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February 2010
Beer blogger Lee Nichols: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
When he’s not writing about politics for the Austin Chronicle, Lee Nichols is drinking beer. Or blogging about beer. Or at least thinking about beer.
Nichols’ blog, appropriately called I Love Beer, is a must read for beer geeks in Austin. He reports on upcoming beer events, what new beers he finds in area stores and the latest buzz around the gazillion new brewers coming to town.
He took this picture of his beer fridge a few weeks back.
What three beers are always in your fridge? Because I’m always about trying something new, and I’m a seasonal beer drinker — winter warmers in December, crisp pilsners and wits in the summer, etc. - there is no beer that is ALWAYS in there. But I’m pretty partial to Real Ale Fireman’s Four, especially in the summer. I lean toward Texas breweries a lot: Shiner, Saint Arnold, and Real Ale especially.
What’s your favorite beer to cook with? My wife does most of the cooking. I think the last time I cooked with beer was in college, and I used to make beer biscuits with Anheuser-Busch Natural Light, because it was the cheapest thing they had in Wheatsville. My wife has a similar philosophy: Whatever cheap stuff people leave at our house after a party. I prefer the quality beer go directly into my mouth.
What’s your desert island beer? Sierra Nevada Celebration is probably my absolute favorite beer, but in that case, I’d need the island to not be tropical, because it’s a thick Christmastime beer that doesn’t taste as good in hot weather.
I’m always on the hunt for interesting refrigerators. If you want to show off yours, take a photo of it (please resist the urge to clean or rearrange) and send it to abroyles@statesman.com.
Photo by Lee Nichols.
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Week of Eating In: Backyard salad for deskside lunch
Five days into this week of eating in challenge, and I’m still going strong.
Had a moment of weakness yesterday afternoon when my unappetizing lunch of leftover pork and rice left me eying Lulu B’s and P. Terry’s for quick bite on the way home from work. I resisted eating out and made pasta and broccoli as soon as I got home.
Eating food that only I prepare takes A) planning and B) a willingness to experiment with new cuisines. One of the things I’m missing most this week is ethnic cuisines that I haven’t quite mastered in my own kitchen.
One thing I have mastered is growing lettuce in my backyard garden. For lunch today, I had a salad made from hardboiled eggs, raisins, nuts, homemade dressing and greens I picked this morning before leaving for work.
In Central Texas, we’re lucky to be able to grow salad fixin’s most months of the year (it gets too hot around June), and lettuce is by far one of the easiest and most money-saving crops I’ve tried.
Making vinaigrettes and other dressings at home will also save you a bundle. Three parts oil to one part vinegar or lemon juice, mixed with a little salt, spices and marmalade for a hint of sweet. An old caper jar is the perfect size to store enough dressing for a salad.
I figure the salad would have cost at least $6 if I would have bought it at a restaurant or cafe. I haven’t been tallying how much money I’ve saved this week by not eating out, but I’m sure no matter which way you cut it, I’ve spent less than I normally would.
Eating in this weekend will surely be interesting, especially because I’ll be under deadline for a story for next week’s food section about this little experiment, so stick around and see what I come up with.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
TECHmunch food blogger workshop during SXSW
To harness the creative spirit of That Other Conference and infuse it with content that is specifically relevant to food bloggers, BakeSpace.com and Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen are hosting TECHmunch, a day-long workshop at Parkside from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 13. (Austin’s own Natanya Anderson of Fete and Feast is also helping put on the event.)
Babette Pepaj, founder of BakeSpace, says that the event aims to bring food bloggers up to speed on “all the latest tools and tactics for building buzz, improving SEO, growing your audience and making money from your hard work.”
The workshop will be broken down into sessions led by bloggers and Web specialists including Ben Huh of I Can Haz Cheeseburger, Nichelle Stephens of Cupcakes Take the Cake, Cathy Erway of Not Eating Out in New York (and host of this week’s Eating In challenge), “Casserole Crazy” author Emily Farris and Hair, who has launched a food writing career from her Steamy Kitchen blog.
I’ll be talking about ethics with Sarah Evans, who created the #journchat live chats on Twitter, as well as how to make old media work for you.
Tickets, which include food at Parkside, cost $45 in advance and can be purchased here.
Permalink | | Categories: SXSW
Week of Eating In: Applesauce muffins
Breakfast habits are hard to break.
I go through periods where all I eat is yogurt. I’ve been known to eat three pieces of cinnamon toast every morning for a week straight. Then I’ll move on to eggs and toast, followed by a few weeks of steel-cut oats. (In fact, I ate so much oatmeal with raisins and nuts in college that I’m just coming around to being able to stomach it again.)
My two favorite breakfasts when I was a kid were waffles smothered in peanut butter and syrup and applesauce muffins.
There’s no way my metabolism could keep up with Eggos, syrup and peanut butter every morning now, but the clove-, allspice- and nutmeg-filled applesauce muffins will always have a place in my breakfast rotation. (I used to make them so much that I had my mom’s recipe memorized, but now I have to rely on the dog-eared booklet that it was printed in when I was in middle school.)
One of the hardest aspects of not eating out this week has been resisting the urge to pick up a breakfast taco on the way in to work. In Austin, breakfast tacos (erroneously called “burritos” in other parts of the country) are cheap and ubiquitous. Every coffeeshop and taco truck sells them, and without fail, they taste better than the ones I make at home.
But when you think about the fact that a single breakfast taco costs about as much as a dozen eggs, you realize that this daily habit isn’t so great on your budget.
To give me something else to look forward to in the morning, I made the muffin batter last night and enjoyed freshly baked pillows of sweetness with coffee this morning.
That’s the best thing about these muffins: You make the batter and keep it in the fridge, and every morning, you can easily make a small batch of fresh muffins, which are highly customizable. You can mix in blueberries, cranberries, raisins or nuts, depending on your mood. Plus, because they are made with applesauce (cough, and two sticks of butter, cough cough), you can pretend they are good for you.
How do you resist the urge to pick up breakfast on the way to work or school? Do you have a favorite family muffin recipe? (I admit that these are just about the only muffins I make, so I’d love a new recipe or two.)
Applesauce muffins
1 cup margarine, softened (I use butter)
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
4 cups flour
1 tsp. cloves
2 tsp. allspice
3 tsp. cinnamon
1 lb. can applesauce
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. vanilla
Cream together margarine, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Add flour, cloves, allspice, cinnamon. Blend together and add applesauce, baking soda and vanilla. Bake at 400 degrees for 12 minutes. (The dough may be refrigerated for two weeks. [ed. note: I’d recommend keeping it for only one week.] Bake fresh as you wish.)
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Week of Eating In: Shrimp ‘n’ grits, beans in under 30 minutes
After Monday’s epic croissant-making, I needed a less time-consuming meal for last night’s dinner in.
Rachael Ray’s entire career was made off the concept of making a meal in less than 30 minutes, so I gave it a shot. Making dinner of bacon-laced green beans, shrimp and cheese grits and toasted bread in under 30 minutes? No problem. Making dinner of any sort in less than 30 minutes with a grabby 3-year-old eager to “help”? That’s a little bit harder.
