February 2012
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What do you feed a kid who doesn’t like a whole lot of things to eat?
It’s vacation time for the kids in public school. In New York anyway, where my grandkids are. So, happily, luckily for me, my grandchildren came for a visit for a couple of days.
One of my grandsons doesn’t like meat (poultry or fish). Or vegetables. Not even french fries. Even pizza is iffy.
Ohmyohmyohmy.
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Today is the day of the famous pancake race in Olney, England and also in Liberal, Kansas. It’s an old tradition, dating back more than 550 years (at least in England).
Well of course, who doesn’t like pancakes?
But a pancake race?
Apparently, the tradition got started back in 1445 when housewives would make food like pancakes on the day before Ash Wednesday, in order to use up all...
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When I first heard about Mardi Gras — I was a little kid — I absolutely wanted to go down to New Orleans and go to what I thought of as this endless, huge street party where people dress in crazy costumes and eat a lot of good things. The pictures looked so tantalizing.
Well, I never did, and it was years before I understood the religious significance of the day. I was raised Jewish,...
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What do I cook when the grandkids come for a visit? Well, lots of things depending on which one, but I know I am safe if I have some Macaroni and Cheese on hand. Just in case.
All of my grandchildren like Macaroni and Cheese.
Doesn’t everybody?
If I have time, I make the recipe ahead and freeze portions in one-serving casserole dishes, then thaw and bake them until they’re hot...
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Meatballs are big these days. I don’t mean big, as in size.
I mean hot.
I don’t mean hot as in temperature.
I mean, meatballs are really really popular right now.
Did you know that there are now meatball restaurants? Also, there have been quite a few articles written about meatballs since the start of the new year.
It’s all okay with me because I like meatballs. Always have....
If you're in need of a smile today, take a look at... →
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little LADIES WHO LUNCH: A Non-Food Valentine's... →
littleladieswholunch:
This is a look back at last year’s Valentine’s Day post, when my friend Diane shared with me her family’s tradition of making a non-food Valentine favors for her children’s classmates.
She rightfully says it’s a great way to put old, cracked crayons to use. Bonus: her kids are now old enough to…
I love this! Going to try it with my grandkids next time they come for...
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Prunes used to be the laughing stock of fruit. Really. Kids used to snicker at the thought of them because, you know, prunes are supposed to be for old folks who, um, need the fiber.
Well, confession here — I always loved prunes. Plump, moist, sweet prunes. Great snack. And when I was much younger I ate Dannon’s Prune Yogurt at least twice a week. It was made with whole milk and had a...
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Happy Birthday Charles Dickens! It’s your 200th. And even though you lived long ago and wrote about what was happening back then, in the 19th century, what you had to say still seems fresh, new and relevant today.
You spoke out for social justice. You showed how unfairly balanced your society was between the haves and the have-nots. You wrote about how poor children were made to work and...
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Why was old-fashioned Date-Nut Bread baked in a round pan?
Yesterday, when I posted about my cousin’s Date-Nut Bread, I mentioned that her mother and mine made this stuff inside a coffee can or other, smaller cans. And then I remembered that even the commercial loaves were cylindrical, so the slices came out round.
Why was that?
When you make Banana Bread or Lemon-Cranberry Bread...
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January 2012
20 posts
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Do women watch the Superbowl?
Well I can’t speak for all women of course but yes, I do. And so does my sister-in-law Eileen. Ed and I go to her and my brother Jeff’s house on Superbowl Sunday and the four of us yell at the TV and eat a lot of things we don’t ordinarily eat, just like a lot of other people across the country.
I once hosted a Superbowl day at our house and...
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There’s an old joke about Jews and Chinese food. A Chinese man is speaking to a Jewish man and says, “so if your culture is over 5000 years old and ours is over 4000 years old where did your people eat for a thousand years?”
Such is the devotion of Jewish people to Chinese food.
Back in the day, young Jewish couples who became engaged would eat Chinese food on a Saturday night...
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What’s TNBT? Every new year people make predictions. One time I read that The Next Big Thing would be a frying pan that somehow let you know when the pan reached the perfect temperature to add eggs or hamburger or pancakes.
It wasn’t.
This year I’ve read, in a few places, that Peruvian cuisine would be TNBT.
