Freshly baked Oatmeal Bread - comfort food doesn't get much better. This bread recipe is a comfort for the cook as well, because it is simple and dependable, producing light, finely textured loaves every time. Moreover, because this recipe includes oats, it is full of whole grain nutrition. Neither the dough nor the resulting bread is delicate or fussy; this is the dough wrapped around hot dogs for our Halloween Severed Fingers.
There is a lot of yeast in this bread - two packets or 4 1/2 teaspoons - so it is full of life. When you add warmed milk to the dry ingredients, all that yeast gets so excited that it can hardly contain itself. It's important to watch this dough because it rises quickly.
The original recipe comes from the Quaker Oats website, but since I can't help experimenting, the following recipe is somewhat different. I use canola oil in place of margarine or butter, and even though the oats add plenty of nutrition, I sneak in a cup or so of spelt flour. If you use soy instead of dairy milk, you'll have thoroughly lactose-free bread.
In my collection of Halloween Party Food, Severed Fingers have to rank close to the favorite. These little digits are absurdly easy to make and they can't be beat for sheer "ick" factor. As an extra bonus, they come close to being nutritious, depending on your choice of hot dog and bread dough.
Hot dog "fingers" wrapped in bread dough "bandages" pretty much sums up this recipe. I cut each dog in half crosswise to make smaller "finger food," but they could be left full size. Just about any bread dough will do, from refrigerator crescent rolls to biscuits to frozen bread dough. Since I'm baking Oatmeal Bread for the party anyway, I set aside a portion to use as bandages for the fingers.
Transforming ordinary hot dogs into amputated fingers requires a specific visual cue: fingernails. Sliced almonds do quite nicely. The only possible difficulty is shaping the end of the wiener to receive the sliced nut, but after a couple of tries, you'll be giggling in ghastly glee.
The following recipe makes about 40 fingers, figuring on 10 hot dogs to a package, enough for a party with maybe a few left over for lunch the next day.
More Halloween Party Food, and this time there are flies all over the table. Indeed, there were two real flies buzzing about the kitchen last night, but those are not the critters that concern us.
Last Halloween, when our party theme was Wizards & Witches, I found a clever method (it's hardly a recipe) for making Chocolate Frogs with Oreos, mini pretzels and M&Ms. This Halloween Party's theme is Movie Monsters, so I messed around with the Oreos and pretzels until I came up with The Fly. I think Jeff Goldblum would be pleased.
The only scary aspect of these little critters is that I've had to abandon all scruples and admit that they have no redeeming nutritive value whatsoever. The raisin eyes are the only detail resembling real food, and even those could be easily replaced by small candies. My early flies had Jujubes for eyes, but both David and I decided they were inedible. I nixed the M&Ms because they turned my flies into frogs. But golden raisins - the ones more yellow than brown - look about as good as fly's eyes can get.
If small children are involved and you really must put nutrition into these, half a dried plum ("prune" is such a nasty word) or apricot could take the place of the marshmallow. I suppose you might also bake up whole wheat wafers to replace the Oreos, but, listen. There must be JOY in life. This is Halloween food, so make it a party.
Be warned, the chocolate can get very messy. I had it in my hair and on my glasses, among other places. I also have a nice friend who enjoyed licking it off. I'm talking about my dog - what were you thinking? But let's get back to the kitchen.
How to eat flies: After taste testing with unsuspecting friends, one comment was, "These are delicious, but they're hard to eat." A direct frontal attack of biting straight down through marshmallow and cookie invariably resulted in the whole creature falling apart in the hand. The better method is to bite the marshmallow from the top of the fly, then proceed to eat the pretzel wings, and only then consume the Oreo cookie by whatever method one prefers.
Recipe: Chocolate Flies
Chocolate Sandwich Cookies (any variety)
Mini twist Pretzels
Marshmallows (full sized)
Golden Raisins
Chocolate Chips, melted
You were expecting amounts? Here you go: for each Chocolate Fly you're going to need one cookie, two pretzels, 1/3 marshmallow, two golden raisins and some melted chocolate. That's about as specific as it's going to get.
Melt about 1/2 cup chocolate chips in the microwave. That takes about 40 seconds in my unit. When the chips get glossy, take them out of the microwave and stir them. Surprise! They don't lose their shape in the microwave, only when stirred. I'd like someone to explain the physics of that.