Julian loves to be a “counter bird” and help measure out ingredients and dig through the spice cabinet. Anyone with young kids knows that they want to be wherever you are, which doesn’t create an ideal cooking environment. With hot stoves, sharp knives and cutting boards covered in meat juice, you’re asking for an injury — or at the very least, a headache trying to prevent one.
But what are the options? Eating out certainly isn’t any easier. We had a quintessential disaster dinner out last week where Julian spilled water all over the table, insisted that the server bring him a hamburger (we were at a Thai place) and got antsy to go look at the fish tank after only a few minutes at the table.
Ideally, finding another activity for him while Ian or I is cooking would making cooking easier, but sometimes, it’s worth the extra effort to expose him to the process of preparing food.
When he was even younger, I was sure that involving him in the kitchen would help expand his palate, a theory I quickly found out isn’t necessarily true. He’s happy to help pour grits into a pot, but we were lucky to get him to take a single bite when they were done. (Not even me comparing it to the gold standard of mac and cheese could convince him it was worth eating.)
Sure, he dumped half the garlic salt on the counter when I wasn’t looking and almost did the same thing with the container of grits, but last night’s cooking-with-kid experience wasn’t too bad.
We finished the meal, including peeling the shrimp and prepping the veggies, in 30 minutes, which was my goal, not just for the video but for my sanity and starving stomach. It took another five minutes to persuade Julian to sit down to eat at the table with us (cue the fit that you’ll hear at the end of the video), but by 6:15 p.m. or so, we were happily eating dinner together and talking about how much fun snow is and how much better grits taste with cheese.
It was exactly the scene Cathy Erway had in mind when she pitched this eating-in challenge to me a few weeks ago.
What’s on the menu tonight? Tacos made from slow-cooked pork that should hopefully take even less time than last night’s dinner.
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Charcuter-what? Preserved meats never tasted so good
For thousands of years, humans have been preserving meat.
In an article in today’s paper, I explore some of the ways we still rely on salt, smoke, fat and — most importantly — time to make things like sausages, rillettes, bacon and pate, which all fall under the umbrella of charcuterie.
Preserving meats long ago stopped being necessary (thank you, refrigeration!), but there’s a reason chefs and home cooks continue to practice this art: it tastes good. Many would argue that there’s no grilling or searing method that can even come close to matching the flavor imparted on meat when it is salted, smoked, cured or cooked in fat.
Larry and LeeAnn Kocurek launched their charcuterie business last fall, and Jesse Griffiths of Dai Due Supper Club sells charcuterie like sausages and rillettes through his weekly mailing list. Daniel Hunt of A Noble Beast Charcuterie sells charcuterie to local businesses including Aviary and House Pizzeria.
Runkle, who was a vegan for 10 years, says he hopes to have Italian cured meats, all made from local meats, such as toscano and genoa salami, pancetta and sopressata available by the end of March at local farmers markets and some restaurants.
Check the Web site, which also features a pretty cool blog by Ben, for more information in coming weeks about availability.
If you’re not quite ready to make the jump to curing your own pork or sausages, consider salmon, which, according to “Charcuterie” author Michael Ruhlman, is one of the easiest charcuterie products to make at home.
Last night, I started my first batch of cured salmon by making a mixture of salt, white sugar, brown sugar, pepper and dill to cover a small piece of raw salmon. Ruhlman suggested covering the salt-and-sugar-covered fish with a piece of plastic wrap and then weighing it down with a brick or cans.
After just 12 hours in the fridge, the liquid from the salmon had turned the salt and sugar into a brine. I flipped it once, placed the plastic wrap and cans back on the fish and returned it to the fridge. Because it’s such a small piece of fish (only about a quarter pound), it will probably be done later today or tomorrow.
If this goes well, maybe I’ll snag some pork bellies and try my hand as the most beloved charcuterie of all — bacon.
Pancetta photo by Ben Runkle.
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Week of Eating In: Homemade croissants
Making croissants from scratch isn’t exactly your average weeknight cooking activity.
Monday was the first day of the Week of Eating in Challenge, hosted by “The Art of Eating In” author Cathy Erway and the Huffington Post, and to kick off eating seven days in a row of eating only food that I have prepared, I hit both ends of the cooking spectrum: a lackluster sandwich for lunch and a dinner that included stuffed homemade croissants.
A few weeks ago, my husband, Ian, and I started a Monday night dinner tradition with our neighbors Buzz and Michelle Bakker. They both work in the service industry and love to cook, so they usually spend their day off on Monday cooking up something fabulous. I couldn’t let them do all the work this week, so I pitched in to make one of their favorite “trailer park” meals: speed bumps.
Every family in America has its version of speed bumps: that quirky, disgusting-sounding-but-delicious-and-easy-to-make meal that the kids downright beg for.
Michelle says she’s been making speed bumps — croissants or crescent rolls stuffed with a mixture of cream cheese and canned chicken or crab — ever since the day an old boyfriend’s kids asked her to make them. “I had no clue what they were talking about,” she says. “They finally explained that it was a dish their mother always made.” So Michelle had to buck up and call her boyfriend’s ex-wife for the recipe. “She reluctantly gave it up, and I’ve been making them ever since.”
Usually, when she’s using store-bought crescent rolls, speed bumps take about 15 minutes to assemble, but Buzz had been wanting to try them with homemade croissant rolls.
Buzz grew up in front of hot ovens. He worked at his father’s bakery in Aspen as a kid and ended up running his own bakeries in Utah and Colorado as an adult. Decades before Michael Ruhlman published his landmark baking book “Ratio,” Buzz kept the charts of all of his baking formulas, not recipes, in a now-yellowed three-ring binder that he still keeps on his kitchen shelf.
Loaves of bread were just the beginning of his love affair with food. He went on to work nearly every kind of restaurant job, which has turned him into a fabulous cook, but he’ll always be a baker, and not just because his last name says so.
He frequently dips into the 25-pound bag of bread flour in his pantry to make all kinds of homemade breads, but until yesterday, he hadn’t made croissants at home. (Probably has something to do with the thousands of them he’s rolled out by hand over the years.)
Here’s his recipe with step-by-step photos, followed by Michelle’s recipe for speed bumps:
Croissants
1 1/2 tsp. yeast
12 oz. bread flour (about 2 1/2 cups)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 cup milk (add milk slowly, you might need slightly more or less than this amount)
3/4 pound butter, softened
Buzz is faithful to his food processor. I usually made bread entirely by hand, but he makes a strong case for letting a magical Cuisinart do the work. Add yeast, flour, salt and egg to food processor and blend for a minute and a half with milk. “You have to know your textures,” he says, which is something you have to learn by doing, but beware that you’re looking for a softer-than-bread-dough texture for croissants.
Place the sticky dough on a floured surface, cover with flour and shape into a flat oval. Roll out dough into a large rectangle that is between 1/8- and 1/4-inch thick.
Using your hands, spread the butter over two thirds of the dough.
This is where the fun begins. Fold the unbuttered third over the middle, and fold the end third on top. Rotate the dough a quarter turn and roll out into a rectangle. Flour the surface as needed.
Now, mentally divide the dough into quarters and fold the outside quarters toward the middle and then fold in half. (Buzz calls this the book fold.) Roll out into a rectangle and repeat two more times, the final time leaving unrolled. Place in the fridge for 30-45 minutes to allow the dough to rest and butter to cool.
