source: Paula's Home Cooking)
Peach Cobbler (Source: Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen)
Fruited Pork Chops with Caramelized Vidalia (Sweet) Onions (Source: Coca-Cola recipe website for both recipes)

Hawaii (West / Polynesia - originally posted April 24, 2011)

Poi (Source: Food.com, Poi Maoli)
Spam Lumpia with Spam-Pineapple Stir-Fry (Source: Hawai'i's Spam Cookbook)

Mashup Recipes - original recipes I created using leftover ingredients from the four preceding states)

#1: Nopal and Cedar-Roasted Catfish Stir-Fry (using ingredients from my Alabama, Alaska, Arizona and Arkansas posts - originally posted January 9, 2011)

#2: Denver Omelette Roll and Delmarva Roll (using ingredients from my California, Colorado, Connecticut and Delaware posts - originally posted March 6, 2011)

The next mashup is coming soon! Look for it May 1.

Cupcakes INSIDE Egg Shells???

According to the Cupcake Project, it's certainly possible. Plus, it's a cool project. Now of course I have to do this.

Because it's Easter Sunday

It comes full circle: the Stations of the Cross, Peeps-Style. I love how they do up Station VI,
Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus". Trust me, you'll love it too.

Snacking State-by-State: Hawaii II - Oh the things one can do with Spam

Mind you, Hawaiian cuisine is not just poi and sweet potatoes, pineapples and seafood. Hawaiian cuisine today is very much a fusion cuisine, specifically in terms of its Asian-American population (Asian-Americans are the largest demographic group in Hawaii). Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean and other influences are strong throughout the Hawaiian islands, and it has led to both delicious Pan-Asian foods but also to fusion foods, such as the uniquely Hawaiian Spam musubi, a type of maki roll with Spam in the middle.

Official Name: State of Hawaii (Hawaiian: Mokuʻāina o Hawaiʻi - Hawaii has two official languages, English and Hawaiian)
State Nickname: The Aloha State
Admission to the US: August 21, 1959 (#50 - Ah, still has that new state smell)
Capital: Honolulu (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Hilo (2nd largest), Kailua (3rd), Kāne‘ohe (4th)
Region: West, Pacific; Pacific (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Taro
Bordered by: The Pacific Ocean (all sides)
Closest land mass: California, almost 2,500 miles away
Official State Foods and Edible Things: none
Some Famous & Typical Foods: poi & taro, pork, much local seafood (such as mahi mahi), macadamia nuts, tropical and "lu’au" foods (pineapple, coconut, etc), Asian and Native Hawaiian fusion cuisines, Spam and foods made from it (musubi, Spam stir fries, etc)

Did I forget to mention, by the way, that Spam is one of the most favorite foods of Hawaii? You can even find it in the form of Spam burgers at McDonald’s. For my next recipe, I wanted something a bit more original than a Spam burger, to reflect Hawaii’s strong Asian-American identity. The Hawai'i's Spam Cookbook by Ann Kondo Corum has many recipes to encourage me. The one that caught my eye was one for deep fried Spam lumpia.

The recipe: Spam Lumpia


The Spam lumpia recipe originally comes from Vicki Perry’s “prize winning recipe”, as the authors of Hawaii’s Spam Cookbook mention. This very Hawaiian twist on the pork-filled Filipino fried favorite calls for:

* Spam (I have not bought this stuff in ages, so I didn’t realize one can would set me back about $3.50)
* kamaboko (basically, a type of Alaskan pollock fish cake from Japan. I had less trouble finding exactly what I needed than I thought I would, since I found this in the “frozen fish cake” section of the H Mart for $4)
* chopped green onion (cheap at the farmers’ market)
* garlic salt (used garlic powder instead)
* 2 eggs, beaten (had them)
* chop suey mix, parboiled (this was what gave me the most trouble. At first I looked in every non-Asian supermarket thinking this would be some Americanized Chun King horror mix. Instead, I had my best luck in the Filipino section of the H Mart. Mama Sita is a particularly popular brand of chop suey/pancit seasoning mix for about $1.50)
* lumpia wrappers (much easier to find - about $3)
* frying oil (had that)
In addition, you will need a dipping sauce, which consists of catsup, vinegar, sugar, water and cornstarch.

To make the lumpia, grate the Spam and kamaboko.