Slicing marshmallows: not as difficult as it sounds. Quite easy, in fact. I use kitchen shears, and if the marshmallows stick to the blades, moisten the shears with water. Don't fret over cutting the marshmallows into perfect thirds - just cut off one end, then cut off the other end, and what's left of the middle is your third piece.
Now smear some melted chocolate on the top of a cookie, and stick on two pretzels and one marshmallow slice. Load your little spatula or knife with more melted chocolate, and cover all the visible marshmallow. If you get chocolate drips everywhere, you're a cook after my own heart. Where's the fun in being tidy? Add two golden raisins for eyes, and that's one fly finished.
Slide your sticky flies into the fridge for an hour or so to firm up the chocolate. Then they can sit at room temperature without melting, unless you're one of my neighbors here in Arizona where it reached 90 degrees again today. In any case, keep your Chocolate Flies cool and dry until Halloween Party time.
The centerpiece of my Halloween Party buffet is the Graveyard Cake. Start with any square or rectangular cake. A single layer is fine because there will be so much stuff going on the top of the cake there's no need for additional filling. You want a fairly sturdy cake that will tolerate being poked around and still support the gravestones, fences, ghosts and dead tree. The Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cake would be a good choice, or try the recipe for October Spice Cake, below.
But don't knock yourself out with a gourmet recipe, because the whole point of this cake is the graveyard it holds.
In the version pictured left, I made a standing cross by adhering one cinnamon stick to another with florists' putty, then drizzled on black icing (from a tube).
The graveyard path is paved with poppy seeds and outlined in black icing. The fence is made of tiny pretzel sticks and toasted coconut, chopped nuts and brown sugar are scattered around looking like dirt, stones and dry leaves.
The gravestones are Pepperidge Farm "Milano" sandwich cookies, cut in two crosswise and gently pressed into the cake so they stand more or less upright. Tombstones are expected to tip a bit, aren't they? When I'm energetic, I pipe bats, skulls and names onto the cookies with black icing. But here's a secret: I usually use a fine black marker. So far as I know, none of
my guests have suffered any horrible fates, at least not from the cake
decorations.
What ARE those things on the Halloween party tray? They look like stark white bones with a bloody sauce - are they edible?
Of course they are all edible, particularly if you have a sweet tooth. The sweet crispy bones are formed of simple meringue which:, if you have never made it, is easier than you might expect: egg whites, sugar and vanilla, whipped up and baked in silly Halloween shapes. The Bloody Sauce is your favorite red jelly or jam, strained and thinned a bit with spice for zing. That's all there is to it.
But give yourself a break and do NOT attempt to bake meringues on a rainy or humid day. Both you and the confection will end up weeping.
Are these cookies or candies? Without flour or butter, meringues taste like candy, but because they are baked cookbooks generally list them with cookies. In any case, eating the weightless little clouds is essentially the same as eating straight sugar. In fact, meringue sticks (or bones) make nice stirring sticks for mugs of coffee or tea.
Not interested in sweets? Later this week we'll be posting a recipe for very different savory Halloween Bones and a spicy Blood Sauce.
Halloween party food! Let the spiders, maggots and every sort of disgusting thing crawl over all your party food, and everyone will be delighted! Nasty dry corn cobs anyone? Or would you prefer one with a juicy worm? Don't forget to dip that corn cob in the green Moldy Sauce. Yum!
The Halloween "corn cobs," of course, are crisp cornbread sticks, baked in the old cast-iron corn stick pan. If you need one, check eBay, where there are 22 posted today as I'm writing; you can also purchase new corn stick pans from Lodge.
The worms in our party food are slivers of pepperoni and the Moldy Sauce is Salsa Verdi. But that can be our little secret, until next month when you might pass around Crispy Corn Sticks and Salsa Verde during the Thanksgiving football game. But until you must serve family-friendly food, have a disgustingly happy Halloween party!
Twelve years ago, my husband and I made the drive from Reno to
Phoenix. To fill up those empty miles between one desert city and the next we
bought a book on tape, Robin Cook's "Toxin," vividly describing the horrors of E-coli contamination of ground beef. Even though we knew it was fiction, that Cook
book convinced us to become vegetarian for the next 5 years.
Eventually, at our physician's insistence we began to accept gifts of elk steak and venison roasts
from hunters. We slowly learned to enjoy the local grass-fed beef,
Arizona buffalo and an occasional burger. We've even sampled some
persuasively labeled "natural" chicken, in spite of that old X File
episode; you know, the one set in the poultry processing plant with the
motto "Good People, Good Food." Let's just say it was a bit too literal
for our taste.