At this point, you have created layer upon layer of buttered dough, which give croissants their signature flakiness.
Roll the dough out into a rectangle one more time and cut in half lengthwise with a pizza cutter. Then cut out triangles with a slit in the short edge.
Taking the corners created by the slit, fold outward and begin rolling toward the triangle tip. An inch or two away from the end, pull gently on the pointy tip of the triangle to extend it and finish the roll. Tuck the corners together to create a circle.
Brush generously with an egg wash mixture (1 beaten egg mixed with a little milk) and let proof in a warm spot. (Buzz uses a dishwasher that has just been run.) Brush once more with egg wash and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. Keep an eye on them, Buzz says, because they can burn easily.
Speed bumps
1 brick cream cheese
1 can crab (You can also used canned chicken or salmon.)
1 small onion, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, minced
1/2 green bell pepper, minced
basil
dill
white pepper
oregano
Greek seasoning
garlic
2 packages crescent rolls (or homemade ones, if you’re up to it)
asparagus soup for gravy, thinned with milk.
In a bowl, combine cream cheese, crab, onion, bell pepper and spices. (The amount of spices is vague, Michelle says, because it depends entirely on what you like. She never measures and just does a dash of whatever she’s feeling like.) Let sit in the fridge so the flavors can meld. Unroll the packaged crescent rolls and combine two small dough triangles to create a larger one. Repeat with the rest of the dough.
Place a spoonful of the mixture onto the dough and roll up. Press the ends that stick out on the top of the roll so the mixture doesn’t melt out. Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes.
While speed bumps are baking, heat asparagus soup in a small pan and add any seasonings you’d like. Michelle likes to add white pepper, basil and dill.
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SXSW Eats: Bacon Takedown at Emo’s
Let the food-for-all that is SXSW begin.
Sure music, film and technology get all the attention during the festivals that are only weeks away, but food has become as much a part of the South by Southwest conferences as the badge-holding attendees. Of course, there has always been a ton of free food at the official and non-official parties, but this year, we’re starting to see even more dedicated food events.
You’ll be reading details about IFC’s food events with chef Sam Mason and crazy Food Party host Thu Tran when I confirm them, as well as Rachael Ray’s famous party. Later this week, I’ll even be announcing the specifics of the second Austin360 Food Blogger Bash. (Last year, we held the event at Whole Foods. This year, it’ll be closer to the convention center.)
But if you like bacon — and let’s be honest, if you eat meat, you do — then you’ll want to know about Bacon Takedown, a throwdown hosted by Matt Timms of The Takedown.
Timms started hosting these cook-offs back in 2005, and now he’s taking the takedowns on the road. One of the first stops is at 4 p.m. at Emo’s on Sunday, March 14, where cooks will bring in their best bacon dishes for the audience and a panel of judges (including me) to taste. It costs $10 to get in, but if you sign up to cook, you get in for free and Hormel will send you all the Black Label bacon you need for your dish.
Timms says he expects to see everything from breakfast to desserts submitted to the Bacon Takedown, and that contestants have a lot of room to earn points for creativity. Think you have what it takes? E-mail Timms if you’re interested in competing. You can also buy tickets online or on the Emo’s Web site.
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Meredith Vachon: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
Meredith Vachon has never worked in any other field than food and hospitality.
She’s one of the founders of Bread and Butter PR, a food publicity firm that has offices in Austin and Los Angeles, which means she represents several restaurants and food clients in Central Texas. Living and traveling abroad as a kid exposed her to a plethora of flavors and inspired her to want to work in food.
In the past four years in Austin, she’s watched the dining scene blossom, as well as the eating habits of her 17-month-old son, Max.
What three things are always in your fridge? scallions, Sauvignon Blanc and eggs
What’s your favorite condiment? Well…Hellmann’s mayonnaise is the truthful answer, but since I can’t indulge in that with regularity the way I’d like to, I’ve recently discovered The Ojai Cook Lemonaise and love their Lemonaise Light. It’s delicious and made with a short list of real ingredients so it’s far better than “over the counter” light mayonnaise.
What’s the first thing you pull out of the fridge in the a.m.? Whatever Max is having for breakfast, which invariably means eggs, butter and either apple or orange juice.
Photo by Meredith Vachon.
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Spicewood Vineyards cook-off challenges chefs to make chili with wine
UPDATE: Winning chili recipe added below.
We could argue all day about what ingredients belong in chili (kick me to the curb now; I fall in the “with beans” camp), but at a cook-off at Spicewood Vineyards on Saturday, only one ingredient was a must: wine.
Claret is one of Spicewood’s signature wines, and for the second year in a row, winery owner Ron Yates has hosted a chili cook-off that required entrants to use claret in their chili.
As with last year’s cook-off, Spicewood Vineyards was teaming with the most eclectic mix of people: Hill Country gentry mixed with hipsters from Austin who were transfixed by the band. Young families with kids and dogs enjoyed playing outside in the sun while sampling some delicious chili and wine.
More than 20 teams whipped up batches of chili infused with claret, which is kind of like a dark rosrosé. As a judge, it was harder than you’d think to detect the wine in many of the chilis, but one of the qualities we were looking for was how well the chili paired with the wine.
Some of the entries were dogs, as my fellow judge Spicewood winemaker Jeff Ivy liked to say, but most had us going back for seconds. We whittled the chili samples down to five (the test, as always, was blind) and argued for our favorites. A masala-laced chili that I really liked didn’t make it into the top three, but we didn’t have a hard time agreeing on a winner: Warren Bane and Nathan Alford, whose enthusiastic and youthful team seemed as shocked as its competitors to have won.
Winner of 2010 Spicewood Vineyards’ Pair It with Claret Chili Cook-off
Spice blend:
1 part New Mexico chile powder
1 part chipotle chile powder
1 part dark chile powder
1 part light chile powder
1 part dried oregano
1/2 part ground cumin
1/2 part spicy roasted paprika
1 part brown sugar
1/4 part onion powder
1/4 part garlic powder
1/4 part cayenne pepper
For chili:
2 lb. chuck roast (cut into 1-inch cubes)
few slices of bacon
2 purple onions, diced
4 garlic cloves, chopped fine
1 jalapeño (diced)
1/2 bottle Spicewood Vineyards Cabernet Claret
3 Tbsp. spice blend (see above)
1 can diced tomatoes
roasted peppers (1 habanero, 2 jalapeños, 3-4 del arbols)
1 carton beef stock
1 carton chicken stock
1 lb. pork chili meat
1 lb. beef chili meat
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 yellow onion, diced and divided
1/2 lb. pork sausage
For garnish:
chopped white onions
shredded Cheddar cheese
For spice blend, combine spices and store in a separate container. You won’t use all of it for this chili, but you’ll have enough for other batches or uses (soups, enchilada sauce, grilling meat, etc.)
A note from the cook: Don’t be slavish to these amounts, I came up with them just now off the top of my head (you wouldn’t ask Michelangelo the amounts of each paint he used on the Sistine Chapel ceiling). The chili is a living, breathing organism and will require different quantities of each depending on the day, personal taste and moon phase. Adapt or die.