Grating the kamaboko

This in itself is pretty unusual, but you need to do this to get a proper lumpia filling.

Ain't it purty?

Merely chopping it up with a knife isn’t going to cut it.

This became a tad bit grating

Mix the rest of the lumpia ingredients, except (of course) for the lumpia wrappers themselves. This includes parboiled chop suey mix. I could not quite figure out how to partially cook a packet of powdered chop suey mix. The best I could come up with was to quickly make it into a gravy and add it to the Spam-kamaboko mixture.

Pancit gravy?

Perhaps the recipe’s author meant something different than a powdered chop suey mix.

Now added to the Spam mixture

Next, prepare the lumpia. I have never made one before so it took a little practice. This video by YouTuber clarkonair shows how to make lumpia, including how to most effectively wrap it so that it doesn’t come apart in your deep frying oil or on your plate (this is about 2:30 into the video).

If the video doesn't work, here's a walkthrough.

Put about 1 to 2 tablespoons of Spam mixture above one corner of the wrapper, then fold up the corner to cover it.

Like so

And so

Next, fold over the two adjacent sides like an envelope,


wet the final exposed corner and then roll up the rest of the lumpia towards that wet corner.

What's Tagalog for "Voilà"?

You may need to wet it a bit more after you fold it up.


Finally, you need to fry the lumpia in oil until golden brown. Make sure the oil is around 350°F, and keep it there. The lumpia should get golden brown after about 3 to 5 minutes. Drain on paper towels, and dip in your dipping sauce.

Making the dipping sauce. Never got thick.

Mine never got thick at all, even though I added about two to three times the amount of cornstarch the recipe calls for.


This was not one of my favorite recipes. It’s not that I did it wrong (unless the chop suey mix really wasn’t meant to be just a powdered mix). I think it is because of all that Spam. It’s been so long since I had ever eaten it that it overwhelmed me. It even exacerbated the Crohn’s a little bit. Perhaps I might need to build up a better tolerance for Spam than I have now? Until then, my next lumpia will be the more traditional one with pork instead of Spam and kamaboko. I will say this: however this Spam lumpia agreed or disagreed with me, it did go well with the very simple Spam-pineapple fried rice I made to go along with it. It's just 1/2 a block of Spam, cut into strips, fried with pineapple chunks, green onions, an egg and about 2 cups of rice.


We’re done in the Aloha State. Next we head up to the Northwest and the country’s largest exporter of potatoes. A hui hou kakou*, and Westward Idaho! (collective groans from the readership...)

* Until we meet again, according to this website of Hawaiian phrases.

ADDENDUM: A month after posting this, I told my friend Gil in Fontana, California, about my Spam lumpia experiment. Gil, who is Filipino-American, developed a sudden and palpable look on his face that I can only describe as 50% disgust and 50% horror. Honestly, I cannot say I didn't feel the same when I ate this, though it was funny to see at the time. Next time, I am making actual, honest-to-God lumpia, punyeta!

Sources:

Anonymous eHow Food & Drink Editor. "How to Make Poi". eHow Food. Posted July 20, 2000.

Clark (clarkonair). "How to Make Lumpia". Posted on YouTube, December 27, 2007.

Kauai Menu. "The History of Hawaiian Food". Kauai Menu, author unknown. Copyright 2010 Kauai Menu.

Kondo Corum, Ann. Hawai'i's Spam Cookbook. Bess Press: Honolulu, 1987. Also available on Google Books.

Mark O. (Food.com user). "Poi Maoli (Taro Poi) Recipe". Food.com. Posted February 4, 2002.

Zia, Dana (The Go Lightly Gourmet). "History of Hawaii's Cuisine". The Go Lightly Gourmet, posted March 8, 2011.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Hawaii" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Hawaii".

Snacking State-by-State: Hawaii I - Poi in the mornin', poi in the evenin'

Our only Polynesian state, Hawaii is part of what the Renewing America's Food Traditions (or RAFT) folks call the “taro nation”. Hawaii has one of the most unique cuisines the country, and it isn't just poi, pork and pineapples either. For this post, I aim to find out how to make food that reflects both Hawaii's history and multicultural identity. Let’s see where this goes.

