chayday Food Journal

Y'know how you need coffee in the morning before you can function, so you have to make coffee, which is difficult because you haven't had your coffee yet?

Why not build a pigtail-toting coffee making miniature robot girl? (I know, it's hard to believe we've overlooked such an obvious solution.)

Granted, some of these use enough food colouring to take down a horse.

But still... lookitthepretty!

So many more here.

Via Neatorama.

"It's the little cow with a big future. Rising supermarket prices are persuading hundreds of families to turn their back gardens into mini-ranches stocked with miniature cattle.

Registrations of the most popular breed, the Dexter, have doubled since the millennium and websites are sprouting up offering “the world’s most efficient, cutest and tastiest cows”.

For between £200 and £2,000, people can buy a cow that stands no taller than a large German shepherd dog, gives 16 pints of milk a day that can be drunk unpasteurised, keeps the grass “mown” and will be a family pet for years before ending up in the freezer."

Full story at Times Online. Via Boing Boing.

A friend and sometime boss lives on a farm up in Guelph, where he keeps wee little chickens.

This week I bought my first dozen eggs from him.

They are gorgeous. The yolks are so... yellow. I made scrambled eggs that look like a photograph of scrambled eggs.

And they were frickin' delicious.

The chickens in question:

Chatting with another friend about the awesomeness of these eggs (I have wide-ranging conversations), she sent me this.

I'm late in reading it, as it was posted in early 2007, but it's bang on for how these eggs made me feel. A sample below, but follow the links for the full article.

Why I Farm
by Bryan Welch

I write this during the most bittersweet of our seasons: late fall or early winter, depending on the day and the weather. It’s the time of year when we kill the animals­ — the cattle, sheep and goats — that we raise for meat for ourselves and our friends.

Just a few months ago they were the spirits of spring, filling the pastures with the joyful, bouncing exuberance of new life. In a few weeks their meat will be in my freezers, and my friends’, on our tables and in our bodies.

People often ask, “How can you eat your own animals?” Sometimes it’s a sincere question, meant to explore the emotions associated with raising your own meat. But often it’s more of an accusation, as in: “How can you be so callous?” So in response I might ask, “How can you be so cruel as to eat animals without knowing them? Without knowing how they lived? Without making sure they were treated kindly and with respect?”

...

I don’t mean to suggest that everyone should raise their own meat. But it’s perverse, isn’t it, that many people in our society seem to consider it more civilized to eat animals they don’t know? Meanwhile, industrial agriculture treats meat animals as nothing more than cogs in the machine, without regard for their happiness or basic well-being.

...

There’s a Buddhist wisdom in the stockman’s cool compassion. The best of them seem to understand that our own lives on this Earth are as irrefutably temporary as the lives of the animals, and that we should provide as much simple comfort and dignity to our fellow creatures as we can. After all, aren’t simple comfort and dignity among the most important things we wish for ourselves and our children?

So we’re careful, on our little farm, to let the animals live in ways that seem natural to them. None of our creatures lives alone. For any social animal, to be alone is the worst thing. All of them have access, every day of the year, to natural food and clean water. They reproduce just as they were created to reproduce. They live their lives on healthy, familiar pastures where they feel secure. When we handle them, we handle them as gently as possible. When we can’t be gentle, we try to be quick.

Even though I’m proud of the happy, healthy lives we give our animals, I feel a profound twinge of sadness as I watch them grazing in the colorful autumn grass. But it’s a feeling I want to embrace, rather than avoid. It’s the sadness associated with life’s astonishing richness and vitality. It’s the sadness associated with mortality. It’s the sadness we feel as we consider our own impermanence and the impermanence of everything on this planet, everything mortal we hold dear, the sadness that makes life poignant and sweet.

This is just a photographic amen to Kate's recent posts on the unnecessity of green food colouring in mint desserts.

This is a picture (somewhat hastily taken -- ice cream belongs in bellies) of my third batch of homemade ice cream ("homemade" in that I used my brand new ice cream maker). Batch one: Simple Vanilla. Batch two: Chocolate Pudding. Batch three: Mint Chocolate Chip.

Best batch, hands down? Mint chocolate chip. And with no oil-slick-mouth-coating-green-dye aftertaste. Yummo.

I've just moved.

I haven't moved much. Not far, still in the same neighbourhood. But I also haven't moved often. This is the first move for me in 8 years. Which, for an urban renter, is a thing of great beauty and some mystery.

And also, deep trauma.

Not in the ways you'd expect. My relationship has escaped unscathed. With the monthlong moving experience (shudder) simply filed under the heading of "horrible experiences we have weathered together". The cat is doing well. She's already back to waking me up in the morning by eating the cover of my bedside book. Which, sadly, is a good sign.

No, the trauma comes from somewhere different. Somewhere people didn't warn me about.

Where did my kitchen go?!

I have lived with a small galley-esque kitchen for many many years now. Too small in many ways. And as a rental, it was a kitchen that we were very much stuck with. Because you're not going to buy a new gas range, or knock down a wall, for your landlord (however nice he is).

And my new kitchen is bigger. At least on paper.

But. But. It's all wrong.

My big glass jars filled with dry goods? I have no shelf to put them on now. My spices? All over the place. My teas? My beautiful beautiful teas? Shut away in a cupboard that's above my kettle, but far away from my mugs. Don't even get me started on the mixing bowls.

All the cupboards are weird and deep and high and don't fit what I have. All the readily accessible locations aren't near what I want them to be near.