For chili, season beef cubes with salt and pepper and let sit for an hour. Then sear each side in a cast iron skillet and let rest. In a chili pot, cook bacon until you have enough grease to coat the bottom of the pot. Remove bacon.
In bacon fat, saute purple onions, garlic and diced jalapeño in bacon grease until onions are translucent.
Add wine, 3 Tbsp. of spice blend, beef cubes, diced tomatoes and roasted peppers and let stew for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Salt and pepper to taste. (Throughout the entire process, you want to keep the chili fairly liquid, do this with one part beef stock, one part chicken stock.)
Brown pork and beef chili meat in cast iron skillet, drain grease and add to pot along with 2 Tbsp. of spice blend, crushed tomatoes, and half of yellow onion, and let stew for 1 hour. Salt and pepper to taste.
Brown pork sausage in a cast iron skillet, drain grease and add to chili along with another 1 Tbsp. spice blend. Let chili reduce down to desired thickness.
Serve and garnish with chopped white onions and shredded cheddar cheese.
Best served at sunset while playing “Thus Spake Zarathustra” at maximum volume.*
**If neither of these songs is available, don’t bother.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Playing with your food
Chefs using Twitter to pick fights, fight back
In today’s New York Times, Julia Moskin writes about how chefs are taking to Twitter to voice their frustrations with customers, bloggers, other restaurants and event restaurant critics.
I’m fascinated by the power that social media gives people on both sides of the table. Moskin offers this quote from the wife of LA chef Ludovic Lefebvre:
“Before the Web and Twitter, restaurants were completely controlled by the press, and chefs and restaurants just had to sit back and take it. Now we have a voice.”
Now, how easily could we replace “restaurants” with “diners”? I’ve always thought that Yelp and other similar sites have given a voice to customers who previously didn’t have a place to air complaints or sing praises of a restaurant.
Two can play this game, but some chefs aren’t too happy about it. “Yelp is for cowards,” Moskin quotes a tweet from a California chef, who don’t have the courage “to say anything while in your restaurant.”
Clearly, people on both sides are taking it too far.
It’s too bad more chefs aren’t taking the high road like Houston’s Bobby Heugel, who owns Anvil, one of the premier cocktail bars in the country.
Earlier this week, he tweeted: “Anvil has a new staff policy. They are NEVER allowed to talk negatively about another bar or restaurant. … We want to be part of a supportive industry and community and will now require our staff, at Anvil or not, to handle themselves accordingly.”
(Heugel doesn’t mention not slamming customers, but I think he implies that by saying he wants to be a part of a supportive community.)
I guess people are just now figuring out what a powerful tool social media is, and with power comes responsibility.
Do you think the food world — from restaurant staff to chefs, critics and diners — does a good job of wielding this power? Were we better off when the restaurant critics were the only one with a public voice? How should chefs/restaurants respond to negative comments online?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Food in the news
Like life, pantries need overhauling now and then
Sometimes, my life is a lot like my pantry.
Right now, it’s cluttered with cans of coconut milk and tuna and buried under bags of nuts, trail mix and beans. It’s organized just enough to find what I need to put dinner on the table. (P.S., that cloth-covered jar is my latest batch of homemade kombucha. If you want a SCOBY, let me know.)
Just like making a budget, every six months or so, I vow to get tough and show my pantry who’s boss. I do a purge, separate all the pastas from the canned goods and throw away cereal boxes that only have crumbs in the bottom. But without fail, we unload groceries hastily and cook dinner in a hurry and before long, we’re back to a disheveled mess that only adds to the craziness of family life.
I have a few areas under control. During one of my organizing kicks, I transferred grains into jars that reside on a shelf in the garage, next to all the extra cooking equipment that won’t fit in my tiny kitchen.
That giant jar of brown lentils? One cup at a time, like a monthly credit card payment, I’m chipping away at using them all up. But I bought them and, by God, I’m going to use them.
But a jar of brown rice, no matter how well-labeled, will not make my husband prefer it over basmati, and there aren’t enough jars in the world for all the random bulk items — especially chocolates, coconut, sugars and other baking ingredients — that pile up like unmatched socks in the pantry.
Just like my long-term to-do list, many items in my pantry are there to remind me of what I want to do, but not at all a reflection of how I actually cook; the dried peppers represent the hope that one day I will actually make enchilada sauce from scratch. Spring roll papers left over from a fun project a few years ago await another day that I just so happen to have the right ingredients and the right company to help me eat them.
So what’s the solution?
I clearly haven’t found one, but I’m on a mission this week to get my pantry in shape. Starting Monday, Feb. 22, I’ll be eating only food that I prepare for a week straight, which is nothing compared to my blogger friend Cathy Erway’s two-year project of not eating out in New York City. She blogged her adventures in cooking and turned it into a book that comes out tomorrow.
Erway has teamed up with the Huffington Post for a week of eating in challenge next week, which allows anyone to sign on: Eat in for a week to rediscover the pleasures of cooking (and realize how much we depend on prepared food). I’m one of a few bloggers she suckered asked nicely to participate, so next week, you’ll get to read about what it takes to feed my family for breakfast, lunch and dinner without relying on food that someone else has cooked.
So, there’s no better time than now to get my pantry in order. Here are some steps I’ll be taking, but I’d love to hear how you keep your pantry in order and well-stocked:
- A big help, just like with establishing a chore chart or family calendar, is getting everyone on board. If I’m the only one invested in using up (read: eating) those popcorn kernels or bags of beans, then they’ll never get used.
On a weekend day when you’re feeling creative or in the cleaning spirit, pull out the ingredients that have been collecting dust, and ask family members what dishes they like that incorporate these ingredients. Give them the task of finding a recipe online or in a cookbook that includes them.
- In a pantry rut? Using a Web site like Super Cook, Recipe Matcher or Recipe Zaar, enter in the hard-to-use ingredients and see what comes up. You could be eating the most delicious Thai curry coconut milk lentil stew later that night.
- Purge more frequently. There’s no reason sprouted potatoes or cereal boxes with less than half a serving are taking up space.
- Before putting away groceries, take a few minutes to tidy up. Like cleaning house, a few minutes here and there mean you don’t spend an entire day doing it later.
- Reuse jars to hold grains, flour, sugar, nuts, etc. They are easy to label and stack.
- Don’t forget about the spice cabinet. Buy spices in small amounts from the bulk section and fill up old spice containers. Ground spices don’t last as long as fresh anyway.
What are your tricks to keeping what you need for dinner on hand and easy to find? I’ll revisit this subject during the eating in challenge next week and for a story next month, and I’d like to include some of your suggestions.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Cooking
Hot Links: Adrià backpeddles on El Bulli closing, Oliver wins TED prize
El Bulli to close for good? Not so fast. In January, chef Ferran Adrià of El Bulli announced he’d be closing his famed Spanish restaurant for two years, a sabbatical that now might not be so temporary. Last week, Adrià was quoted in the New York Times as saying that he was going to permanently close the restaurant — which has a years-long waiting list to get in and reportedly loses 500,000 euros a year — to open a culinary academy instead. But now Adria has done an about-face, claiming in El Universo that he was misquoted. My question: How does the best restaurant in the world lose half a million euros a year? Maybe he should use that sabbatical to take a few business courses.