Official Name: State of Hawaii (Hawaiian: Mokuʻāina o Hawaiʻi - Hawaii has two official languages, English and Hawaiian)
State Nickname: The Aloha State
Admission to the US: August 21, 1959 (#50 - Ah, still has that new state smell)
Capital: Honolulu (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Hilo (2nd largest), Kailua (3rd), Kāne‘ohe (4th)
Region: West, Pacific; Pacific (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Taro
Bordered by: The Pacific Ocean (all sides)
Closest land mass: California, almost 2,500 miles away
Official State Foods and Edible Things: none
Some Famous & Typical Foods: poi & taro, pork, much local seafood (such as mahi mahi), macadamia nuts, tropical and "lu’au" foods (pineapple, coconut, etc), Asian and Native Hawaiian fusion cuisines, Spam and foods made from it (musubi, Spam stir fries, etc)

Hawaii is unique among its neighbors, in part because it really has no neighbors to begin with. One of the most isolated island chains in the world, humans did not reach it until about the 3rd century AD, bringing edible crops along with them, including sugarcane, breadfruit, sweet potatoes, yams and most importantly taro and pigs. Over a millennium later the ancestors of the modern Native Hawaiians reached the islands, likely from Tahiti, creating food traditions such as the lu’au feast, perhaps one of the more famous of Hawaii’s many exports to the mainland (NB: Dana Zia at the Go Lightly Gourmet blog has another very thorough description of both the cuisine of Hawaii and its history): Kauai Menu Magazine describes one lu’au thrown by King Kamehameha III, one of the largest ever thrown, in 1847. It included among other things, almost 300 pigs, thousands of taro plants, coconuts and salted fish and "482 large calabashes of poi" [Kauai Menu 2010]

Taro is among the most important foods in Hawaii, Polynesia and the Pacific Islands, and many of their food traditions center around that famous root crop that is as ubiquitous there as it is elusive here. Only in the last few years has taro even become readily available in Maryland, and even then you still have to know where to find it. I found mine at H Mart. It’s not the Hawaiian taro that most Hawaiians prefer, but the relatively available Asian taro that most Hawaiians do not. But unless I want to book those plane tickets to Honolulu right now, I’m going to just have to settle for the Asian variety. This is used to make many dishes (for example, this taro and crab dish from Papua New Guinea that I made last year). But the one most famous one to us haoles on the mainland is the ever-famous poi.

Yes, I’m going there.

The recipe: Poi

I have to admit: when I started this state-by-state series, one thing I was looking forward to was this recipe. The problem is that poi always seemed like a daunting challenge. The only videos or TV segments I had ever seen of poi making made it seem so exhausting, the constant pounding and working in of oil and sweat from the hands. I even considered ordering a container of powdered poi from Hawaii, but I wasn’t ready to confront how much that would cost (NB: there are lots of brands of poi that you can buy online if you want to go that route. The Islands Gift Shop is one of many that ships poi all over the country. As they point out, a 3 oz jar makes about 13 1/2 oz of poi.). And yet, as daunting as making poi from scratch seemed to me, most recipes I found online made the process much simpler.

Ingredient wise at least, all you need is:

* whole taro corms (I got this at H Mart for about $2 or so per pound. Note: you can use other root crops to make poi, most notably sweet potato, but I wanted to go the taro route)
* water (for boiling and for making runnier two- and three-finger poi)

It is preferable that you prepare this in a calabash or gourd bowl. I don’t have one of these, and I’m not prepared to go to Michael’s to buy the ones they have for crafts that are sprayed with all manner of odd chemicals. Instead I bought a wooden bowl ($12 at Ikea) that worked nicely not just for this project but for many more I will do in the future. Come on, at that price I am sure as hell going to get as much use out of it as I can. But I digress.

I ended up using two different websites for my poi recipes. I imagine that this recipe from Food.com poster Mark O. is the more authentic one of the two I used. His recipe for poi maoli (or taro poi) uses the calabash bowl, the poi pounder, and so on. The other one, an eHow recipe whose author chose to remain anonymous, modernizes poi for the 21st century by recommending you throw the pieces in a food processor. I went ahead and tried both.

First, peel the taro with a vegetable peeler. Yes, eHow Guy suggested scrubbing the hairy bristles off the corm, but that all came off with the peeler anyway.

Cut up your taro into about 1 to 2 inch chunks and drop it into boiling water until you can pierce it like a soft potato. The difficulty with boiling taro is that you must boil it long enough to make it edible (raw taro is somewhat poisonous) but not so long that it becomes gooey and stringy (ick). So watch over it and once you can poke it with a fork and it feels like a boiled potato, it’s done.

