Scratch Food with a Side of Geek Mom and Pop Culture.
Have you ever wondered about how cream turns into butter, or why whipped cream and butter are different? I was thinking about post ideas, when someone said “have you done butter yet?” No, I haven’t done butter. Butter is gradeschool Homesteading 101, and everybody’s got a post on how to make butter. “Yes,” says my friend….
Bacon jam is one of those things I’ve been hearing about but haven’t yet tried. It was sitting quietly on my “try someday” list. Until I noticed I had 8 packages of bacon in my chest freezer for some reason. Looked like a sign to me! When life hands you bacon, you make bacon jam….
If someone had asked me what I thought my most popular post of all time would be, I would not have guessed it would be Chinese fry batters. It consistently is in my top three posts every day. The people have spoken! And they want to make their own Chinese food. This suits me just…
Speaking as a person who has spent more than one anniversary and Valentine’s Day both at home, you don’t have to do anything exceptionally lavish to make the evening special. A little wine, one of your fancier dinner recipes… Whatever you do, remember the wise words of Charles M. Schulz: All you need is love….
Tahini, a paste made from roasted sesame seeds, is one of those unusual foods that has gotten slapped with the labels “ethnic” and “vegan.” That’s no reason to give it the cold shoulder. The odds are that you probably have had tahini pass your lips, though, especially if you’ve ever enjoyed a hummus dip. I…
I love historical minutiae as much as I love science. It could be a related phenomena… there is just so much to KNOW (also, keeps me thinking, helps me try to recover from baby brain…). For instance: carrots giving you better eyesight? TOTAL URBAN LEGEND. That’s right. If you grew up thinking carrots helped you…
My friend Jennifer at Homegrown.org recently asked me to write up a 101 on making homemade pectin instead of using store-bought powdered stuff with dubious GMO ingredients. I happily complied, since I’ve got the hots for scientific research of the food variety. 🙂 You can find the entire 101 article at http://www.homegrown.org/forum/topics/making-pectin-101
(AKA Pastry Cream!) Crème Pâtissière is, at the center of it’s little French heart, just a custard thickened with a starch to make a sturdy confectioner’s product. By the way, custards themselves have a long and colourful history, dating back as far as the Middle Ages! Who knew? Well, that means it definitely counts as retro!…
Apple butter is big in the south. It strikes me as strange that it’s not quite so big here in the Great White North, where apples are in rampant supply come fall. So sad! Great things come from apple butter. I personally like it more as an ingredient than I do as a condiment–it’s…
This sweet & sour sauce uses palm sugar and unsweetened pineapple juice for a more natural, lower-glycemic treat. Make with homemade ketchup to avoid all HFCS and refined sugar. Serve over sweet & sour breaded chicken or pork, if you wish! Or maybe with meatballs 🙂