alanaclaire

Oh old bread, how I love you. Hard and impenetrable, past your prime, you will feed us all.

Last week, I ran into a cheese shop that sells not only cheese, but also expensive mustard and caramel corn from France, and most importantly, big crusty baguettes. I had garlic bread on the brain, and although I know I was asking for it by running in at 4:55, I was a little bit heartbroken to see the bread shelf empty. Opening my gaze, however, revealed a floor basket filled with bread marked “day old.” It was, as I mentioned, the end of the day, and so this bread was pretty much day after day old. As I grabbed two loaves, I swear I heard little cries of “yippee” from the bread itself. The owner, who was on the phone, swiped at me. “Is that all you want?” he asked. “Take them. I would have just thrown them out.”

Tags: Food Sunday, strata

Over the last couple of days, something has become very clear to me.

I live in a part of the world where people are conscious about the food they eat. The Co-op gets as much business as the Price Chopper, and each of our many CSA’s have long wait lists, full of people just begging for celeriac and spinach. To put it mildly, this town eats a lot of sprouts.

But I knew all of that. What I did not know is that there is also a deep passion in the hearts of my friends and neighbors for the oreo cookie.

Tags: baking, cookies, cooking, Food Sunday, oreos

In honor of February, the time before the tax return arrives, the month that begs for creativity, we have been exploring the eternal possibility of the cabbage this week. While my girls have been making their valentines, I have been chopping, rolling, stuffing, and falling in love with the cabbage.

All that cheesemaking last week was pretty great, but I thought we might do butter this week.

I’ve been making butter here and there, and of course enjoying it in the way that I do with activities of that nature, and I thought it might be time to tell you about it. It is February after all, and I’m guessing we all need a bit of a thrill, and homemade butter might just do the trick.

I’ve gotten more curious about making normal everyday foods in this last year. I’ve made fresh pasta, puff pastry, ice cream, pudding, granola, yogurt, bread, salad dressing, ricotta, tomato sauce, applesauce, pickles, sauerkraut, hamburger buns, chai- whew, we could start to fill a supermarket of our own here.

Today, we add mozzarella to the list.

Did you get so excited about meat last week? Did you befriend a kind farmer, and did you buy half of a lovely pig and unpack it into your freezer? Did you leave out one of those lovely roasts to defrost in your fridge? Are you having faith that I’ll help you figure out what to do with it?

Thanks for trusting me. I won’t let you down.

Vegetarians, this post is not for you. I promise I’ll have something for you next week, but today, skip over this one.

Today we’re going to talk about meat.

We eat a fair amount of meat around here.

As I get older, I can’t rally myself to get too worried about wrinkles and gray hair. No matter how hard I try to believe that youth equals beauty, I just think that women seem to get more beautiful as they get older. I can’t help it.

I think this is going to be a decade when Wonderbread goes under. I think that whole grains are going to make a real comeback, and not in a health food-y macrobiotic kind of way. I’m seeing a decade of real, whole food on tables everywhere. I’m feeling optimistic.

How about we start now?

Have you ever had a wheat berry?

What do you say we take a little break from this holiday thing for a few days?  I don’t know about you, but I am full of pie and salt and cream, and I am feeling the need for a brief hiatus before the chili and champagne of New Year’s Eve. Let’s look for something green to eat.

Easier said than done. By this point in the year the lettuce in the store starts looking more wilted than it should, and it is far more appealing to heat up some of that leftover Christmas Ham.

But wait- pause for a moment before you rev up the microwave.  If sad and slimy salads do not excite you, I offer you a new set of greens that will both cleanse the palate and give your liver a momentary rest.