Next you process the taro into poi.

You can do it the modern way, and throw it in the food processor, or you can mash it in a bowl.

My wooden bowl and potato masher stood in for the more traditional calabash bowl and poi pounder.

I was satisfied with the result.

You should add some water to your taro to get the consistency you want. This is where personal preference and taste come in. If you add just a little bit of water you will get a thicker poi.

The Hawaiians call this “one finger poi” and it is apparently the preferable way to eat it. I certainly liked this kind better.

Add more for a runnier “two finger poi” or even more for a goopier “three finger poi”. This one I was not a fan of.

Hawaiians also prefer their poi slightly fermented. I did this too, both covering it with water and with a damp towel, and letting it sit for two to three days. Covering my poi with water turned my one finger poi into the distinctly three finger variety. However, covering it with a damp towel kept it nice and firm, though it did leave the poi on top a slightly sick-looking beige color. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to eat that part, but I scraped it off anyway. The poi underneath was still nicely sour.

The finished poi, at long last.

So poi doesn’t really have much of a flavor. No wonder Hawaiians prefer theirs to sit for a few days. It gives the poi a bit of character. Honestly, I don’t know when I would need to make poi again. Perhaps I might throw a lu’au at some point to make it again. But for now, at least I have this experience under my belt.

Sources:

Anonymous eHow Food & Drink Editor. "How to Make Poi". eHow Food. Posted July 20, 2000.

Clark (clarkonair). "How to Make Lumpia". Posted on YouTube, December 27, 2007.

Kauai Menu. "The History of Hawaiian Food". Kauai Menu, author unknown. Copyright 2010 Kauai Menu.

Kondo Corum, Ann. Hawai'i's Spam Cookbook. Bess Press: Honolulu, 1987. Also available on Google Books.

Mark O. (Food.com user). "Poi Maoli (Taro Poi) Recipe". Food.com. Posted February 4, 2002.

Zia, Dana (The Go Lightly Gourmet). "History of Hawaii's Cuisine". The Go Lightly Gourmet, posted March 8, 2011.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Hawaii" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Hawaii".

Peep Invasion!

I'm getting dangerously close to not being thirty-something anymore (that's one way to put it), and my mother still buys Easter candy for my sisters and me. I'm not really into the whole "Easter candy" thing anymore. I haven't been for about 20 years now. Of course, there is a small handful of Easter candies I will still go for again and again. I will never turn down a good old Mary Sue Easter Egg - you know, the vanilla butter cream variety. With rising prices, however, I'm not buying so many Cadbury Creme Eggs (though I would buy a few just to do what those guys from UNottingham did in that awesomely geeky video in the last post).

And of course, there are those Peeps. That's the other Easter candy I cannot avoid despite my better judgment. It's something you look at and you're all like "Bee-yotch, I don't need you." And then you eat one and before you know it you have devoured the whole damn package (Fool, please. You know your ass needs me!) I have been known to kill an entire package of 20 Marhsmallow Bunny Peeps in the course of two or three hours, before it ever gets to that much better "Hard Peep" stage. It's an addiction I know I will never escape. I wanted to do one of those Peep Dioramas that are so popular. Won't happen. The Peeps will all be eaten before it ever comes to that.

Unless you do the tried and true "Blow up a Peep in the microwave" thing and it goes, well, kind of wrong:

When Science Meets Easter Candy!

From the University of Nottingham (UK), watch as delicious, overpriced Cadbury Cream Eggs are frozen with liquid nitrogen, are treated with powdered oxygen, and are made to explode from the inside out by being pressurized! It's when food meets geekdom! Thank you, Perry Michael Simon at Chris Hardwick's Nerdist website!

Because it's Good Friday

Not exactly the Easter equivalent of that song where Santa Claus visited the baby Jesus in the manger, is it? But get a load of Judas Peepscariot!

Linked from the Photobucket site of Kevin Berth

Doctor Who RECIPES?

In gathering links for my previous post about Elisabeth Sladen (still very sad), I discovered a "Recipes" section on BBC America's Doctor Who website. The funniest: the Sonic Screwdriver, named for the Doctor's ubiquitous extra-terrestrial "jackknife" of sorts, but with alcohol. The most disturbing: erm, Dalek mini-cakes? "Exterminate" isn't quite the word I would use to describe it.