Maybe. Maybe not.
But I do know that we have the Peruvians to thank...
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Last Friday I mentioned how annoying I find the mixture of food and politics. I was talking about kiwi fruit then.
But after thinking about it some more, I should also say that I find the whole anti-French, anti-European political demagoging to be absurd, and at the very least, self-righteous. We Americans come from all cultures, including European ones. We’re mongrels. Inclusive.
So why...
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Politics and food? It’s incredibly annoying.
Take kiwi fruit, for example.
This brown, fuzzy-skinned fruit originated in China, which introduced it to New Zealand which wanted to market it here during the 1950s.
Unfortunately, at that time it was known as a “Chinese Gooseberry” and the U.S.A. was deep into McCarthy fever at the time. There were politicians who wanted nothing...
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baked potatoes
Jim Kuzzy (jimkuzzy@yahoo.com) submitted:
Ronnie,
Thanks for the stuffed potato recipes. I look forward to trying the spinach and feta cheese variety. I have a slight variation on baking potatoes which works well. To your instructions, after scrubbing I would add drying with a paper towel to maximize benefits of 400 degree oven blast; secondly, do not pierce the potato until it has baked for...
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Yesterday, while I was organizing some children’s books, I came across “The Turnip,” which I wrote about yesterday.
Reading it again put me into even more of a turnip frame of mind.
And I was thinking how ironic it is that turnips are so under appreciated in the United States but are considered so worthwhile in Europe that dozens of folk tales — not just the one about the...
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Yesterday I wrote about turnips and it made me think of an old folk tale about a man who plants a turnip but it grows so enormous he can’t get it out of the ground. So he asks his wife to help and still they can’t pull it out. And then they get their grandson, then the dog — the cat — and they all pull together and still nothing — and so on with helpers — a hen,...
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I had to try turnips several times before I got sold on them.
The first time I cooked one was many years ago when one of my daughters was studying vocabulary words for the SATs. We had eaten a turnip dish a couple of nights before, one that we thought smelled and tasted rotten and I told her that the best hint for the word “noisome,” if that should ever come up on the exam, was to...
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In case you’re not up on these things, you might want to know that tomorrow (Saturday), January 7th, is National Tempura Day.
YUM. Tempura is good stuff, especially if you can eat it within minutes after the making.
I know it’s soon after the holiday season and everyone’s thinking bad things about fried food. But with Tempura, the batter-dipped ingredients are cut small or thin...
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UGH. I did it again. Ate too much on New Year’s Eve and for the entire weekend.
I do this every year.
And to make matters worse, I went to the movies and ate an entire tub of popcorn.
So I need to get back to culinary reality. Eat sensibly.
Time for a hearty, nourishing, tasty and filling soup. But one that also is low calorie and low fat.
This one:
Winter Vegetable Soup
3...
December 2011
18 posts
mega1500 asked: best wishes.2012 have a nice time and good luke for ever.
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Do you do the same thing every New Year’s Eve?
We do. But only for the last 35 years or so, so we’re beginning to get the hang of it.
My cousins, brother and sister-in-law will be coming for dinner.
It’s always the same schedule and dinner but we don’t think it’s boring because after years and years of trying this and that, we figured out what we like to eat and to...
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All this talk about Hanukkah and oil reminded me of the time my nephew, who was then about 4 and the type of kid who was mischievous and always getting into trouble, reached for a bottle of olive oil that his mother had left on the counter.
It was a liter size bottle made of glass, so that when he managed to get hold of it it did exactly what you’re now picturing.
There were large shards...
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Last year I mentioned that I make a roasted goose every Hanukkah (recipe and all). Well, yesterday I bought the bird and my goose will be cooked next weekend, for our traditional family Hanukkah dinner. This isn’t an old tradition in our family. It started with me, after I read that in German Jewish families goose is a traditional dinner on the Fifth night of Hanukkah.
Well, we all love...
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Aunt Ronnie makes french fries from a potato!
All this talk about Hanukkah and potatoes and latkes and frying got me to thinking about a time years and years ago when my niece, then age 6 or so, came for the weekend. When she got home the first thing she reported to her Mom was this wondrous thing:
“Aunt Ronnie makes french fries from a potato!”
That became one of the official “family comments.” You know, the kind of...
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