Food Revolutionary: Food Network-gone-good chef Jamie Oliver stole the show at the TED conference with this impassioned speech about educating kids about food. “Your child will live a life 10 years younger than you because of the landscape of food we’ve built around them,” he tells the crowd in Long Beach, Calif. Oliver, who for the past decade has been working to improve kids’ diets in both American and the UK, won this year’s TED prize for his goals to educate families on how to improve the food our children eat.
Is the food allergy in your head? A Portsmouth University study has found that 9 out of ten Britons who believe they have a food allergy or intolerance don’t actually have one, the Daily Mail reports. The study points to millions of people self-diagnosing allergies to wheat, milk or eggs as the main culprit.
‘Let’s Move’ those TV ads: Michelle Obama announced her initiative to fight childhood obesity last week, but Marion Nestle says that she overlooked one of the biggest culprits: food advertising. UCLA researchers have found that “kids who watch commercials on TV are more likely to be obese than kids who watch non-commercial TV,” Nestle writes.
I’ll have the pork chop, minus the antibiotics, please: On CBS News last week, Katie Couric used a two-part series to explore what feeding antibiotics to animals is doing to humans. This isn’t news to anyone who has read “Fast Food Nation” or seen “Food Inc.,” but when the issue gets this much airtime on the mainstream national news, even Michael Pollan must be pleased.
Bravo for Pope: Houston chef Monica Pope of t’afla is one of 22 chefs competing in Bravo’s next season of “Top Chef Masters.” The series premieres April 7.
How about a little fecal contamination in your salad? Consumer Reports found that 39 percent of bagged salad mixes are contaminated with “an unacceptable level of total coliforms or enterococcus (bacteria).”
Speaking of eating (crap): Anthony Bourdain has a radio show called “Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert: Turn & Burn” on Sirius XM’s Martha Stewart Living Radio. “My feeling is if Martha Stewart asks you to do something, you do it,” Bourdain said in an interview. (I wonder if his response would be the same if Rachael Ray asked him to be a columnist in her magazine.) At least he gets to do it his way: The AP reports that there will be plenty of sexualized food puns.
Pretty Peas: To leave you with a something a little light-hearted, check out these adorable peas in a pod, characters in Disney’s “Toy Story 3,” which comes out in June.
Permalink | | Categories: Hot Links
Sugar Mama’s offering trial run of breakfast items
Cupcakes and cookie bars aren’t exactly considered a breakfast of champions, so starting Tuesday, Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop, 1905 S. First St., is testing the breakfast waters by offering scones, brioche cinnamon rolls, pound cake and buckles, which are like steusel-topped muffins. Prices range from $1.75 to $3.
For the next month, the bakery will open at 7 a.m. instead of noon, which means you can grab a cinnamon pecan scone and coffee while picking up a dozen cupcakes for your colleague’s birthday at work.
Owner Olivia O’Neal says she’ll decide whether to make breakfast a permanent offering in March. She says she hopes to make the expanded hours permanent so she can use in-season fruit from local farmers markets like peaches and apples. “We’ll see what people want and what they ask for,” she says.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating out
Free heart-shaped bagels at Jo’s, big day for Mangia
Who would have thought that Valentine’s Day is the biggest day of the year for Mangia Pizza?
Valentine’s Day, which this falls just a week after the Super Bowl, a day generally considered to be one of the most profitable for pizza makers, Mangia Pizza will be as busy as the floral shops. Mangia sells and delivers hundreds of heart-shaped pizzas (mediums start at $18, larges at $22) at its four Austin locations.
Jo’s Hot Coffee and Good Food downtown, 242 W. Second St., will be giving away heart-shaped bagels with the purchase of a coffee until supplies last. The bagels are from Joe Humel’s Rockstar Bagels, whose popularity among Austinites craving New York-style bagels has blossomed in the past year.
GoodPops, the Austin company that makes paletas with organic sugar or agave nectar that you can find at local farmers markets, created a chocolate-covered strawberry paleta, made with organic chocolate, for Valentine’s Day this year. The specialty paletas ($2.89 for one, $14.99 for six) are available this weekend only at Wheatsville Co-op.
If you’re after the real thing, Amy’s Ice Creams will be accepting orders online for their chocolate-covered strawberries until 5 p.m. on Saturday.
Permalink | | Categories: Playing with your food
Retro Bizzaro pastry chefs: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
This Valentine’s Day weekend, I couldn’t resist showing off the fridge of Michael and Amanda Joyner of Retro Bizzaro, mainly so I could retell their tale of falling in love in pastry chef school.
Back in 2005, they were in the same class at the Texas Culinary Academy. They’d gotten off on the wrong foot when Amanda asked Mike if she could partner up with him on a project, and he replied, according to her, “Don’t you know who I am? I work alone.” The rivalry began. Once, she tried to ruin his dessert by putting salt in his sugar. He would taste her desserts and tell her that they were “just OK.”
The tension was so strong between them that their instructor called them out on it one day in front of the whole class. “That’s where animosity turned into curiosity,” Amanda says. Fighting turned into play fighting and flirting. He asked out her for coffee, but she’d conveniently “forget,” until one day, he had to come by her house to drop off notes she’d missed in class. “He just grabbed me and kissed me,” she says. “We’ve been together ever since.”
Because they are both pastry chefs, they still occasionally fight in the kitchen, but now that they have two little kiddos (3-year-old Arthur, named for King Arthur flour, and 1-year-old Isabella) running around the house and are starting a new business, most of the energy goes elsewhere.
(And yes, Amanda says, that is a giant bottle opener/corkscrew on the top of their fridge.)
With Retro Bizzaro, the Joyners are bringing back old-school favorites like snack cakes, candy bars, Twinkies and other treats but making them from scratch using local and sustainably made ingredients. They’ll be selling their products at the HOPE Farmers Market at Fifth and Waller Streets starting Feb. 21, and Amanda says they are on the hunt for a trailer. You can also place orders online.
They’ve also launched a video blog in which they answer questions — mainly gathered from Twitter — about the world of pastry-making.
“He’s good at the science behind pastries, and I’m good at design and flavor,” Amanda says. “It’s a good combo like sweet and salty: two completely different flavors but great depth together.”
What three things are always in your fridge? Amanda’s bacon jam, yogurt (for Arthur), and fresh veggies
What’s your favorite condiment? Amanda’s is hot sauce and Michael’s is mustard.
What’s the strangest ingredient you’ve ever incorporated into a dessert? We do a lot of experimenting in the kitchen with all sorts of things, but the strangest ingredient would be cilantro, which Michael used in a citrus sauce for a key lime pie. Amanda says she’s used jalapeños in a lime pot de creme with caramelized jalapeño chips. “I liked it even if no one else ate it,” she says. “This was way back in the day before spicy was in.”
Photos by Amanda Joyner.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: What's in Your Fridge Friday
Antonelli’s Cheese Shop brings artisan cheese to Hyde Park
John and Kendall Antonelli know that Antonelli’s Cheese Shop, their artisan cheese store at 4220 Duval Street that opened today, won’t have the biggest cheese selection in town — after all, the overflowing cheese counters at Central Market and Whole Foods are within five miles of their Hyde Park location — but they are hoping to offer cheese lovers a more intimate cheese-buying experience.