Our Sarah Jane

Publicity still from The Sarah Jane Adventures, from the BBC Radio Times

Totally not food-related, but I just had to express my sadness and shock over the passing of Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith, my most favorite companion on Doctor Who. Sladen appeared in various shows but Doctor Who her claim to fame, not only acting alongside two of the original series' Doctors (Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker) but appearing in two spin-offs (including the recent Sarah Jane Adventures) and in cameos with one more Doctor (David Tennant) in the new series (the newest Doctor, Matt Smith, did a cameo on her show).

This clip of her last regular appearance on the classic series (the last episode of The Hand of Fear) was posted on the Entertainment Weekly website in a tribute by Clark Collis.

'Til we meet again, Sarah.

Back in the Garden

It's refreshing to finally be back in my garden plot at Clifton Park. I found out today that mint really does grow like a weed. It grows EVERYWHERE, man. A month ago when I saw the dead-looking plant I thought "Oh well, that was nice while it lasted". Now the entire raised bed that I planted it in is covered in the stuff, much more so than the oregano that was growing and pulsating like it was alive. Also got a little sage out and planted some basil (too early perhaps) and dill (just right timewise). That and the guy that manages our little communal garden let me have some of his romaine and kale sproutlings.

Quinoa is Kosher for Passover, right?

According to The Atlantic's Uri Friedman, not necessarily. If you want to be absolutely sure, check with the Chicago Rabinnical Council, who say you can use quinoa. As long as it's from Bolivia, where quinoa production is chametz-free. And even then it's a pain in the tuchus:

...[The Chicago Rabbinical Council] recommends inspecting quinoa before Passover by spreading "one layer of quinoa at a time on a board or plate" and checking to be sure that there are no other grains or foreign matter mixed in with the quinoa"--a time-consuming exercise that Jews rushing to prepare seders are unlikely to embrace. [Friedman 2011]

And here I was struggling to find creative ways to avoid meat on Fridays. Silly me.

Random Bites: Tax Day Edition

Tax season bites. Looks like I withheld too little last year because I owed for the first time ever. Wow. I also made more in all of my part time work than I realized, which is great - though it did push me into a higher tax bracket. I'm not complaining about being taxed per se. I'm just kicking myself for not having changed my W4's sooner. Now I'm withholding nothing. Hopefully I'll get something back next year?

Just a few more bites as I recover from tax season.

1. The drive to cut back on my soda consumption has taken a slightly bumpy road, but I'm still on it. I now drink, on average, about two cans of soda a day. That said, I have gotten much more used to using that press-n-seal wrap on the half-empty can and putting it back in the fridge. I've also been a little generous in my definition of what counts as "soda". I haven't been counting it if it's normally caffeine-free, like ginger ale, or "all-natural", like one of those sugary sodas you might find in some of the more upscale natural food stores. The iced tea I keep brewing (thank you, Luzianne) has definitely cut down my soda consumption, that much is certain.

2. About those "upscale natural food stores": I don't have the cash to do all, or even much, of my shopping at places like the Good Life Organic Market in Severna Park or David's Natural Market in Columbia. I do love roaming around them to see the merchandise and hopefully pick up one or two things without breaking the bank. Good Life has hot soups (a small Senegalese Peanut Soup will cost $4), chocolates that I cannot avoid (a quarter pound for about $4.50) and more of those natural sodas. They also sell eggs individually - 35¢ per egg. David's is also a lovely store, and I have become addicted to the individually wrapped Dan's Chocolates that are conveniently located right by the checkout (50¢ each).

3. The Haute Dog Carte has a second location! It's at the Colonnade at Hopkins.

4. Speaking of businesses in Mt. Warshnin', Bansky's is just awesome, a beautiful group of people with awesome food.

5. I'm trying to find some huckleberries in the area! This is for an upcoming Snacking State-by-State post about food from Idaho. Rachel (Coconut & Lime) gave me the head's up that Atwater's at Belvedere Square sometimes sells huckleberry jam, but they have none at the moment. Will probably need to break down and mail order it online, like I almost did with poi for my upcoming Hawaii post.

6. If you didn't know this already: RuPaul's Drag Race (one of my guilty gay pleasures) is on every Monday night at The Hippo. Now I don't have to wait until it's posted online the next day!

