You Are Lookin' At the Serried Ranks of $60 Worth of Cookies!

So in Indonesia, Christmas and the 26th are spent visiting friends and family. It's an all-day open house. And when people visit, the proper things to serve them are little homemade cookies, and Coke, Sprite, and Fanta. ... Well. A friend in our neighborhood has a home business where she sells cookies and cakes for all occasions. Knowing that Christmas was coming up, and wanting to help her out, I went over and ordered 4 jars (the standard unit of measure for homemade cookies). She quoted me a price. The price did not make sense to me. If the decimal was where I thought it was, it was much more expensive than I'd expected. If I moved the decimal to the left ... too cheap. So I agreed, but resolved to check on this. ... So I checked on it. Yep, she was giving me a special price that, when converted, works out to $15 a jar. So I resolved to go and ask if I could just order two jars, instead. ... But life got busy and I didn't make it over to her house until the 20th. And when I said, If it is possible, I'd like to reduce my order, she got a frozen smile on her face and said that the cookies were all made and sitting there. In fact I was the only person whose cookies she hadn't delivered yet. She had made and delivered them all early, because of another event she was going to have to bake for soon. ... Naturally, I agreed to buy the order. I am told the cookies can last 3 months. And they are very small and labor-intensive: sandwich cookies, pineapple-jam filled cookies, cheese-topped cookies, and chocolate. ... This is what happens when you live in a land not your own and are too proud to admit you don't know what's going on. It can cost you. Financially.

How to Make the Most of your Rice Cooker

If you live in Asia and have access to electricity, you probably have a rice cooker ... that wonderful gadget where you put in the rice and water, plug in, turn on, and it makes perfect rice and keeps it warm until you want to eat it. But that's just the beginning of what you rice cooker can do. Let's start with leftovers. These can be reheated in the rice cooker as you cook a pot of rice. Simply put them in the steamer basket - most rice cookers come with one - over the rice, before closing and turning on the rice cooker. When the rice is ready, so will the leftovers be, and piping hot too. If your leftovers are sloppy, they may drip through the holes in the steamer basket and flavor your rice. You can avoid this by putting them on a small plate or bowl that fits in but doesn't fill the steamer basket. Secondly, dumplins. The Better Homes & Gardens cookbook has a great dumplin recipe that is designed to be cooked in a covered pot, resting on top of chicken that is simmering in broth. Why shouldn't this work in a steamer basket? Well, I've tried it, and it works great! 1 cup flour, 2 t baking powder, 1/4 t salt, 1 beaten egg, 1/4 cup milk, 2 T cooking oil. Combine the four, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. If desired, you can also add 1/4 t dried oregano. In another bowl (or measuring cup), beat the egg, milk, and cooking oil; add to the flour mixture. Stir with a fork till just moistened. Drop dough in globs directly onto the steamer basket, or use a small baking pan that fits in the steamer basket. Steam for 10 to 12 minutes or until a toothpick poked into the dumplins comes out clean. Most rice cookers will automatically stop active steaming when you open them (at least mine does). Don't get burned! Last but not least, brownies! If, like us, you happen not to have an oven at the moment, you can still enjoy cakelike brownies. Simply buy a steamed brownies mix at your nearest Indonesian or Malaysian grocery store, follow the directions, and steam it in your rice cooker. I don't steam brownies over rice, but I add enough water to cook about 5 cups of rice, since the brownies need to steam for a total of an hour with the mix I use. Adjust as necessary. You can line the steamer basket with waxed paper (being careful not to cover ALL the holes), or use a small brownie pan (which might not hold all your batter).