They know exactly how it feels to stand in front of hundreds of exotic-sounding cheeses and not know where to start. Three years ago, John was a certified public accountant and Kendall was working for a nonprofit. They were enamored with cheese, but mainly, they wanted to start a business where they could work together. On their honeymoon, John pitched an idea: What about starting a cheese business? Without hesitation, Kendall agreed.
They’ve spent the last two years learning everything they could about cheese, including what it takes to start a small-scale store. They visited Europe and followed the “fromage” signs on the side of the road to find cheesemakers who would become their teachers. John even interned in the caves of rural France to discover how terroir affects aging cheese.
“We cold-called cheesemongers across the country and not one person hung up the phone on us,” she said on opening day. “The cheese community has been wonderful to us.”
In addition to between 75 and 100 different kinds of cheeses, the Antonellis are also selling wine, charcuterie, crackers, chocolate, olives and other foods that you’d need for a cheese tasting party at your house. You’ll also find several Texas cheeses, including those from CKC Farms, Veldhuizen, Brazos Valley and Pola, in the refrigerated case.
After they get their legs under them, the Antonellis hope to start guided tastings and classes on Thursday nights to help customers learn even more about the complex world of cheese. “The thing with cheese is education. Teaching people about cheese and letting them try it before they buy it is so important,” John Antonelli said. “Telling people about the story behind the cheese and what makes it so special. That’s what we wanted to do.”
(4220 Duval Street, 531-9610. Open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday.)
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Eating locally, Grocery goods
If you love hot sauce so much, why don’t you marry it?
It’s been so much fun digging into our love of hot sauce for today’s story just ahead of Valentine’s Day.
One of the sources of inspiration for this story was how frequently hot sauce came up in the What’s in Your Fridge Friday posts. More than half of the people I’ve featured either always have hot sauce in their fridge or listed it as their favorite condiment. Not a single person has owned up to ketchup being a favorite condiment. There’s surely a stigma attached to ketchup: It’s too pedestrian. It’s for juvenile palates. It covers up flavors instead of enhances them.
But hot sauce. Now that’s a condiment people are ready to rally behind. When I went to speak to Cynthia Thomas’ fourth grade class at Oak Hill Elementary last month, I told the students I was working on this story. I asked them to raise their hands if they liked hot sauce and about 75 percent of them enthusiastically shot their hands in the air. A few days later, they got to work writing hot sauce haikus. (Videographer Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon was there to document their work, which he turned into the adorable video at the top of the post.)
This story also gave me an excuse to interview my brother-in-law, who eats more hot sauce than anyone else I know, and feature a homemade hot sauce recipe from Andrew Smiley at the Sustainable Food Center, who was one of the first food peop
Not everyone holds such an affection for hot sauce. I wasn’t a big fan of spicy food in general until moving here, but Brian Rush of Tears of Joy Hot Sauce Store on Sixth Street is right: You can build up your tolerance for capsaicin, the compound in chiles that makes your mouth feel hot.
I still have a long way to go before I’m ready for hot sauce made from naga jolokia, the world’s hottest pepper, but knowing there’s a scientific connection between the way we feel when we eat capsaicin and when we fall in love makes getting there a whole lot more fun.
Photo illustration by Alberto Martinez for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Playing with your food
Walmart holds own against Whole Foods in Atlantic Monthly taste test at Fino
For Atlantic Monthly’s March issue, food writer Corby Kummer devised a brilliant taste test: Using similar ingredients purchased from Walmart and Whole Foods, create two identical meals and ask tasters to pick which they preferred.
UPDATE: “Just Food” author and Texas State educator James E. McWilliams, who was also on the tasting panel, makes a key point: The people tasting didn’t know what was being tested beyond taste. They knew that the ingredients came from two sources, but not that one meal came from the world’s largest company and the other was from the pioneering Austin-based natural grocer.
What better restaurant for this task than Fino, whose chef Jason Donoho sources many of his ingredients from local farms. Kummer gathered more than a dozen food-connected folks, most of them Austinites, for the test. The results will shaken anyone’s preconceived notions of the quality of food found on the shelves of both stores.
The majority of Kummer’s article is dedicated to exploring Walmart’s attempts to “go local” by encouraging farms within a day’s drive of its warehouses to grow crops that currently are hauled across the country from states like California and Florida.
It’s ironic, of course, that Walmart is attempting to forge relationships with the small farmers whose livelihood they squashed in previous years in the quest for low prices. At a press conference late last year, I heard from Walmart officials, as well as a farmer or two, about this new initiative, which Kummer points out is a clear attempt to tap into the quickly growing “locavore” market.
At the Austin press event, I found a handful of products — including potatoes, corn, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, oranges — with a “locally grown” sign and the Department of Agriculture’s Go Texan logo, but no mention of exactly where in this gigantic agriculture state the produce came from.
The bright lights and cookie-cutter produce were a far cry from in-season, heirloom varieties found at any of the area farmers’ markets. Patrons of these markets, as well as those who prefer Whole Foods, won’t be making the switch to shopping at Walmart anytime soon, but the company’s efforts can’t be ignored.
When you’re a company that’s making more money in a day than every single farmers’ market in the country had made in the past decade, a move like this has the potential to change the game, especially when your produce beats Whole Foods’ in a blind taste test.
The complicated network of farmers and distributors required to keep Walmart shelves stocked, combined with the icky history Walmart has of doing whatever it takes to keep prices as low as possible, in no way fits the traditional locavore ethic, but I’m hoping their massive buying power can have a positive effect — for farmers and consumers — in the long run.
I’m probably wearing rose-colored glasses, but I long ago learned that no matter how long you pretend Walmart doesn’t exist, it always will, and the majority of Americans will continue shop there.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
At Rio’s Brazilian Cafe, a little piece of Brasil in East Austin
For Elias Martins and Ben Googins, Rio’s Brazilian started in 2006 as a side project after the couple moved to Austin from Rio de Janeiro, where they met.
Martins continued to work in local restaurant kitchens, while Googins chipped away at building up the company, which sold malagueta sauces, pastries and cheese breads at area farmers markets. Eventually, the sauces — sold in original, mango and pineapple coconut flavors — took on a life of their own and were picked up by local Whole Foods and Specs as well as smaller stores like Whip-In and Royal Blue and the online food retailer Foodzie.com.
But it wasn’t until last year that they were able to start the wheels on their newest expansion: Rio’s Brazilian Cafe, a small but bright and energy-filled restaurant at 408 N. Pleasant Valley Road in East Austin that opened earlier this month. (The patio in the front of the building easily doubles the restaurant’s seating capacity.)
The cafe sells Rio’s signature savory pastries (or salgadinhos), including risolis, empadãos, pasteles and breakfast pockets made with egg and cheese, as well as sandwiches, salads, soups (caldo verde and sweet potato bisque) and, of course, their gluten-free cheese breads. Yuca root is a key ingredient in the cheese breads, and Martins and Googins also fry the root to create something similar to a French fry.
To lure morning commuters, they are selling breakfast and coffee through a drive-thru on the side of the building. (The coffee is from Casa Brasil, a local company that works directly with coffee growers in Brazil and even offers after-school programs and scholarships to kids in need in Brazil.) If you’re not in the mood for the savory breakfast-taco like pockets, try the banana pastel, a banana and cinnamon-stuffed pastry.