Because Passover is coming up...

The Atlantic has quickly become on of my favorite sources for interesting articles about food, drink and such. Take Yoni Appelbaum's brief but thorough history of Manischewitz sweet Concord grape wine. In "The 11th Plague? Why People Drink Sweet Wine on Passover", the author grapples with the history behind the reality that Manischewitz wine isn't all that good, but people love it anyway. From raisin wine to cheap, easily supervised Concord grape production, through Prohibition and into the present day, Appelbaum lays out the history of Passover wine in America, and the uniquely American drink that Manischewitz became. It's even become a fad among hip young Jews and gentiles alike. For instance, as Appelbaum says:

...a modern bistro attracts a trendy crowd with offerings that include the Drunken Pharaoh, a Manischewitz-and-bourbon cocktail. Concord wine, it turns out, has hipster cred. It is also enjoying a boom in exports to Asia, home to the world's fastest-growing wine markets.

Catholic boy here will occasionally buy a canister of kosher macaroons at Giant when he finds them. As for the Manischewitz wine: I haven't tried it, but now I'm gonna have to go out and buy some just to see what Appelbaum is saying.

Strawberry Jam!

While in DC this Sunday, I gave a friend a lift home after our weekly soccer game. We stopped in the Harris Teeter for some grocery shopping. He found a sale on four pints of strawberries, and gave me two of them since he would never use them all. Yes, I did tell him he could freeze them. He doesn't cook though. And I am not one to turn down free food from friends.

I had to do something with these strawberries, and fast. I tend to procrastinate. Hell, while cleaning out the fridge today I just threw away a stroopwafel I brought home with me from Amsterdam - three years ago. You can't keep strawberries that long in the fridge.

I thought about cakes, crisps and cobblers, but I eventually settled on a strawberry freezer jam. I followed this recipe from the Gwen's Nest blog. It was surprisingly easy. All I needed were a packet of freezer fruit pectin, 3/4 cup sugar and two pints/pounds of strawberries. You also need about three pint size jars, or five to six half-pint (ie., cup) jars. They can be glass ones, though Bell does make special plastic freezer jars.

First, mix the sugar and fruit pectin (I should have used only half the packet since I halved Gwen's recipe, but I eventually dumped in the whole thing). Then moosh up the strawberries in a bowl, add the sugar-pectin mixture and stir for three minutes. Put into cleaned jars and close, and let sit for half an hour before freezing. And there you go! No need to even cook it.

I have never made a fruit jam. Okay there was that one tomato jam. All I have to do is bust out a jar if I want some fresh strawberry jam.

Snacking State-by-State: Georgia III - The Many Uses of Coca-Cola

Peaches and peanuts aside, by far Georgia's biggest export is Coca-Cola. First made in Atlanta in 1886, Coke is now bottled all over the world. Is it really any surprise that the Coca-Cola corporation has not just a handful but an entire collection of recipes from enterprising Southern and other'n cooks (not to mention all those chefs in the Coca-Cola test kitchens) using Coke products as ingredients in cooking.

Official Name: State of Georgia
State Nicknames: The Peach State, Empire State of the South
Admission to the US: January 2, 1788 (#4)
Capital: Atlanta (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Augusta (2nd largest), Savannah (4th largest), Columbus (3rd largest)
Region: South, Deep South, Lowcountry (specifically along the coast); South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Crabcake, Gumbo
Bordered by: Alabama (west), Tennessee & North Carolina (north), South Carolina (northeast), Atlantic Ocean (east), Florida (south)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: grits (official state prepared food), peach (fruit), Vidalia onion (vegetable)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: again, grits, peaches and Vidalia onions, among many other things, among them: Coca-Cola, boiled peanuts, pecans, pralines, okra, and other typical foods of the Deep South

Elizabeth Candler Graham, direct descendant of Coke founder Asa Candler co-authored the Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola cookbook with Ralph Roberts in a quest to find some recipes, hoping to find 20 or 30.

As the research progressed, we found to our pleasant surprise that in the over one hundred years of its existence, Coca-Cola has inspired a lot of recipes. So instead of just a few, we found literally hundreds of recipes using Coca-Cola or other products of The Coca-Cola Company. In fact, we found ourselves with too many recipes and were forced to leave out some of the lesser ones. [Candler Graham and Roberts 1998, p. 4]

I almost considered making an entire meal using Coke as an ingredient, but stuck with an entrée and a side instead. These may have been two of the rejects from the book, though I had great success with one of them.

