Musings

When I was shopping for dinner groceries:

Fact 1: we hadn’t had any corn-on-the-cob yet this summer.

Fact 2: I read an article recently about how many more micro-nutrients are in plants of color than in highly bred low-color varieties.

Fact 3: I needed a starch for the menu, and we’ve had rice and potatoes many times recently.

Fact 4: no kidding—$6 for five ears. (I hear opportunity knocking for serious gardeners.)

And, my heavens, was that red maize tasty! All the way to the cob. (Red cob.)

And, yes, a splurge, but ya gotta do that once in a while—if you at all can—in some form or another….

Posted at 8:37 PM | 2 Comments »

I’ve been thinking about KW spending the weekend where she has views of Canada (me? jealous? no comment…). Searching the archive for a picture, I came across this, collected when we were last in that foreign nation.

Needless to say, we left this fine beverage (?) right there on the shelf.

Posted at 7:17 PM | 3 Comments »

Gardiner Harris in the NYTimes says lots of spices sold in this country are…suspect. For salmonella. And most of the spices come from India and Mexico. Harris writes about a 3-year long project by the FDA:

In a study of more than 20,000 food shipments, the food agency found that nearly 7 percent of spice lots were contaminated with salmonella, twice the average of all other imported foods. Some 15 percent of coriander and 12 percent of oregano and basil shipments were contaminated, with high contamination levels also found in sesame seeds, curry powder and cumin. Four percent of black pepper shipments were contaminated.

And this is why this is a serious matter:

The United States is one of the world’s largest spice importers, bringing in 326 metric tons in 2012 valued at $1.1 billion, according to the Department of Agriculture. Of those imports, which account for more than 80 percent of the total United States spice supply, 19 percent were from India and 5 percent from Mexico.

Bon appétit.

Posted at 9:33 PM | 2 Comments »

Lately we’ve had a little jones going on here, a modification to cocktail hour: Thomasville Georgia’s own Sweet Grass Dairy‘s Green Hill mini-wheel. I take it out an hour before showtime so it reaches room temp.

Posted at 8:35 PM | 1 Comment »

On the theory that plants with strong flavors provide great nutrients and antioxidants and those bits that aren’t protein, carbos, or fat, I am always happy to add piles of Thai basil leaves to this dish.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on It’s Thai basil season

Friday rituals. More or less.

Tonight’s included Samized BBQ sauce.

I write this following a NYT article by Catherine Saint Louis from the 9th, “Rituals Make Our Food More Flavorful.” (Behind a firewall.)

Posted at 8:48 PM | Comments Off on Tweaked sauce

The very kindly Guru brought home a new gin for me to try.

Just gin over ice. (purring) Verrrrry nice.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

BBQ, as in meat with flavors cooked over an open flame/fire, is a world-wide cooking technique. B’s version this afternoon had a Korean twist and fit into a pan-Asian meal to celebrate her son’s 24th.

BTW, we guests also discussed dumplings, as in boiled dough (moistened ground grain) mixtures, stuffed or no—concluding that they are near-global, too.

Posted at 6:21 PM | 1 Comment »

Agriculture is an integrated biological production system, in which several crops are grown in combination (variously called polyculture, intercropping, or associated cropping), in succession (crop rotation), or in a combination of both approaches.*

That phrase, “integrated biological production system,” caught my eye. What if it’s just a few plants, like I have? Is that agriculture or some version of horticultural dilettantism?

The first sentence of a 2009 article by M. Kwak, J.A. Kami, and P. Gepts, titled “The Putative Mesoamerican Domestication Center of Phaseolus vulgaris Is Located in the Lerma–Santiago Basin of Mexico”, and published in the journal Crop Science (49:554–563). And, yeah, I realize that Phaseolus vulgaris is the bean, and the photo is maize—you work with what you have….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on IBPS = agriculture

In honor of our recent UP houseguests and because it seemed like the thing to do (blueberry special at store), I made blueberry pancakes for b’fast. That’ll either get you fired up or weigh you down. Seemed like the former for both of us….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Quick cakes