Native American Gourmet

Even though economics makes it unlikely that I will ever eat food catered by Red Mesa Cuisine, I love, love, love what they are doing. According to their web site, the two chefs, Lois Ellen Frank and Walter Whitewater, both of Native American descent, strive "to bring Native American Cuisine into the contemporary Southwest kitchens and to help sustain traditional foods, traditional agricultural food practices, as well as keep alive culinary techniques from a variety of Native communities." In other words, "Chefs Frank & Whitewater cook contemporary American Indian foods using ancient techniques and ingredients all with a modern twist." Whenever possible, they buy their ingredients from tribes in their area.
I found out about this when our local paper ran an article about Lois Ellen Frank, one that included some recipes. I think my birthday wish list is going to include her book, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations.

Tractor Cake for A Three-Year-Old

You can find much better-looking tractor cakes if you Google it, but this is my version. We used two loaf pans, two small Pyrex bowls, and two cupcake cups to get the desired shapes. A lot of toothpicks holding it together. My little bro built the foil-covered cardboard platform on which we raised the cake. A great use of his architectural training to serve others. The grill and the headlights are licorice candy. The steering wheel is a peppermint patty.
The three-year-old immediately recognized it as a tractor cake and was very pleased.

Corn on the Cob Is Delicious and It Makes a Great Weapon Too

Heart-Shaped Buttermilk Biscuits

Build Your Own Apple Crisp

One person can't eat gluten. Another is avoiding sugar. We accomodated everybody at a recent Bible study meeting by creating a build-your-own-apple-crisp bar.

First came a glass baking dish filled with sliced baked apples (that's right, just apples - no sugar, cinnamon, or anything). Then a glass bowl of sliced fresh apples. Then four little stoneware crocks, each labeled, containing dry oatmeal, chopped pecans, brown sugar, and melted butter.

The crocks looked very pretty, but no, I didn't take a picture of it. I've got a 2-year-old and a 5-month-old, both sick. I don't got time to be taking pictures of food lately.

Breakfast at our house

2-year-old ... a bowl of instant apple-cinnamon oatmeal with 1/4 cup plain yoghurt stirred in

Mom ... an apple, halved, seeds scooped out, cavity filled with peanut butter, plus cold cereal, omlette or whatever my heart desires (e.g. cake)

Dad ... coffee is a must-have, plus oatmeal or egg, toast and cereal

Baby Carrots on Snopes

I eat a lot of baby carrots. So this was moderately disturbing.

Book Review: In Defense of Food

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, by Michael Pollan, 2008

It was in 2006 that I first heard the term “trans fats.” Returning to the U.S. after a four-year absence, we discovered that many food products now boasted they had “none” of something we had never before heard of. A new food baddie had been discovered, or perhaps made up. This constant turnover in nutritional buzzwords is one aspect of a wider phenomenon which Michael Pollan critiques in his book.

Pollan’s basic thesis is that the nutrient-by-nutrient approach to healthy eating has served to confuse consumers by taking nutrition out of the realm of common sense and putting it in the hands of the experts, those scientists who alone can detect the nutrients that are invisible to the naked eye. The same approach has been very profitable to the processed-food industry. If the experts say a nutrient is bad, manufacturers can find a way to remove it from their products. If the experts say a nutrient is good, it can be added to just about anything.

The problem, says Pollan, is that foods are probably greater than the sum of their parts, and certainly greater than the sum of the very limited number of nutrients that have so far been discovered. That’s why taking a supplement that contains vitamin C, vitamin A, and folic acid is not as good for you as eating a carrot. It’s a classic case of scientific reductionism. Reductionism fails again and again, but the modern dream lives on. We keep trying to use our limited knowledge of science to make foods that are better than the plant and animal foods that God causes to grow right out of the ground for us. And of course the foods we make are always much worse than the God-given foods, though sometimes it takes us decades to figure this out. So we spent a generation eating hydrogenated vegetable oils, now known as trans fats, because the experts told us that they were better for us than lard. That's right, lard. Pollan demonstrates that they're actually much worse for us. Than - I must say it again - lard. That was the biggest surprise in the book, for me.