The recipes: Fruited Coca-Cola Pork Chops with Caramelized Sweet Onions

To make both recipes, you need the following.


The entrée: Fruited Pork Chops

* shoulder or loin pork chops (4 about 1/2" thick - I got a package of 5 leaner, skinnier ones, which I now somewhat regret as I will explain below)
* salt, pepper and ground ginger (got them all)
* one apple and one lemon or orange (each less than a dollar - for the citrus I went ahead and used a tangelo instead, with little change)
* 1/2 cup Classic Coca-Cola (you can get the corn syrupy stuff, or splurge and get a bottle of the Mexican stuff with real sugar for about $1.50. Not too easy to find, but you can get it at Wegman's or Eddie's of Roland Park. Drink whatever you don't use)
* brown sugar and corn starch (got 'em)


Quickly brown the pork chops in a greaseless pan, then sprinkle them the salt, pepper and ginger, set them in your baking dish, and add the following: an apple slice on top of each pork chop, a citrus fruit slice on top of each apple slice, brown sugar over each pork chop, and Coca-Cola around the pork chops.

Like so.

Bake for about 45 minutes at 350° (the thinness of my pork chops probably necessitated a shorter baking time, which I did not consider at the time). Next stir in the corn starch and put in for about 15 minutes more.

The side dish: Southern Caramalized Vidalias, er, Mayans


For this recipe, you need a liter of Coke, a little A1 and two nice big sweet onions. The recipe, of course, calls for the very Georgian Vidalia onion. I could not find these anywhere at this time of year, so I begrudgingly settled for the not-as-special Sweet Mayan variety from Mexico. It wasn't the same, but it was doable.


Chop the onions into pieces, and pour in enough Coke to cover - the recipe says you will "float" the onion pieces in the Coke.
Next, add A1 Steak Sauce or a reasonable facsimile, cover and microwave on high for 20 minutes. When done you will have a mess of sweet, caramelized onions that you can serve on steak, mashed potatoes or anything else you like. I mixed some with some homemade tomato sauce and ate it on linguine. It wasn't as disturbing as it sounds.


I have to be frank: the onions clearly turned out better here. I could almost see myself just eating them straight out of the bowl. They certainly made the pork chops more interesting. I am largely to blame for how they turned out, since I did not adjust the time for the thinness of the chops, resulting in a drier, less juicy pork chop. Yes, even with all Coke and those fruit juices, the pork chops ended up pretty flat. Not so the onions, which I have eaten with potatoes, taro root and that linguine I mentioned above. I'll be making the onion dish again

Served with a Coca-Cola-free potato salad

Now heading out of Atlanta Hartsfield, the world's busiest airport, for the only state in the union that is not landlocked at all. In fact, it's our only Polynesian state, and the absolute southernmost state in the Union (sorry, Florida and Georgia). It's Hawai'i, the land of mahi mahi, poi and Spam.

Sources:

Candler Graham, Elizabeth, and Ralph Roberts. Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola. Hambleton Hill Publishing: Nashville, 1998

Coca-Cola Company. "Recipe: Fruited Pork Chops". Copyright The Coca-Cola Company, 2006.

Coca-Cola Company. "Recipe: Southern Caramelized Vidalias". Copyright The Coca-Cola Company, 2006. Originally submitted by Rod Rives of Birmingham, AL.

Deen, Paula. "Boiled Peanuts". Featured on the Paula's Home Cooking episode "Boat Day". Copyright The Food Network, 2010

Fairweather, John. "How to Make Boiled Peanuts in a Slow Cooker". From eHow Food, date unknown.

Georgia Peach Council. "Rich History of GA Peach". Copyright Georgia Peach Council, date unknown.

Hanley, Lucy (editor), and Alice Moffatt (food editor). The Best Basic & Easy Recipes of Savannah. John Hinde Curteich: Savannah, 2000. Distributed by Dixie Postcards & Souvenir Sales.

Yearwood, Trisha, with Gwen Yearwood and Beth Yearwood Bernard. Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen: Recipes from My Family to Yours. Clarkson Potter: New York, 2008.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Georgia" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Georgia".