But on Sunday, October 4th '09, the New York Times ran a front page article on the contamination of ground beef in the U.S., "The Burger that Shattered Her Life."
I had to look twice to be certain the piece was not written by Robin
Cook. When horror fiction becomes horror reality, something needs to
change.
I will not expand further here on the contamination of our meat supply other than urge you to read the Times article
and "Toxin" (Click on either the paperback or audio book featured in
our Amazon store, in the left column of this website.) Here
I only want to suggest three positive steps that might reduce the odds of getting contaminated meat.
First, we can be selective. Becoming vegetarian
or vegan is an option for some but not all of us. You might call us selective
omnivores; we choose wild game when possible and hunt for trustworthy
local producers who are
accountable to consumers in the community.
My second suggestion is to do simple
processing ourselves. Don't panic -- I'm not talking about
slaughtering pigs in the back yard or raising heirloom hens ala Martha
Stewart. Besides, HOAs tend to frown on such activities. But we do have choices.
How many of us already have powerful food processors, grinders and
mixers that are rarely used? If you aren't lucky enough to have a
buffalo ranch down the road or a generous hunter in the family, you might buy a piece of
chuck or boneless turkey or chicken breast. A single piece of meat is safer than a package of ground meat because you see exactly what you are getting and you know
how many animals went into that package: one. A single cut of meat has less
surface area exposed to pathogens. You can wash it thoroughly then drop
it into your food processor or grinder along with exactly as much or
little fat as you want. You can grind it fine for burgers or meatloaf
or make a coarser grind for chili and casseroles. You can even replace
the beef fat with olive oil for a moister, more heart-healthy burger.
The
third suggestion is simplest: eat less meat. Nobody needs to eat
meat every day, much less two or three times daily (with the possible
exception of pregnant moms, which most of us clearly are not.) Nobody
needs to eat 12 or 16 ounces of meat as a single serving. Our concept
of appropriate portion size is so
warped that we take 1/4 lb. burgers
for granted and hardly blink at double and triple quarter-pounders.
Then we add bacon and cheese, piling enough protein into one sandwich
to feed a family of four!
Sorry, I nearly fell into a rant-&-rave there. I meant to say, calmly and with great patience, that a reasonable portion
of meat is 3 ounces and even that can be enjoyed two or three times a
week, with alternative proteins filling most of our nutrition needs.
We
don't have to be helpless pawns in the game of multi-national
agribusiness. We can jump off the industrial meat-wagon any time we choose.
"Our Daily Bread . . . " The phrase is so familiar that we hardly think about it. All things having to do with bread are tangled up in the deepest symbols and myths of our culture: the wheat, the harvest, milling the grain, mixing, kneading, leavening, baking, breaking, cutting, sharing, eating . . . all have profound significance reflected in all religious traditions, mysticism and art.
Soft, white, pre-sliced plastic-wrapped supermarket bread delivered daily to the supermarket might not be particularly evocative. But fragrant, crusty brown loaves hot from the kitchen oven? That's guaranteed to evoke salivation if nothing else. So let's talk about that.
My recipe here for Daily Bread combines whole grain spelt with white flour. Gasp! White flour? Isn't that anathema?
Well, yes, to a point. And the point is to produce a light, tender crumb, i.e., the inner texture of the loaf. Tender and light simply do not happen with 100% whole grains. (If you have recipes to disprove that statement, I'm willing to experiment.) But honestly, have you seen the worn-down nubs of teeth in the skulls of iron-age Europeans? That shows what can happen when taking the whole grain thing too far. Choosing between baking whole grain bread that could cause a concussion in a food fight and compromising with a bit of white flour, at long last I have chosen to compromise. But only a little.
The Daily Bread also requires kneading. From the enthusiastic responses to recently published no-knead bread recipes, a lot of people think kneading is a bad thing. I disagree: much of the pleasure of bread making rests in the involvement with the living dough. For those whose schedule or physical strength prevents that much effort, a good stand mixer with a dough hook is a fine robotic kneader, producing excellent results.
Don't give up if your first efforts don't produce perfect results. A wise teacher said that anything worth doing is worth doing wrong. Our early flops teach us how to succeed the next time, and for that reason I'm swallowing my pride and including one of my failures at the end of the recipe that follows. Baking a good loaf of bread is worth learning to do well.
"Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
That's pretty close to Michael Pollan's declaration on the cover
of In Defense of Food.
In reducing his slogan to as few words as possible, Pollan does not specify "real" food, but the entire book explores the difference between what is really nourishing and the stuff we mistakenly think of as food.
That Pollan and others promoting real foods are making a difference is evident in that the NY Times Sunday Magazine food issue (October 11, 2009) was filled with articles and recipes concerned with improving the way we eat. It gave me the sense that things were changing and that Western Culture might be ready to give up its fast food ways and return to real farm-grown home cooked food again.
Then I took my carefully arranged natural meat-and-potato hearty appetizers to the block party, and got dope-slapped by reality. Oh, the young girls thought the tiny potatoes with their meatballs were adorably cute, and their moms pronounced the presentation very clever. Then they chowed down on take-out buffalo wings covered in pasteurized cheese food product, and most of the adorable potatoes returned home uneaten.
How do we get real food past the lip-service and down the hatch?
The sad fact is that after decades of eating artificially enhanced foods loaded with fat, sugar and salt, those are the tastes we crave. Former U.S. Surgeon General David Kessler argues in his book The End of Overeating that these sweet, fat foods actually alter our brains and metabolisms so that we are addicted: we urgently crave the substance that harms us.
It wouldn't matter if my meatballs were the Ultima Thule of meaty excellence; lacking globs of fat, salt and sugar, they are unpalatable by contemporary standards. So is that encouraging or discouraging?
Go ahead, call me Pollyanna, but I'll choose to be encouraged. I'm back in the kitchen today devising a sweet mustard topping for those meatballs, and I'm working on a modified version of my favorite whole grain yeast bread. Maybe my last recipe didn't seduce anyone into righteous eating - but they'll all be hungry again tonight, and I intend to be ready with more real food.
Both Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and Dr. Kessler's The End of Overeating can be ordered from the Amazon store found in the sidebar on this page.)
"The party is Friday night - bring a hearty appetizer!"
"Hearty Appetizer?" Guess that doesn't mean potato chips and onion mix dip. What is a hearty appetizer, anyway? For our purposes, we'll say a hearty appetizer is any food that can be eaten with the fingers while carrying on a conversation, that does not actually do what appetizers are desined to do: it doesn't leave you hungry for something heartier anytime soon.
In the 80s, we combined cocktail weiners with cherry pie filling in a Crock Pot, or heated frozen meatballs with canned mushroom soup and Velveeta. But in this new century, we try to be just a bit more enlightened. So what qualifies as satisfying finger-food -- more than a cracker but not quite a meal -- that might originate on a farm instead of in a chemical factory?
My suggestion involves tiny new potatoes (you could call them natural 'tater tots) stuffed with spiced ground meat. Once you get the basic idea, the possibilities are endless and you can party hearty.
On Saturdays we share some of our
favorite things – appliances, websites, kitchen gadgets & tools, cookbooks
& books about food, and anything else that we think is cool.
Once upon a time, the Lady of the House had plenty of help in the kitchen, if she ever bothered to go there at all. Cook ruled the roost (and roast and roux) with servant girls and scullery maids at her beck and call. Once upon another time, nearly every home had a spinster aunt or not-yet-married daughter or two, so there was always someone available to stir the pot while Mama trussed the goose. There were even recipes for things called "Nun's Cake," because only a convent had women who could beat egg whites for hours without stopping.
We might not have servant girls but we have pretty handy substitutes in our appliances.
One appliance I would not give up is my heavy duty stand mixer. Mine is a discontinued green Kitchen Aid model with wire whip and dough hook as well as a standard beater. It seems mine was the last model of its size that does not have a tilting head, which is admittedly rather awkward. Doesn't matter, I love it. In addition to the countless ordinary tasks performed by a stand mixer, the 325 watts motor allows me to mix and knead bread dough effortlessly, and consequently I feel no need for a bread machine. (No, KitchenAid does not sponsor this blog, although if anyone has connections, please send them my way.)
Like everyone else, I used to have hand-held electric mixers. They burned up one after another. When I wanted to make bread, they were no help at all. Would you try to clean all the carpet in the house with a Dust Buster? If you love to cook and want to enjoy the process, a quality stand mixer is a smart investment.
