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Peep show

31st March 2010

Peep show

by Rachel

Speaking of food art…  The Washington Post announced the winner of its fourth annual Peeps Show Diorama Contest.  Public voting is still on for the People’s Choice award from among 38 entries, culled from the more than 1,100 gooey submissions received.  Here’s a few of my favorites:

For their winning diorama based on the Pixar flick “Up,” Michael Chirlin
and Veronica Ettle of Arlington constructed a miniature Victorian house
from plywood and Popsicle sticks, and placed it atop salvaged mattress
springs to give it an airborne quality. VIDEO: A closer look at ‘EEP’

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In their diorama “Easter at the National Peep-Thedral: A House of Prayer
for All Peeps
,” District residents Andrew Martin, Christine McCann and Julie Avetta
used photographs of Washington’s National Cathedral to create the backdrop, and added
a Darth Vader head from a Pez dispenser as a nod to the carving on the northwest tower.

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Margaret Cooney and Adam Matuszeski of the District were inspired by Maurice Sendak’s classic book
for their “Where the Wild Peeps Are” creation. The husband-and-wife pair notes: “Each of the
Wild Peeps has a teddy bear or bunny Peep body with either a bunny, teddy bear, or a chick Peep for
a head. The eyes are thumbtacks while arms, legs and snouts are made from Peep parts or finger puppets.”

I admit it… I don’t really care for the taste of Peeps, but who can resist their sparkling sugary cuteness?  And it seems that many have succumbed to the marshmallowy madness — self-admitted Peep freaks maintain websites  featuring everything from Peep haiku, to Peep-inspired multimedia art and sculpture, to Peep science and research and even an inventive online movie called “Lord of the Peeps.”  Peeps are, in fact, the number one selling non-chocolate Easter candy, topping even jelly beans.  The iconic Easter candies are hatched in Bethlehem, Penn., by Just Born, a firm named after founder Sam Born, who immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1910 and built a candy empire.  Just Born began manufacturing Peeps in 1953 when it acquired a rival candy company (for more on Peeps’ history, read here).  The Just Born factory now hatches more than 1 billion Peeps’ per year, with 600 million Marshmallow Peeps and Bunnies consumed by Americans on Easter alone.

So, how do you like your Peeps?  Fresh or stale?  Do you bite the heads off first?  Or do you prefer to violate your Peeps, dress them up and take pictures?

http://the-f-word.org/blog/index.php/2010/03/19/feel-good-friday-food-as-art/

posted in Food Culture, Food History, Rachel | 6 Comments

30th March 2010

Fun with vintage advertising

by Rachel

Hungry?  You won’t be after you check out these absolutely stomach-churning vintage food advertisements.

Hold the anchovies.  How about some tasty tuna pizza?

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There’s a reason why Mom’s Fish Loaf never caught on.

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This tomato soup-covered charred frisbee is somehow supposed to be a pizza?

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Radioactive mac-and-cheese, anyone?

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Child abuse, 1960s housewife-style

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If Ohio ever legalizes civil unions/gay marriage, I’m totally making this for my friend Ryan’s bachelor party.

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Answering the question of what zombies would eat if zombies ate Spam.

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Sack O’ Sauce in a Can O’ Meat?  No wonder it was such an “exclusive” — and no doubt, short-lived — invention.

posted in Food Culture, Food History, Rachel, vintage ads | 33 Comments

19th March 2010

Feel Good Friday: Food as Art

by Rachel

The Art of Food

The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center here in town is winding down its The Art of Food exhibit next month.  Brandon and I haven’t had a chance yet to attend, but I’m hoping to make it before its April 2 close date.  This is the fourth year for the exhibit, which showcases food as art, art about food, and food as the inspiration for art — and the works are as eclectic as the medium.  Artist Eric Bass, for instance, has recreated famous paintings with candy and junk food.  This year, he recreated Van Gogh’s “Potato Eater” using — what else? — potato chips.  Photographer Bruce Frank manipulates the colors and forms of food in works such as “Fruit salad mandala” (pictured), while other artists such as Pam Kravetz chose to make her 8-foot tall food-themed puppets and towers of cupcakes artwork about food and our relation to it.