Snacking State-by-State: Georgia II - That's What I Like About Peaches

Georgia is one of the leading producers of peanuts in America, and it is also a leading producer of peaches. According to the Georgia Peach Council, the peach has been grown by Cherokee farmers since the 1750's, and harvested for sale in Georgia since before the Civil War, started by Raphael Moses in 1851. Georgia sells over 2.5 million bushels of peaches annually - down from an all time high of 8 million in the 1920's, but still a lot (Georgia Peach Council 2011)

Official Name: State of Georgia
State Nicknames: The Peach State, Empire State of the South
Admission to the US: January 2, 1788 (#4)
Capital: Atlanta (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Augusta (2nd largest), Savannah (4th largest), Columbus (3rd largest)
Region: South, Deep South, Lowcountry (specifically along the coast); South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Crabcake, Gumbo
Bordered by: Alabama (west), Tennessee & North Carolina (north), South Carolina (northeast), Atlantic Ocean (east), Florida (south)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: grits (official state prepared food), peach (fruit), Vidalia onion (vegetable)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: again, grits, peaches and Vidalia onions, among many other things, among them: Coca-Cola, boiled peanuts, pecans, pralines, okra, and other typical foods of the Deep South

Since Georgia is the Peach State, this post needs a good standard peach recipe. And where better to turn than that most famous of Georgia chefs... Trisha Yearwood!? Yes, the Grammy award winner, Grand Ole Opry member, Garth Brooks family member (he's her hubby) and Monticello native. Yearwood now calls Oklahoma home (again, the Garth Brooks thing), but brings America her Georgia family recipes in her book Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen. Yearwood says her family knows her as much for her food as her singing.

As the singer notes, the peach cobbler is an important part of the Southern home cook's repertoire: "You can't be considered a serious southern cook if you don't know how to make peach cobbler" [Yearwood 2008, p,. 192]. Her recipe is quite the easy one, and it worked out well for me.

The recipe: Peach Cobbler


For this peach cobbler you will need:

* peaches (two 15 oz or four 8.5 oz cans, in syrup - Yearwood recommends canned peaches instead of fresh, which she says work better in recipes such as this. More so, she suggests you use freestone instead of clingstone peaches "because they are tender and tasty" [Yearwood 2008, p. 192]. You would not believe just how difficult it is to find canned freestone peaches here.)
* 1 stick butter (got it)
* self-rising flour, or all-purpose flour mixed with a little baking powder and salt (got 'em all, too)
* sugar and milk (got those)

This recipe is, as Yearwood notes, easy. Melt the butter in a 9 x 13 pan in the oven.


While you melt the butter, dump out the peaches and save half of the liquid (so drain half the peach syrup into a bowl, and the rest of the syrup just dump out). Mix the drained syrup with the milk and dry ingredients.


Next, pour into the pan, and arrange the peach slices in the pan before baking at 350° for an hour.

Mmmm. Peachy.

What can I say? It was easy, and it was very buttery and luscious. I have to agree: I definitely like freestone peaches better than the clingy variety. And while it is definitely best right out of the oven, especially with vanilla ice cream, it is almost as good after being nuked for a minute in the microwave.


And that's what I like about Trisha Yearwood's cobbler.

Sources:

Candler Graham, Elizabeth, and Ralph Roberts. Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola. Hambleton Hill Publishing: Nashville, 1998

Coca-Cola Company. "Recipe: Fruited Pork Chops". Copyright The Coca-Cola Company, 2006.

Coca-Cola Company. "Recipe: Southern Caramelized Vidalias". Copyright The Coca-Cola Company, 2006. Originally submitted by Rod Rives of Birmingham, AL.

Deen, Paula. "Boiled Peanuts". Featured on the Paula's Home Cooking episode "Boat Day". Copyright The Food Network, 2010

Fairweather, John. "How to Make Boiled Peanuts in a Slow Cooker". From eHow Food, date unknown.

Georgia Peach Council. "Rich History of GA Peach". Copyright Georgia Peach Council, date unknown.

Hanley, Lucy (editor), and Alice Moffatt (food editor). The Best Basic & Easy Recipes of Savannah. John Hinde Curteich: Savannah, 2000. Distributed by Dixie Postcards & Souvenir Sales.

Yearwood, Trisha, with Gwen Yearwood and Beth Yearwood Bernard. Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen: Recipes from My Family to Yours. Clarkson Potter: New York, 2008.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Georgia" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Georgia".