The other favorite appliance in constant use is my food processor. Also a Kitchen Aid, it has a plastic housing, and lacks the indestructible feel the mixer has. I replaced the work bowl cover when the locking mechanism broke and I wish additional blades were standard rather than separately priced accessories. That said, the thing is a work horse and takes an enormous load of work off my hands. The more I use it, the more I learn about its capabilities.
With a few exceptions, the food processor does most of the jobs that used to be done in the blender. The processor simply keeps the food in contact with the blade more effectively than the blender. Two notable exceptions are smoothies and salad dressings including mayonnaise. The blender's upright bowl is better designed for liquids while the processor makes quick work of everything else.
Finally, since we're considering electrical things with spinning blades, I keep a little whirligig coffee grinder for spices: anise, cardamom, cinnamon sticks, cloves, coriander, cumin, peppercorns. When you smell freshly ground spices for the first time, you won't want to go back to the pre-ground dead stuff in sad little bottles.
To sum up, don't do more work than you have to do. Let the right appliances do the heavy labor for you, and you'll find yourself cooking more joyfully.
Here is a simple recipe with all the advantages of the traditional American Apple Pie, without the pie tin, based on a recipe in Julia Child & Company. Since the crust is the main feature of this dessert, it nicely demonstrates how the schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) produced in the previous post can be used in pastry. You could use butter, of course.
Julia's turnover serves 6 - 8, which is more than we need in our house, even considering the difference in expected serving sizes. You can easily double or quadruple the amounts given in my version. And because no pie pan is involved, feel free to make the turnover as large as you like, or in any shape you like.
One secret to keeping pastry dough cold - and producing flaky results - is to use a chilled marble slab as a working surface. Such things are available at cooking stores; I found mine at a thrift store where it had once been the top of a small table. It used to slide nicely into our old refrigerator, but the new side-by-side refused admittance. Improvising again, I chilled the marble with a few bags of frozen vegetables. There's more than one way to do what must be done.
You want to bake this pastry on a cookie sheet without edges in order to slide the turnover on and off the surface without breaking the delicate crust. Although I've never baked a jelly roll in my life, all the cookie sheets I own are actually jelly-roll pans with raised edges. What to do? No worries: I flip the jelly-roll pan upside down, spray and cover it with parchment, then spray again. Instant baking sheet.
Confession: I am so glad we didn't video this recipe! Not only did I spill chicken fat all over the floor along with a cup of ice water, but I burned my thumb removing my first effort from the oven. That 1st turnover is shown here on the blue plate. It disappeared plenty fast, and no one complained, but, well, I knew. Some days just need too many do-overs.
For my second effort I turned out the dough from the processor onto a floured silicon baking sheet instead of waxed paper, and worked on that surface from there on. I think Julia would have loved it! I hope you'll try the recipe, because it's quite good in spite of my goof-ups.
What is Schmaltz? It's chicken fat and it's good stuff for cooking and baking.
Why schmaltz? Because it's a fun word, and my Zia Silvia never taught me the Italian word for chicken fat. Why not butter or vegetable oil or lard or that butter-flavored shortening that comes in the big can?
Butter is wonderful. It's just that some of us cannot eat it because of that inconvenient problem, lactose intolerance. It also can be rather expensive.
Vegetable oil is great, particularly olive oil or canola oil. But some baked goods need a solid fat; oil simply does not produce a flaky pastry.
Natural lard is also fine, but it can be difficult to find. The lard product sold in most stores is partially hydrogenated, which means it has been altered on a molecular level. The same is true for margarine and vegetable based shortenings, whether the old fashioned white shortening or the more recent butter-flavored shortening. Any partially hydrogenated oil, fat or shortening should be avoided. Which brings us to an entirely natural, non-hydrogenated fat: schmaltz.
Rendering schmaltz, or chicken fat, is something that happens any time we stew a chicken. In addition to schmaltz, we end up with chicken broth and cooked meat, all of which are very useful to have around.
Start with a whole stewing chicken, or cut up parts, with all the skin and bones. Inexpensive bony pieces like wings, backs and necks are fine. Do NOT cut away those large clumps of white fat, throw it all in the pot.
Wash the chicken and/or parts well, then cover with cold water in a large pot. The chicken will probably float, which is fine. Add a heaping teaspoonful of salt, and a good splash (up to a quarter cup) of cider vinegar, cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a slow simmer and use a big metal spoon to skim off the foam on top of the broth. Let it stew in its own juices until the meat falls off the bones - at least three to four hours. You can also do all this in a large slow-cooker while you're off doing something more interesting.