As a photographer and digital artist myself, I’ve been drawn to golden fields of swaying wheat and corn, but never have I made food itself the subject of my art — unless, that is, you consider cake-decorating to be an art, in which case I am a total food artist.  The Art of Food exhibit pays homage to the days of early modern Europe, when orate edible creations and sculpture were often created for celebrations in cities and courts as both a feast for the eyes and a taste experience — read more on that here.  Now food art is enjoying a resurgence again among the creative class looking for new and unique ways to express their vision and creativity.  Just check out some of the amazing works featured here, here or here.   Among my favorites are the eye-catching “foodscapes” of photographer Carl Warner, who uses fruits, vegetables anything else he can scrounge up in his kitchen to make his fantastical landscapes made entire of food (well, and glue and pins).   Simply amazing!

Carl Warren foodscape

Do you have a favorite food artist?  Have you made food art?  If so, show off some of your creations!

posted in Arts and Music, Food Culture, Food History, Food News, Rachel | 4 Comments

9th February 2010

Food Finds: UGLI fruit

by Rachel

Food Finds is a semi-regular feature in which I channel my inner Andrew Zimmern to experiment and try exotic and new foods — sans creepy crawly bugs and bull’s testicles, of course.  Have an idea for my next food find?  Post your suggestions in the comments below!

It is a testament to the marvels of modern technology that I am able to savor an UGLI fruit while gazing out my window at steadily falling snow in my corner of the American Midwest.  What exactly is an UGLI fruit, you ask?  It’s the trademark name under which Cabel Hall Citrus Ltd. markets it brand of tangelos from Jamaica (pronounced there as “hoo-glee”).  The fruit was found in the 1920s growing wild on the island nation, and is believed to be a hybrid of grapefruit, Seville oranges and tangerines.  It’s available from December through April, and sometimes in the fall.   The company’s slogan for the fruit is, ““The Affliction is only Skin Deep so the Beauty is in the Eating,” so while a name makeover might make it more palatable to consumers, it’s a perfect food find for this blog.

As its name suggests, the UGLI fruit is indeed a rather unattractive fruit — it’s slightly larger than a grapefruit with misshapen, dimpled wrinkly green-yellow skin.  I bought mine at my local grocer for 99 cents, a price comparable to a grapefruit of similar size, and not knowing anything about the UGLI fruit, selected one with a bright Kermit-green colored rind.  The skin is easier to peel than a grapefruit or orange and sheds to reveal an orangey-yellow, pulpy, virtually seed-free citrus inside.  I later read that the green surface blemishes turn orange when the fruit is at its peak ripeness, so mine was perhaps a bit under-ripe for the eating (they can be stored for up to two weeks in the fridge). The UGLI fruit is much juicier than an orange and even a grapefruit, so make sure you aren’t wearing white, like I was.  Better yet, wear a bib.  For those of you raised with manners, Cabel Hall recommends cutting the fruit in half, loosening the segments and eating with a spoon.

I found the taste to be somewhat of a weak orange with a slight sour zest of lemony citrus.  In reading other accounts of people who actually waited until their fruits were ripe, the taste at its peak is comparable to a juicy naval orange.  I’ll probably stick to oranges and grapefruits for stand-alone fruits, but I think the UGLI fruit would be fantastic in a fruit salad or smoothie.  Check out these other creative UGLI food and drink recipes:

Are you an UGLI fan?  Have a recipe to share?  Post your comments below!

“The Affliction is only Skin Deep so the Beauty is in the Eating “™

posted in Food Finds, Food History, Rachel, Recipes | 3 Comments

28th December 2009

Open Post: What are you reading?

by Rachel

When I was younger, our parents would have us fill out our Santa wish lists weeks before Christmas.  As the sole bookworm in the family, I, of course, always requested a long list of books — Oliver Twist in the third-grade, Shakespeare at the age of 9 and later, in my teen years, Stephen King.  My list must have not made it to the North Pole because instead I got things like a makeup brush kit or a t-shirt screenprinted with a picture of a black labrador.  One of the joys of marrying a man who used to do all his Christmas shopping at Walgreens on Christmas Eve is that now all I do is fill out my Amazon wishlist and know that most, if not all, will be wrapped and waiting under the tree.  I’ve already devoured the two fiction books I received — Stephen King’s new book, Under the Dome and The Strain, coauthored by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro — and am now ready to dig into my non-fiction gifts.  In no particular order…

So, what’s on your reading list?  Any recommendations for the rest of us?

posted in Book Reviews, Class & Poverty, Eating Disorders, Fat History, Feminist Topics, Food History, Race Issues, Rachel, Recovery | 30 Comments

16th December 2009

Latkes, blintzes and doughnuts! Ahh, the foods of Chanukah

by Rachel

Happy Chanukah to my Jewish readers! The eight-day Jewish festival of lights began at sundown Dec. 11 and continues through Saturday. I was raised Christian and now identify as Buddhist, so my knowledge of Chanukah and its origins is rudimentary at best. But the internet is a wonderful, wonderful tool and there are lots of websites devoted to sharing the holiday’s history and time-honored traditions.

