Agnolotti of Leeks, Kale and Magic Nuts

I have a modest kitchen. Since it's just Heather and me eating, I don't need to cook large quantities of anything, so I don't need a large pantry for staples, I get by with a normal civilian range and oven, and I don't like gadgets so I don't need storage for a crap like a duck press, egg slicer and cherry stoning machine. In a normal week's cooking...

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Food Friday: Sauerkraut and Oysters

"I like your cooking , I just don't like it when you cook stuff from 1870."      --My youngest son to me after being asked why he didn't like Pink Stuff.Contrary to popular belief I do not make my children eat foods from the 1870s, for the most part. For the Holidays I decided to go ahead and make Pink Stuff, a jello dish I...

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Food Friday: Oh The Things We Eat During The Holidays

I love that the Holiday season is like a time of free reign over eating pretty much everything and anything. Foods you would not eat during the rest of the year become fair game during the winter months.So what types of things do you eat during the Holidays? I came across a series on unique holiday foods on NPR called Chompsgiving to Chew Year's: Holiday...

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Food Friday: Sandwich Spread

Is it just me or do sandwiches always taste better when someone else makes them? I can use the same ingredients as a friend but when she makes the sandwich it tastes so much better. Maybe that explains the popularity of sandwich places where you pick what you want but someone else makes the sandwich right before your eyes. You could make your own gigantic...

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War Time Food: Remembering Pearl Harbor

From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/5531627685/World War II in the United States was a time that affected all Americans. If we just focus on food, civilians were encouraged to eat less meat, use up all they had and grow as much as they could. Publications and propaganda posters of the time suggested ways to can and preserve foods,...

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Have You Documented the Holiday Foods You Ate?

In my Thanksgiving blog posting, Thanks for the Memories: Thanksgiving I provided some ideas for questions to answer about your memories of Thanksgiving. The Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories, a month long series of blogging prompts, encourages bloggers to write up their Holiday food memories for December 2nd.Check out the blog for links to blogger's posts about food memories. Remember, you don't have to be a blogger to record your food memories. That information can be included in a journal, family history book or a family cookbo...

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Food Friday: Cheese Loaf

Cookbook appears courtesy of Gary Clark, www.phototree.comNow my true confession for this Food Friday is that I love cheese. Cheese is my food downfall and probably will result in a future heart attack. However, the following recipe for Cheese Loaf makes me wonder what the end result would taste like. The combination of cottage cheese and peanut butter...

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Resource: St. Cloud Times Community Cookbooks

The St. Cloud Times has a feature in their Life section where they take a community cookbook and provide a recipe from it. A search in their online archives shows over 100 postings of community cookbook recipes. Today's  post was from the Avon Lakers' Ladies Cookbook (1980).This is a nice feature and might be helpful to those who had/have family in this area. While it does not provide the names of everyone that contributed a recipe it does, through the title, let you know what is available.The unfortunate part is that older articles require...

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Look Ma Stuffed Tomatoes

On the phone with mom the other day I felt like a triple dirtbag. 1) I got super busy and didn't call her on her birthday. 2) I remembered as I was falling asleep that I needed to call her in the morning to make up for it, but then I overslept and was late and it slipped my mind. 3) Now I'm on the phone with my mom two days late and apologizing for...

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Leftovers, Leftovers: The Thanksgiving Aftermath

So all the food is put away. The guests are gone. Your house needs another cleaning. Now what to do with all that food?Several editions of The Metropolitan Cook Book was published  by Metropolitan Life Insurance in the 20th century. The 1925 edition provides homemakers with tips for healthy eating  including advice well suited for today....

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Thanks for the Memories: Thanksgiving

Woman Cooking from the US National Archives. http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=513406 As genealogists our concentration is rightly focused on the lives of our ancestors. While that should be the majority of our focus at some point it's a good idea to consider what our descendants will remember about us or even know about...

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Food Friday: Fried Squirrel ala World War II

Recently, I was in Solvang (California) checking out the used cookbooks at the local bookstore, The Book Loft. (On a side note, these great independent bookstores are a dying breed and deserve our support). They had a great selection of community cookbooks compiled by all kinds of different fundraising groups. I ended up picking up a few that looked...