Googins says that the restaurant is BYOB until their liquor license is in place, and for Valentine’s Day this weekend, they are offering free champagne with a purchase and a special trio of desserts. Stay tuned to their Twitter and Facebook streams for more specials, especially for Carnaval, which starts this weekend.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Eating out
A new ketchup packet design for the new decade
I always feel a little bit guilty when I grab a fistful of ketchup packets at a fast food restaurant. I shift my eyes around quickly to make sure that no one is observing my packet gluttony—and if they are, I toss a packet or two back into the bin. Here’s the thing, those ketchup packets were made for unrealistic portions. I need at least three packets squirted onto my hamburger wrapper to achieve a good fry dunk.
Heinz recently announced that they are releasing a new ketchup packet design, Heinz Dip and Squeeze. It’s bigger and offers the option to dunk or squirt. Two options in one packet? It’s made possible by the very smart addition of a perforated end on the packet so the user can squeeze it like a tiny plastic ketchup bottle, and a removable lid so the user may also submerge their food into a small pool of ketchup.
This is the first ketchup packet makeover Heinz has done in 42 years. It’s got to be big news. I was a bit apprehensive about the new design at first, but that first dip into the deep reservoir of ketchup made all of my worries go away. It’s nice to have the ketchup confined to a pack for easier cleanup, and its great for maximum fry to ketchup coverage. Also, one packet equals three of the old guys, so for me it means grabbing less packets. The new ketchup also features reduced sodium. The flavor isn’t noticeably different. Overall, I think the new packets are more user friendly, and I look forward to seeing them at fast food restaurants soon.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Food in the news, Playing with your food
Trailer tour brings together hundreds of Austin’s food-obsessed
Eat, tweet, trailer, repeat.
It was the same scene at trailer after trailer on a sunny Saturday afternoon: foodies — some 300 of them in total, plus at least a handful of four-legged friends, on a trailer tour organized by blogger Jodi Bart and me — devouring some of Austin’s best food while mingling with familiar and not-so-familiar faces and capturing it all to share on mobile devices. (Check out the #tastyup hashtag on Twitter for a tweet-by-tweet account of the day.)
We started the day at two trailers — La Boite and Trailer Perk — to hand out nametags and grab breakfast and coffee, but after that, it was a choose-your-own-adventure of 16 mobile food vendors that sell everything from sushi to samosas.
(Bikes were the favored transportation method for dozens of East Austinites on the tour.)
I stayed mainly in East Austin, hitting up Old School BBQ and Grill, Franklin BBQ and Lucky J’s with both old and new friends, before a jaunt south for a pepperoni and black olive pie at Spartan Pizza.
Between bites, Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon shot the video at the top of the post, which really captures the energy both in front of and behind the sliding glass window.
(Here’s another video from Sara and Cassiday from the JB and Sandy Morning Show.)
It didn’t take long for folks, including the hard-at-work bloggers Natanya Anderson of Fête and Feast, Kristi Willis of Austin Farm to Table and Jenna Noel of Edible Austin, to figure out that trailers are the quintessential place to BYOB.
Six hours, countless calories and at least one nap later, the true gluttons for punishment reconvened at East Side King, an Asian trailer located inside the Liberty Bar, for one last round of incredible bites.
By the end of the day, everyone was swapping stories, but it all came down to the food: “What was your favorite dish on the tour?”
The crispy and freshly fried fries at Old School definitely stood out, as did the overall carnivore-friendly ambiance of Franklin BBQ.
One of my favorite parts of the day of chumming it up with trailer owners like Aaron Franklin, who was cutting into the last brisket of the day when we showed up around 2 p.m.
I was bummed that I ran out of time (and room in my stomach) to hit the South Lamar favorites Odd Duck and Gourdough’s, as well as G’Raj Mahal. Austin is lucky to have so many wonderful trailers to chose from every day of the week.
But this won’t be the last trailer tour. By the end of the day, lots of people were asking about a Tasty Up Trailer Tour 2.0. I’m thinking it might be time to pay homage to the originals: the trailers who broke ground in Austin for this new wave we enjoyed Saturday.
Stay tuned to the Facebook pages for Jodi’s Tasty Touring and my Eat-Ups for details.
Thanks to all the wonderful people who came out on Saturday and the trailers who participated! Your enthusiasm for Austin and its awesome food is what makes hosting these events truly worthwhile.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Playing with your food
IHOP, Denny’s bring back free breakfast days
There were hundreds of more interesting moments during last night’s Super Bowl than the silly chicken ads from Denny’s announcing free Grand Slam breakfasts on Tuesday, but a free meal is a free meal, and come Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of folks across the U.S. will be lining up for theirs.
A year ago, both Denny’s and IHOP scored major press by giving away food during two days in February. This year, IHOP’s National Pancake Day celebration is also a fundraising venture for Children’s Miracle Network. From 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 23, IHOP will be giving away one short stack of pancakes per customer, and in return, it is asking customers to make a voluntary donation to support local children’s hospitals.
Rather than go the charity route, Denny’s splurged on several ads during the Super Bowl promoting Tuesday’s deal: one free Grand Slam breakfast per customer from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The commercials also reminded folks that they can get a free Grand Slam on their birthday, which unless it is Feb. 9, will be a whole lot less crowded than Tuesday.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating out, Food in the news
Tasty Touring blogger Jodi Bart: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
Jodi Bart is the food blogger, but her boyfriend, Adam, is the resident chef in their Northeast Austin home.
Bart’s blog, Tasty Touring, tracks the best of what’s happening in Austin’s food scene, and in the past year and a half since she started blogging, she’s become a leader in the food community, organizing Tasty Tours for her readers and, up until December of last year, hosting a weekly radio segment about food on KGSR.
The pictures above show their fridge before and after a trip to the grocery store. “It doesn’t look like much but it kept us fed for the week,” she says. Adam might be in charge of dinner most nights that they aren’t out at some of Austin’s most buzzworthy eateries, but Bart has been expanding her cooking repertoire recently with dishes like this Thai stir fry.
This month, we’ve created a Tasty Tours/Addie’s Eat-Up mashup event at more than 10 trailers tomorrow. The Tasty Up Trailer Tour will start at coffee/breakfast trailers from noon to 1 p.m., and then it’s a choose-your-own-trailer-adventure at some of the newest and most talked-about mobile food vendors in Austin.
You can find all the details at the Facebook event page, and stay tuned to the Tasty Touring and Addie’s Eat-Up pages for more events like these in the future.
What three things are always in your fridge? Mootopia Skim Milk, breakfast fruit (blackberries in the winter, blueberries and raspberries in the summer) for our cereal, random jars and bottles of exotic jams and sauces that Adam promises we’ll use some day.
What’s your favorite condiment? Adam’s homemade chipotle aioli
What’s your go-to late night snack? Cereal or graham crackers topped with crunchy peanut butter and drizzled with honey.
Photos by Jodi Bart.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: What's in Your Fridge Friday
Bona Dea delivers fresh bread, rolls, scones
Lauren Hubele moved to Austin in 2008 with the goal of enrolling in a doctoral program, but before she’d completed a single class, she started another venture: a bread delivery company called Bona Dea.