As in most religious and secular holidays, food plays a large role in Chanukah traditions.   Many traditional Chanukah foods are cooked in oil, in remembrance of the oil that kept the menorah alight.  Traditional favorites in the U.S. are latkes, a potato fritter that may have developed in Eastern Europe.  In Israel, the favorite Chanukah food is sufhaniya, a kind of jelly doughnut cooked in oil.  A small spinning top, the dreidle, is used to play a gambling game using nuts, raisins, sweets or chocolate money (gelt).  The four-sided top carries the initials of the Hebrew phrase “a great miracle happened there.”  Dairy products, especially cheese, are another Chanukah tradition.  This is done in memory of the Jewish heroine Judith, who according to legend saved her village of Bethulia from Syrian attackers.  With her main, Judith entered the enemy camp and fed Holofernes, the Syrian leader, salty cheese and fine wine until he fell into a drunken stupor.  The clever Judith then seized his sword and cut off his head, which she brought back to her village in basket.  The next morning, Syrian troops saw their leader’s head mounted on the city walls and fled in terror.

A typical Chanukah party menu might include: gelfilte fish, or poached fish patties; potato pancakes, fried, of course, in lots of oil; sweet cream cheese rugelach, strawberry-jam-filled doughnut covered in powdered sugar; fried apple fritters; cheese-filled doughnuts fried in oil and dipped in honey; and cheese blintzes.  Yum!   You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy these delish treats.  Check out some of the creative recipes I found online:

Share your own Chanukah recipes or traditions in the comments below.

posted in Food Culture, Food History, Rachel, Recipes | 26 Comments

19th November 2009

Taking the diet out of “diet foods”

by Rachel

I’m sitting at my favorite local indie coffeehouse staring at a large plate of cottage cheese and fresh fruit atop a bed of leafy greens paired with a side of steaming spiced apples and wishing I had my camera because the presentation is as much artistic as it is yummy.  That its menu is vegetarian-friendly is one of the reasons why I love this coffeehouse so much, but despite its array of veggie offerings, I sometimes find myself craving the delicious synergy of pineapple and large curd cottage cheese.

Cottage cheese has gotten a bum rap in the past few decades.  For too many, its pebblelike curds suspended in a milky mixture conjures up images of diet food or maybe food for the old and senile.  There’s even a cottage cheese fad diet that guarantees weight loss if you only eat it straight for one week.   I always find the association of cottage cheese as diet food a bit amusing considering that during my eating disorder days, I decided it way too high-cal to eat and labeled it a “bad” food.  Salad, another diet food dismissal and a personal favorite, also seems to get no respect.

As I sit here alternating between typing and downing forkfuls of cheese curds, I wonder about other foods considered to be worthy of consumption only when in the pursuit of weight loss.  Are there any “diet foods” that you like and have reclaimed as part of your non-diet diet?

posted in Food History, Health, Nutrition & Fitness, Rachel | 47 Comments

7th August 2009

Name your favorite food flicks

by Rachel

NPR’s Talk of the Nation yesterday did a brief segment on food flicks, that is, films that are centered on food or in which food plays an important role to the plot.  Listen to an archive here.   The segment was inspired by the opening this weekend of Julie and Julia, starring Meryl Streep as the indomitable Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell, a woman who aspires to cook all 524 recipes from Child’s autobiography and blog about it. So, consider this an open thread to discuss your own favorite cinematic food moments and foodie flicks. To help get you started, check out this list compiled by Rebecca Epstein of the food and culture journal Gastronomica.

posted in Arts and Music, Food Culture, Food History | 38 Comments

30th June 2009

Food Finds: Quince

by Rachel

Before I went vegetarian nearly seven years ago, vegetables for me basically came in a handful of varieties: green beans, potatoes, corn, carrots and the lettuce and tomato atop a burger.  Newly-veg enthusiasm and sheer culinary boredom compelled me to expand my agricultural repertoire and I soon began to discover new-to-me fruits and vegetables I love like pink lady apples, plantains, sweet potatoes, dandelion greens and kale, parsnips and okra.  There were a few I still don’t like (eggplant, yuck) but now whenever I see a new fruit or vegetable at the grocery story or farmer’s market, I make it a point to try it.

