Category Archives: food and cooking

From the box to the pot to the bowl…

agriculture, food and cooking

Recently we subscribed to a CSA (community-supported agriculture) service, one that delivers to our door a box of organically grown vegetables in the wee hours of the morning, in our case every two weeks. This morning I opened the front door to find the second box sitting on the step, full of my favorite kind of goodies. I spent a while thinking about which things to use immediately and which to put away in the fridge – also I had to browse recipes for beech mushrooms, which I found are too bitter to eat raw, and for radishes, which I didn’t feel like eating raw.

The two big bunches of broccoli immediately suggested a cream soup, so I worked on that while munching the sweetest Nantes carrots and washing some spinach leaves, which Mr. Glad put into his sandwich at lunchtime. After I poured the soup into a bowl I wanted to sprinkle a few chives on top, so I visited my huge clump next to the patio only to find that they had disappeared in the hard winter we had, and only a few short scapes (I just learned this name for the stems) were venturing forth at so far. I sprinkled some nutmeg instead.

The ingredients in this batch were: broccoli, onions, garlic, butter, chicken broth, black pepper, nutmeg, salt and cream. When the vegetables were tender I put almost everything into the blender, but I kept back some soft chunks for texture. After taking the picture, I ate the bowl of soup, and I’ll likely have another tonight for dinner. It might be my favorite way to eat broccoli.

Food for the Poets

food and cooking, poetry, quotes,

The literary-foodie blog Paper and Salt has a newsletter from which I gleaned this tidbit of history: T.S. Eliot’s Culinary Weakness: Hot Fudge

In his letters, T. S. Eliot wrote that his favorite food memory was of duck à l’orange, but he didn’t dine on fancy French fare around the clock. Sometimes there’s only one thing that will hit the spot: a hot fudge sundae. According to his second wife, Valerie, a healthy scoop of vanilla slathered in chocolate sauce made this modernist poet a very happy guy.

If you have doubts that someone who wrote The Wasteland could enjoy the simple pleasures of a sundae, you’re not alone. In an interview with The Independent, Valerie recalled Eliot’s succinct response to his dessert critics. “He was eating it in a restaurant once and a man opposite said, ‘I can’t understand how a poet like you can eat that stuff.’ Tom, with hardly a pause, said, ‘Ah, but you’re not a poet,’ and went on eating.”

Chocolate Carrot Cake

food and cooking, ,


In my vast recipe files I found a recipe for Chocolate Carrot Cake, without a date or URL such as I try to include these days. We were having guests for dinner, and though it was a fasting day I wanted to serve dessert. This cake looked easy enough, so I adjusted some things and was really pleased with the outcome.

 

 

Chocolate Carrot Cake
6 servings

1 1/2 cups finely grated carrots (about 3 medium large)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup coconut oil
1 cup boiling water
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl combine the carrots, sugar, and oil. Pour the boiling water over this mixture.

In a separate bowl, combine the remainder of the ingredients. Add to the carrot mixture and mix well. Pour into a greased 8″ square pan. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Bake for 40 minutes.

I tested the cake before our friends arrived, to make sure it was agreeable, and it was so agreeable I tested two more slivers off the edge of the first little square hole I had created. It’s nearly as moist as a brownie, and the amount of chocolate seems to compensate for the lack of butter. We aren’t big cake-eaters in our family, but Mr. Glad and our guests liked it very much. I will have to call it my best vegan cake so far.

A cookie might be a little seedy bun cake.

Christmas, family, food and cooking, history, , , ,

By the time I came into my husband’s family, Seedy Buns were only a memory in the minds of the older generations. My father-in-law said they were cookies featuring caraway seeds and a treat eaten at Christmas, but perhaps he got them mixed up with Seedy Biscuits? Because a bun is bread, we all know that, whereas a biscuit can be a cookie if it is in the British Isles. But what if you take a bun and sweeten and shorten it up? Might it be like a little cake?

I never thought of a cookie as being a little cake until I read The Little Book to my children very long ago. “A cookie is a little cake,” it says right there. I know that type of cookie, and I don’t really care for them. I like mine chewy or crispy, but not cake-y.

In my joyful Christmas cookie project, which is my art at this time of year, I had the idea to make a modern Seedy Bun that would hearken back to the ancestors who brought their Cornish traditions to California.

Once a cousin had taken a box of sugar cookie mix and thrown in a can of caraway seeds to create a simple reenactment, and I scoured the Internet to see what else might be out there as inspiration.

 

 

A fascinating collection of recipes from newspapers dating 1891 to 1981 gave a hint as to the possibilities, and included two poems mentioning a grandma or an aunt making caraway cookies. Here’s one of the recipes that even claims to make a crisp cookie:

It was published in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1919, and I think is interesting for its use of the word “butterine,” which I’d never seen before.

Early American cooks also used seeds liberally in their cookies, often coriander or caraway, and I liked the looks of a glazed cookie based on one from the first American cookbook published in 1796.

Cooks are like folk-singers, changing and adapting their material freely, and it’s not as though I am looking for The Original Seedy Bun recipe to cook myself, but it would be nice to know what those cookies were like, that my husband’s grandma made.

In the meantime I decided to try this recipe for lemony cookies, calling for ground caraway seeds which I didn’t have. I tried grinding some in the blender, but they only burned from the heat, so I used whole seeds.

Some of the baked cookies were a little skimpy on seeds, like the one I picture below. I’ll have to see how everyone receives them before I decide whether to make these the same way another time. If I make a different Seedy Bun, I might bake these again as well, without the caraway, because I agree with their creator about their appealing “depth and intensity” from the lemon juice and zest.


After my Seedy Lemon Biscuits were put away in the freezer, I heard from an older grandchild of my husband’s grandmother who, I was so happy to hear, had made a collection of Grandma’s recipes, and the first cookie in the collection was indeed called Seedy Buns.

Grandma’s Recipes

COOKIES:

Seedie Buns – 5 doz. These are similar to sugar cookies.

Sift and set aside: 3 C flour, 1 t baking powder, 1/4 tsp t salt

Cream in bowl: 1 1/4 C butter

Beat in until fluffy: 1 1/4 C sugar

Add: 3 eggs one at a time, beat well after each.

Blend in: 1 t grated orange peel, 1 t vanilla, 2 T caraway seeds

Chill several hours.

To form cookies take about 1 T dough and roll into ball.

Place on lightly greased baking sheet

Flatten to 1/4″ with bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.

Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 min., or until lightly browned.

If any of my readers have favorite seedy cookie recipes, I’d love to hear about them. It’s not too early to start brainstorming for next year!