(An interesting side note: part of the blame for Americans’ susceptibility to the notion that basic, natural foods such as meat and cheese could be unqualifiedly bad, can be laid at the door of the church. There has been a strain of asceticism that keeps popping up in the church at various times and places that mistrusts the enjoyment of food, viewing such sensual pleasure as an indulgence of people’s “animal nature.” Its roots lie in the acceptance of the ancient Greek notion that matter is evil and spirit is good. This notion, by the way, is in defiance of the Bible which teaches us that “the kingdom of heaven is not a matter of what we eat or drink” and that “God gives us all things richly to enjoy.” This mistrust of table pleasures goes way back, but it flowered in the modern age in such characters as the Seventh-Day Adventist John Harvey Kellogg, whose contributions to American food faddism Pollan briefly documents [56 – 57]. Just more proof that error in the church can have bizarre, long-term effects in the greater culture.)

Pollan closes his book with some rules of thumb that can be summarized: “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants” and include injunctions like “don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” So: hooray for steak! Hooray for eggs and fish and chicken! Hooray for milk and yoghurt and real cheese (not “cheese food”)! And double hooray for apples and cantaloupe and peppers and tomatoes and cherries and sweet corn and mangos and squash and carrots and watermelon. And lest you think I am a food puritan, hooray for homemade cake as well.

Cupcakes are hot

They made the cover in a recent Winter issue of Taste of Home magazine. They featured in a 2007 Reader's Digest "100 Best" article. And in the April 09 Family Circle's recipe contest, the winners in the Cakes and Desserts divisions were both cupcake recipes.
The trend seems to be huge gobs of frosting. Fine with me.
My sister suggested we make these for a family party. Hers was the vision of cupcakes in bold colors. We just made them from a mix. We whipped up our own frosting with shortening, butter, powdered sugar. Then for each cupcake we used a knife to spread a thin layer of frosting for a base, then we piped on the stars using a very large pipe tip. The final touch was sprinkling them with clear sugar ... also my sister's inspiration. They went like, well ... cupcakes.

Initial Pancakes

My dad used to make us pancakes shaped like our initials. Perhaps someone in your household does this as well. Of course, some kids' initials are easier to make a pancake out of than others. So, if you want it to be really easy, don't name your kid something that starts with M, E, or S.

My father-in-law usually does this just for the grandkids, but the other day he made one for me!

It's just one of those simple creative things you can do that brings joy to the members of your family all out of proportion to the effort it took.

Animal Print Eggs

Boil the eggs for 20 minutes, cool in ice water, dry. Draw on the animal print with a black crayon (except be sure you have a model to look at so that your leopard print looks better than mine!). Soak in yellow or orange egg dye until the desired shade is reached. Drain; allow to dry.

How To Home-Carve a Pineapple

OK, maybe you already know how, but I didn't until I learned it in Indonesia. My work is not the prettiest example of the technique you'll ever see. An Indonesian could carve up a pineapple so the result is gorgeous, even spirals all the way around, and the resulting slices are perfectly notched on the edges. With a machete.

First, cut off the head and base of the pineapple.


Stand the pineapple on end and slice off the skin, top to bottom, not too deeply. Your slices should take off all the skin but leave the little hairy brown dimples.

The hairy brown dimples run in a corkscrew pattern from the top of the pineapple to the bottom. Pick one row and follow it down, making two diagonal cuts just deep enough to remove a wedge of flesh that includes the brown dimples.

Continue with the other rows of dimples.

The end result with be a pineapple with elegant corkscrew grooves. Or in this case not so elegant.

Now lay the pineapple on its side and cut thin slices. Each slice will be round with notched edges. There is no way to "home-core" a pineapple, so your guests will have to cut the flesh off the hard core with a fork before they eat it. If it was important, I guess you could try your luck with a cookie or biscuit cutter.

Amusing Article on Cookbooks

Check out this history of cookbooks that appeared in the Christmas edition of The Economist :

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795620

Now THAT'S a Recipe!