Quince

My latest food find is quince, a small mottled-yellow, lumpy fruit about the size of a large apple.  Quince trees, which produce beautiful large pink flowers, thrive in almost every soil, even on chalk.  It’s thought that the forbidden fruit eaten by Adam and Eve was not an apple, but in fact, a quince.  The fruit was cultivated long before apples in Mesopotamia and was carried by the Greeks into the Eastern Mediterranean.    Charlemagne helped bring it to France about 812 AD and it soon began being traded on the Silk Road.  Quince was quite popular in colonial New England and by 1720 was thriving in Virginia.  The fruit fell from popularity in the states and today is most popular in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and in some Latin American countries, where it’s also used for medicinal purposes and believed to be an aphrodisiac.    The fact that I found quince, which cost only slightly more than a large apple, at my grocer’s in the middle of summer is odd, considering that it is a seasonable cold-weather fruit usually cultivated between early fall and January.  But thanks to recently passed origin-of-food labeling laws, I could see that my quince was grown in Chile.

I had no idea how to prepare quince and with my customary disregard for directions, sliced it and ate it raw.  BIG mistake.  The texture of quince is kind of a mix between an apple and a firm, unripe pear, but the taste is tart and sour and leaves your mouth very dry.  It was only after I googled quince that I discovered that it is most usually eaten cooked, usually in fruit sauces and jams and jellies or it can be peeled, then roasted, baked or stewed.  The tannins that cause the acidic taste in quince supposedly mellow when cooked to produce a fragrant, delicate taste and also turns the fruit a pinkish red color.

I haven’t written quince off yet.  I plan to get a few more and try out some of the simpler recipes I’ve linked to below after the jump.  Has anyone tried a quince recipe or have one to share?   What are some other food finds you’ve discovered?

Read the rest of this entry »

posted in Food Culture, Food Finds, Food History, Rachel, Recipes | 25 Comments

17th June 2009

Food History Blogging: Breakfasts of Champions

by Rachel

For much of my adult life, I’ve rarely eaten breakfast.  As a kid, I’d eat whatever generic sugary cereal that promised the best toy or we’d be sent out the door to school armed with a Pop Tart or snack cake.  I’ve never been a morning person either, but most of my aversion to breakfast stems more so from the fact that even when I ate meat I never really liked breakfast foods, or, at least, popular American breakfast foods.  Bacon?  Ick.  Sausage?  Links maybe, but definitely not patties.  Fried eggs?  Gross.  Doughnuts or strudel?  Too saccharine.  I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism in my early 20s and prescribed Synthroid, which must be taken on an empty stomach.  I got into the habit of taking it in the mornings, thus giving me a convenient excuse to skip breakfast altogether.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day or so dietitians keep telling us.  And studies showing that kids and adults who eat breakfast perform better in school and are more productive at work certainly back it up.  My doctor recently recommended that I try to increase the number of hours I sleep and to start eating breakfast, so I’ve been making a concerted effort in both areas.  My dilemma, however, is not whether I should eat breakfast, but rather what to eat for breakfast.  We’re so culturally staid in that there are certain foods that are appropriate for certain meals and foods that are not appropriate at certain meals.  Brunch for lunch was always popular in my grade school even though it consisted of limp French toast drowning beneath watery syrup and accompanied by anemic sausage links just because the breakfast-lunch inversion was so novel a concept to us.  Bacon and eggs, French toast, waffles and pancakes, toast and cereals are all considered traditional American breakfast foods, but it’s interesting to note that they haven’t always been the breakfasts of champions.  Here’s a quick rundown of American breakfast foods through the ages:

Pioneer Breakfast: Like their Native American counterparts, pioneers relied on cornmeal as a breakfast staple.  Cornpone (pan-fried in oil), hoecakes (small pancakes cooked on a garden hoe), Johnnycakes (flattened and griddle-fried) and Ashcakes (wrapped in cabbage leaves and cooked in campfire ashes) were popular amongst the poor and well-to-do.  George Washington’s step-granddaughter recorded his breakfast habits, for instance, as: “‘[H]e ate three small mush cakes (Indian meal) swimming in butter and honey, and drank three cups of tea without cream.” Check out Paula Deen’s hoecakes recipe or this recipe for Johnny cakes.