Other stuff added to the stew pot is entirely optional, including the Simon & Garfunkel herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Ground herbs can be tossed loose in the broth, or use fresh whole herbs tied up in a coffee filter. For even more flavor, include some whole peppercorns, allspice berries, whole cloves and a couple of bay leaves. Use whole herbs when cooking in a slow cooker. And if there's a partial bottle of white wine left over from the other evening, that goes in, too.
Vegetables can also be added. The usual things are garlic, onions, carrots, celery and celery tops, plus any root vegetables. I avoid the coles: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, as their flavors get too strong. But now the pot is turning into soup; none of these are necessary if you are just interested in broth and schmaltz.
So let's say the chicken has been simmering away in the slow cooker or in the stew pot all afternoon, and now you come back and find your kitchen smelling like some gramma's farm house in a winter fairy tale. The meat is falling off the bones and the broth has a nice shiny layer of grease floating on top.
Lift the chicken, or more likely, scoop the chicken pieces, bones, herb bundle, veggies and scraps onto a platter. Let the broth cool a few minutes - you don't want to be pouring anything while it's still boiling - then pour it through a strainer into a refrigerator container. Tomorrow you can spoon the solidified fat (schmaltz) from the top of the broth into another container. If you're really dedicated, you could melt the fat and strain it again, but hey, life is short and there are other things to do.
Back up, we still have that stuff we scooped out of the broth. Can't leave it sitting on the counter. Take out the larger pieces of meat: breasts, thighs and maybe parts of the drumsticks, and seal them into plastic bags, to be frozen and used later in curries, salads, soups and any other dishes calling for cooked chicken.
That leaves a big pile of bones, skin, scraps of meat, onions, herbs and miscellaneous stuff sitting in a mess on the platter. Kitchen tradition dictates sorting carefully through these scraps for bits of nourishing meat, separating out hunks of skin and gristle for the dog, and saving anything that might be borderline edible. But I'm going to suggest something rather different. Brace yourself, this could be a shock . . .
Throw it all away. Seriously, the flavor and nutrients are all in the broth, and your time is more valuable that a few boiled scraps. You've saved the good stuff, so toss the rest.
All done. The stew pot, platter, ladle and spoons go into the dishwasher, and you have lovely cooked chicken, broth and schmaltz stored in the freezer and fridg. Life is good. Now, what sort of pastry shall we make with that schmaltz?
I love October! Even before moving to the Arizona desert, where October brings summer's end and blessed cool weather, I have loved this month. Fat bumply pumpkins and dry corn cobs turn me all woobly inside and I want to pull on an old sweater and knee socks.
Then I come to my senses and realize I'm standing in the craft store check-out line, tearing up over a plastic pumpkin. It's 93 degrees in Phoenix on October 2nd. Sweaters and socks will have to wait, but I'm baking something with pumpkin tonight.
My mother used the recipe on the back of Libby Canned Pumpkin for her pumpkin pie filling, but her crust was a graham cracker crumb crust with chocolate chips baked in it. I have never been able to reproduce that crust - either the chocolate burns to the bottom of the pan or the chips float to the top of the pumpkin filling.
Even so, the combination of pumpkin and semi-sweet chocolate is unforgettable, and this small cake combines them nicely. It is chocolaty enough to feel indulgent, with enough nutritious whole-grains, eggs and pumpkin to feel righteous. It also happens to be just the right size for a family or small party without a lot of left-overs tempting me in the middle of the night.
{Warning: My husband hated this cake! Apparently, he had a sad childhood bereft of chocolaty pumpkin memories. You'll have to try it and decide who has the best taste.}
Baking bread from scratch? Making your own sausage or rendering lard? Why would anyone go to all that trouble? There is convenient food in nice little packages, ready to cook or reheat right in the store!
True, sometimes our own families think we're crazy for passing up convenience in favor of cooking from scratch. That is, until they taste the sausage or bite into the pie crust.
Health and safety are two big concerns here, along with adapting recipes for family members with food allergies. But beyond all that, we're determined that food should taste wonderful. Food is meant to be gathered and prepared and shared and eaten with great joy.
"You are what you eat." If that is true, what have we become? What do we want to be?