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Pan Roasted Pineapple in Prosciutto with Li Hing and Umeboshi

My li hing mui obsession continues to find opportunities to express itself. Here's the next shot.The celeriac skordalia was a big hit with H-Bomb. I call Heather H-Bomb sometimes. She hates it*. The last time I made celeriac I ended up with a little left over, so I needed something to serve on it as a main course. One of my favorite Hawaiian li...

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Asparagus in Perilla with Pork Rillettes and Leek Chives

I mentioned previously that I got some "sesame" leaves at Jong Boo market. These are perilla, a Korean relative of the Japanese herb shiso. They taste somewhat of wintergreen or licorice and are about the size of small grape leaves. As soon as I had the Perilla leaves in my hand, I imagined wrapping something in them, and was pleased to discover while...

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Food Friday: Bacon and Cottage Cheese Sandwich

They say that bacon can go with just about everything. I'm not totally convinced that bacon is a good match for all things but am open to different combinations even those that include desserts with bacon like bacon doughnuts and chocolate covered bacon.Today's Food Friday come from the cookbook highlighted last week, Recipe from Our Redeemer's (sic)....

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Food Friday: Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

I'm very lucky because my parents are constantly on the lookout for community cookbooks for me. At a recent library book sale they purchased a stack for me and one of them has quickly become my favorite.Recipes from Our Redeemer's (sic). Our Redeemer's Lutheran Church Cook Book. Benson, Minnesota (1964) is a collection of 246 pages of recipes. All...

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Three Minute Gazpacho

Made a trip to Andy's and got some beautiful little cucumbers I've never seen before. They had a bumpy, leathery skin and firm flesh, almost like a zucchini, but small, inoffensive seeds. About half the size of a salad cucumber, they tasted great and were much less watery than the waxy green dildos normally available. I sat down to watch a baseball...

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Food Friday: Tomato Milk

One of my historical food interests is the foods served during World War II. This is an interesting time food wise because people had to not only make due with what they had but they had to do it while  using ration coupons, food substitutes and enduring shortages.One recipe I have seen in more than one cookbook from this time is for Tomato Milk...

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Food Friday: Eskimo Ice Cream

Recently, I've had the opportunity to do some traveling and as part of that traveling I have sought out regional foods. Isn't that the great thing about traveling?So in Springfield, Illinois I had the Horseshoe Sandwich.The basic horseshoe is an open faced sandwich with meat, french fries and a cheese sauce. There are variations of the horseshoe including...

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Weird Little Mushrooms in Soup

After living a mile from it for a decade, I finally made a shopping trip to Jong Boo Korean Market, which I drive by often but had never set foot in. The occasion was a successful day of marketing that included the new fancy supermarket that just opened across from the Jewel, Paulina for meat and a fly-by of Andy's for some weird little cucumbers and...

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Food Friday: Depression Dinner

Probably everyone has an idea about how to make a low cost meal that your family will enjoy. I've seen articles addressing this topic in food magazines as well as websites and even YouTube. During difficult times like recessions, depressions and war this topic can be one of utter necessity.If you Google the phrase "Depression Dinner" you will find...

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How Popcorn Came to Matter

Heather loves popcorn. We go through phases where she needs popcorn every evening, so I make a lot of popcorn. When I was a kid, my mom made popcorn with olive oil and butter as the frying medium. Timing was critical, because if the fire was too hot or the popcorn didn't come off the fire precisely when it was done popping, the butter solids burned...

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Burdock What the Hell is Burdock

Like most people, the only time I ever come across burdock root is watching episodes of the original Japanese Iron Chef. They seem to throw burdock in everything they boil, and having eaten my share of Japanese food, I'm pretty sure I've eaten it, but I couldn't tell you what it tastes like and couldn't identify its flavor blindfolded. While at Mitsuwa...

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Food Friday: The Congressional Club Cook Book 1961

Antique stores hold family history. Yes, much of what you will find is not the record of an individual family's life but more of a documentation of what our collective families used over time, in different time periods. But in some cases antique stores sell items that do name names and document an individual's life. These are items like postcards,...

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Homemade Cheese to Garnish Sausage and Peppers

Making cheese is way more daunting than bread. Bad bread, whatever, it's still bread. Bad cheese could end up a weird moldy science experiment that stinks like rotting garbage and cures syphilis. Nevertheless, despite not really knowing how, I thought I'd give it a shot. When I was a kid, my mom made a kind of farmers' cheese by curdling milk...

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