Hubele, who spent the last 15 years teaching high school in Germany, has always been a baker. “My mom was a horrible cook,” she says. “So I was cooking for my whole family by the time I was 8.” She quickly found a spiritual connection to baking bread but didn’t take the plunge to make it a full-time job until after a career in education.
As a cancer survivor, she’s always trying to find ways to work in as many whole grains and antioxidant-rich ingredients into her fragrant and tender breads, including Lauren’s loaf ($5.50), a sourdough whole wheat baton made with flaxseed and oats, and scones ($7 for 4). Challah ($5.50 for a loaf or $6 for six rolls) is made with local organic eggs.
Through the Web site, you can order by the loaf or sign up for a monthly subscription for challah, scones or sourdough. Place orders by Wednesday for Friday delivery to a pick-up location of your choice. There are pick-up locations in several Central and South Austin neighborhoods, but Hubele says she’ll be expanding as orders come in.
Photo by Alberto Martínez.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
Streep, ‘Food, Inc.’ earn Oscar nominations
2009 was a great year for food in film.
Most people who give two salt shakes about food saw “Julie & Julia,” based on former Austinite Julie Powell’s book about her quest to cook and blog about every recipe in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”
“Food, Inc.,” as well as the lesser-known and well-distributed “Fresh,” exposed the food industry’s dirty secrets to millions of moviegoers.
It’s no surprise, then, that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated Meryl Streep for best actress for her portrayal of “Julia Child” in “J&J” and “Food, Inc.” got a nod in the best documentary category.
I loved Streep as Child, and riots probably would have erupted in America’s top restaurant if she hadn’t been nominated for her most excellent performance as one of the most famous chefs of all times, but I’m most excited about “Food, Inc.” getting such high-profile time in front of American audiences. The movie conveys much of the same horrific information as “Fast Food Nation” and Michael Pollan’s books, but the news bears repeating: The agricultural system in this country is broken, and we’re all in trouble if we don’t fix it soon.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
Groundhog sees his shadow; I see more soup, slow-cookers
With our relatively mild winters, Austin isn’t the worst place to spend the months of November through March. I feel kinda bad complaining about six more weeks of “winter” in Austin, but after last summer’s crazy heat wave, I think like we’ve paid our dues and deserve a few more 70-degree days in January and February.
But the groundhog in Pennsylvania says we probably won’t get so lucky. (If you’ve got a source for groundhog, here’s a recipe for cooking one.)
So like the rest of you, I’m succumbing to more soup and slow-cooker recipes in the coming weeks. But how do we get out of the rut we’ve been in since the first cold snap in November?
Have you made a pot of chili or Frito pie yet? What about some spicy enchiladas?
Grilled sandwiches will make even the most bland soup interesting. (But because you’re following these tips from the Soup Peddler, you’re soups aren’t bland any more, right?)
Baking will give your heater a break. I’ve already professed my love for these bread recipes, but what about graham crackers or applesauce muffins? (If you’re tired of your go-to breads, check out this great blog by the authors of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes.)
Or maybe it’s time to forget all these winter food traditions and break out the margaritas and head outside to grill. After all, it’s not going to be snowing any time soon, and a grilled steak and vegetable kebabs might be just what you need to cure the wintertime blues.
Groundhog photo by Jason Cohn for Reuters.
Permalink | | Categories: Cooking
Can $5 buy lunch for two at Whole Foods?
It had been a cold and dreary Monday. On the way to my internship at the Statesman, I snagged a couple cookies from the box — this couldn’t be all I was eating until heated up leftover this evening, could it?
When I arrived at the office, Addie was kind enough to show me the test kitchen. I’m still trying to find my way around here, and, let’s be honest, I get lost a lot. We took a peek in the fridge in hopes of finding something to munch on. We were disappointed, but Addie had an idea: It was the perfect kind of day for soup from Whole Foods. She presented me with a challenge: Could we possibly get lunch for two for less than $5?
You’re thinking, “Oh no, crazy women have been sitting under the fluorescent lights too long, and they think can get lunch from ‘Whole Paycheck’ for next to nothing!” I was skeptical, too. With a $5 dollar bill in hand, we headed out into the mist.
After quickly realizing that ready-to-eat soup would burst our budget faster than we could say “seafood bisque,” we headed to the soup aisle in the grocery department, where we were inundated with options. Big cans, small cans, boxes and bowls. The boxes of soup — which cost $2.99 to $4 for four servings — were the biggest bang for our buck, but most importantly, we’d have money left over for bread and cheese. Tomato basil soup in hand, we grabbed a 79 cent baguette to to split. On the way out, we stopped by the cheese counter and asked the cheese monger if we could get a small sliver of luxurious brie cheese, which ended up costing us 90 cents.
Still within our budget, we headed to the checkout line, but were inundated by dark organic chocolates and lovely Valentine’s Day sweet treats. Were we able to stay on budget? Did we blow the mission and buy a candy bar? How would we got from soup in a box to hot soup in our bellies before heading back to the office? Watch the video to find out!
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: How to video, Playing with your food
Hot Links: Bacon explosion for sale, homemade cough drops
A year ago, our collective bacon fever hit its peak with bacon explosion, a bacon-wrapped bacon and sausage wrap that had bloggers in a frenzy. The Kansas City-based creators of the original have now gotten their act together to sell pre-made bacon explosions, just in time for the Super Bowl. Explosions starts at $17.99, shipping and doctor’s visits not included.
If that’s not enough meat for you, check out Meatloaf Creations, a newish blog that shows the craziest things you can shape out of meatloaf.
Austin’s Woman with a Whisk swears she will never buy pre-cured lox again after learning an easy way to make her own.
The downtown farmers market has moved into Republic Square Park with nary a hitch. Except all this unseasonably cold weather we’ve been having lately.
If the weather (or cedar) has you feeling under the weather, Instructables shows you how to make your own cough drops using just tea and sugar.
For those of you like me suffering from a case of the small kitchens, Epicurious offers the 10 commandments of effectively organizing your kitchen, no matter how much space you have. (Looks like momma needs to go shopping for some hooks and racks and ditch that hybrid espresso-coffee maker, which we only use to make coffee, for good.)
Sundance Film Festival just wrapped up, but you can still catch a bunch of shorts over on its YouTube channel, including this one about Mr. Okra, a man who sells produce out of his truck in New Orleans. My favorite line: “I love women like I love my food. And I love my food. See, as long as I got that wagon out there, I don’t have no trouble gettin’ no women. I keep ‘em full and fat and feed they children when they hungry.”
Austin’s A Pizza Girl, whose blog I featured a while back, made her debut as a guest blogger on Serious Eats’ pizza blog, Slice. Look for more insights on what it takes to be a pizza delivery driver in coming weeks.
Michael Pollan is killing it in Austin. BookPeople’s Top 10 lists run in the Statesman every Sunday, and this week, he has three books (“Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “In Defense of Food,” “Food Rules”) in the bestselling non-fiction list. Also in the top 10: “My Life in France” by Julia Child and “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Liquid Austin blogger and beer columnist Pat Beach has succumbed. He’s attempting to make bacon-infused vodka this week, but the big question is, what will he make with his concoction and will it involve beer?
Photos by BBQ Addicts, Instructables.