"One of the most unusual dishes I had was called Telluh Babi – sour preserved pork, aged without cooking or refridgeration in a section of a giant bamboo. It is prepared in the following way. Mix one-half small water glass of salt and one plate (three double handfuls) of fatty wild pig meat cut into 1-inch-by-2-inch-by-3-inch pieces and adjust seasoning with pepper – or chillies, if available. Add one double handful of steamed rice (cooled) and mix with a clean wooden paddle (if you touch the mixture with your hands, it will go rotten). Store in a new bamboo container, tightly sealed, for at least one month, but preferably for six months.
"… Uncooked, the mixture does have an almost overpowering odor of sour fermented rice, but the pieces of coated meat become transformed into something altogether different when laid directly on the coals for five minutes. The fat flames up until one would think the meat was burned to a cinder, but when slightly cooled it is absolutely delicious. Crispy and sweet on the outside from the carmelized, tangy, fermented rice and juicy on the inside – full of complex and unexpected flavors. Each bite brought forth a new taste sensation. What a spectrum of flavors: piquant, sour, fragrant, and sweet! When sliced across the grain, the meat reveals an iridescent shimmer similar to corned beef or pastrami."
--from Stranger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo, by Eric Hansen

Fried Spicy Tempe

Tempe is a cheap local source of protein. It is soybeans in a sort of cake, formed into a log. It can be sliced and deep-fried. Here is a log of tempe wrapped in a banana leaf.

The following is a Javanese recipe that goes by a lot of different names, most of which include the words “fried,” “dried,” and “tempe.” (They are: tempe kering, tempe bumbu kering, sambel goreng tempe, sambel goreng kering, and tempe orek.) I decided I wanted to learn to make it in order to save our budget a bit. At first I kind of guessed how to make it, guided by a few tips from a kind lady in the market where I bought the ingredients for my first batch. Then I got some more advice from a friend who is a caterer. My husband also got some advice from a food vendor. But the person who helped the most was my housekeeper. She’s the one who explained that you have to fry the tempe before you sautee the garlic and onions. To an American, this is a very counterintuitive recipe!
Ingredients
1 log of tempe
cooking oil
1 or 2 small fresh red peppers
a handful of string beans (buncis)
3 – 6 shallots (small red onions)
2 – 4 cloves of garlic
lemon grass (serai) (optional)
turmeric root (optional)
a flavor enhancer (e.g. Royko)
about ½ log palm sugar, grated (or 2 – 3 tablespoons brown or white sugar)
salt
1/8 to ¼ cup water
Method
In a large frying pan, heat just enough oil to deep-fry the tempe. Slice the tempe into strips and deep fry. You may need to fry it in two batches.
Drain on paper towels. Frying the tempe is the step that will take the longest. While it is frying, you can do the prep work for the other ingredients.
Rinse and bias-cut the red peppers and the string beans, stringing the beans first if necessary.
Poach the peppers and beans in a little water until done (about 10 minutes), then drain and set aside.
Grate the shallots and garlic. Optionally, grate a small amount of turmeric. Also optionally, cut the lemon grass into 1-centimeter pieces and crush it slightly to release the flavor. When all the tempe is draining on paper towels, there should be a few tablespoons of oil left. If not, cool and pour off any excess oil. Add the grated onions and garlic, and the other optional spices if using. Reheat the oil and sautee the spices, meanwhile sprinkling a packet of flavor enhancer such as Royko over the mixture. (Those allergic to MSG may leave this ingredient out, but you will not have the authentic Indonesian taste.)
When the spices are soft and fragrant, add the tempe back to the pan and stir gently so as to coat the tempe with the sauteed spice mixture without causing the tempe strips to fall apart. When the tempe is well coated, turn off the heat. Add the palm sugar and a little water. (I grate the palm sugar directly onto the tempe.) If the flavor enhancer you used is not very salty, you may need to to add salt. Turn the heat on low. Cook and stir until the sugar and water has become a brown glaze on the tempe strips. When this step is almost done, add the peppers and beans.
Voila! This dish is usually served with rice that has been cooked in a solution of water and coconut milk.