Victorian Breakfast: Victorian breakfast menus were more extensive owing to the rise of the middle-class and middle-class mothers who had more leisure time and disposable income to improve the quality and range of food options.  Middle-class families expanded breakfast to include at least one hot dish or meat and/or eggs, along with fish, breads, porridge and fruit.  Menus could be quite extensive and a formal Victorian breakfast might include Eggs Benedict, smoked Haddock, English muffins, fruit, toast and cake or crepes.  Folgers introduced its pre-roasted and ground coffees in the 1860s, and coffee quickly became a breakfast staple.  Check out these recipes offered by Victorian bed-and-breakfasts and inns across the nation.

Breakfast Cereals: Dr. John Harvey Kellogg developed and patented America’s first flaked cereal he called Granose Flakes in 1894.  He and brother Will Keith Kellogg joined him in creating the first corn flakes cereal three years later.  After a bitter feud left them divided, Will Keith started his own plant in 1906 that would come to be known as the modern day Kellogg Company.  He introduced Rice Krispies in 1929.  Inspired and rebuffed by J.H. Kellogg, an inventor by the name of C. W. Post went on to produce his own cereal he called Grape Nuts.  By 1900, he had become a multi-millionaire.  Read more about the Kellogg brothers here.

Oatmeal: Some 80 percent of Americans are estimated to have oatmeal in their cupboards today, but it wasn’t always so popular.  Although oats are one of the earliest cereals to be cultivated by man, Americans did not begin growing them in large quantities until the nineteenth century.  And until the twentieth century, oatmeal proved quite arduous to prepare, requiring as long as 24 hours soaking time.  Quaker Oats was registered as a cereal trademark in 1877.  “Quick oats” were introduced in 1922 and “Instant” oatmeal in 1966.  “Flavored” oatmeals arrived in the 1970s.  Today’s rolled, instant and quick oats are far different from the steel cut oatmeal prepared in earlier centuries and as some would say, less tasty and healthy.  Check out a recipe for steel cut oats here.

Doughnuts: Doughnuts date back to prehistoric reuins in the American Southwest, but they’re primarily credited to the Dutch who would fry sweet dough balls in pork fat.  Dutch pilgrims brought these olykoeks to America where they were dubbed “dough-nuts” because they were usually prepared with prunes, apples or nuts in the middle (these fillings were added mostly because it was so difficult to fully cook the centers of the doughballs).  Legend has it that a popular sea captain disliked the nuts his wife prepared in his doughnuts and poked them out.  Acting on his orders, the ship’s captain removed all subsequent doughnut centers with a round tin cutout, thus giving rise to the doughnut hole we all know today.  Returning WWI G.I.s brought back with them a craze for doughnuts after having been served them by the grateful French and doughnuts began to be mass-produced by the 1920s.  They remained primarily a snack food in the U.S. however, until the invention of the doughnut machine in the 1930s.  Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Doughnuts arrived in the 1940s and 1950s and made popular the pairing of coffee and doughnuts.  The whole cops and doughnut shops lore exists today because these shops were often the only places open all night.  In the days before Red Bull, police officers would get their caffeine fix there so as to get them over the 4 – 7 a.m. hump.  The doughnut’s holiness was challenged by the growing popularity of the bagel in the 1970s and 1980s; by 1999 bagels were reported by the New York Times to have overtook the doughnut in popularity. However both remain popular today with even Dunkin’ Doughnuts selling bagels.  Check out these recipes for doughnuts and bagels.

I’m trying to let go of my breakfast foods propriety and instead just make things that I like and that will give my brain a much-needed boost.  Some of my breakfast favorites are: strawberries, blueberries and granola in yogurt; Morningstar Farms Veggie Sausage Links; peanut butter toast and a banana; pineapple chunks and cottage cheese; a veggie BLT made with Morningstar Farms Bacon Strips; the occasional scrambled eggs on toast; and, of course, fresh fruit.  How about you?  Are you a breakfast person or no?  If so, what are some of your favorite breakfast foods?

posted in Food History, Health, Nutrition & Fitness, Vegetarianism | 45 Comments

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