And also? The countertop is ugly. As my brother aptly observed "it looks like when you open a tin of salmon with the skin still on". *sulks*

Now, don't get me wrong. It's going to be great. And since we own it, we can actually make changes to push it along to greatness. But for now, whenever I walk into my kitchen I just feel... lost. For someone who likes to cook there is something unsettling, deep in your soul, when you have to open 5 or 6 cupboards before you find what you're looking for.

So here I sit. At the counter, eating things from tins. Since I know where those are.

(Promoted from the Diaries - K)

If you, like me, found yourself stuck partway through Omnivore's Dilemma, here is Michael Pollan at Google -- speaking on food versus nutrition.

Triptych Part II: Indonesia

When I lived in Sumatera, oh so many years ago, we'd go away on weekends -- from Medan to points further east and south. On the road from Medan to Berastagi, I used to get sick every single time. Not all-the-way sick. Just severe wooziness. 90 minutes of driving with "pull over!" on the tip of my tongue.

(Language detour: Woozy is a satisfyingly emotive word, like onomatopoeia for feeling nauseous. Just drag out the sounds. WoooOOooooozZzyy. If how you felt made a noise, that'd be it. Works with queasy too... But word to the wise, don't do that when you're actually nauseous. It'll tip you over the edge.)

It went on like this for months. I loved going to Berastagi, but I hated the winding bumpy drive to get there. Until I learned a critical tip about traveling somewhere unfamiliar.

Eat what they eat.

Your body might already be resisting where it is and what you're making it do. My body was used to a well-paved, relatively flat urban landscape, and a bumpy, twisty, uphill ride was jarring to my delicate Canadian senses. It's like resonance. My soft and squishy organs were not in harmony with my spicy Indonesian surroundings. So I decided to try acclimatizing myself from the inside out.

Instead of doing What I Would Normally Do on a car trip, I paid close attention to what our hosts were doing, and did that instead. Start the drive on an empty stomach. Stop for sweet tea. Eat the assortment of small fried snacks even when no one can tell you what they are (anchovies anyone?). Crank up the techno music. Drink deep of that sickly air freshener smell.

It doesn't exactly sound like a remedy, but danged if it didn't work.

It worked on car sickness, but it worked more permanently on my day-to-day life in Medan. Squishing my tastes to fit what was going on around me changed them forever. Which was perfect for the year I was there, and was so effective that it's left me feeling like half my favourite food options are stuck in kitchen cupboards and restaurants on the other side of the planet. Dang it. Win some lose some.

Below is a (possibly ever-expanding) mini-inventory of the dishes I grew to love, and keep a special place for on my plate. The plate in my heart. My heart plate.

Indonesia

Babi (Chinese)/ Char-Sui

I put these up alphabetically, but it works that this dish is at the top. Because like so many of these (and other) dishes I grew to love in Medan, they're very specific. I'm referring here to a particular dish, from a particular place. Not just any Char-Sui -- even though there's nothing bad about that.

But what I miss is "that red pork noodle dish from the open-air restaurant on the corner, about 10 minutes west of the taxi stand". Because even in that one neighbourhood there might be 5 or 6 places that all sell a special char-sui noodle dish. Quite possibly all bumped up beside each other. But, for the magic, you need to find that particular one...

Bungkus

Bungkus!! What's inside? Who knows?! Oh wait, you do, because you chose it all, then they wrapped it in a banana leaf and sent you on your way. De-friggin-lish. Especially from a Padang restaurant. (Careful: sometimes they use staples to keep the banana leaf together. Don't eat 'em.).

Read more! »

As I mentioned at Christmas, my family excels at taking sugar, and finding new and exciting ways to combine it with more sugar.

The piece de resistance in my family's sugar lovin' recipe repertoire? Fondant Easter Eggs.

They're originally an Eagle Brand recipe I think. But the original recipe (which finishes with an elaborate royal icing decor) has been edited down to its key elements. One colour of fondant, wrapped in another, dipped in chocolate. Resulting in:

*gurgle*

What you're looking at there is sugar and condensed milk, the inner died yellow, the outer left alone, and the whole kaboodle dipped in chocolate. Yummo.

(Clear a path around your house before you eat one though, because you're going to have to run in circles for a while on the sugar high this baby delivers).

Fondant Easter Eggs

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2/3 cup (1/2 can) sweetened condensed milk
• 6 cups (about 1 1/2 lbs sifted icing sugar)
• yellow food colouring

Makes 12 large sized eggs.*

1. Cream together butter, salt, and vanilla.
2. Add sweetened condensed milk and blend until smooth.
3. Gradually stir in icing sugar.
4. Mixture will become very stiff -- kneed until all icing sugar is combined.
5. Place fondant on board or waxed paper and continue kneading for several minutes, until mixture is very smooth and not sticky.
6. Cut off 1/3 of the fondant and add a few drops yellow food colouring for yolks. Knead until the colour is evenly blended.
7. Cut 12 portions and roll into balls for the centre of the egg.
8. Cut remaining fondant into 12 equal portions and pat out flat, then mould around egg yolk and into egg shape.
9. Chill for a short time, then, if necessary, remodel gently.
10. Chill for several hours or overnight.

Read more! »

(from the diaries - K)

Copied from YesButNoButYes, who recovered it via Google's cache, who rescued it off of BrowniePointsBlog.

I have not made it or tried it, but what a thing of beauty.

Bacon Vodka

Makes up one pint

• Fry up three strips of bacon
• Add cooked bacon to a clean pint sized mason jar. Trim the ends of the bacon if they are too tall to fit in the jar. Or you could go hog wild and just pile in a bunch of fried up bacon scraps.
• Optional: add crushed black peppercorns.
• Fill the jar up with vodka. Cap and place in a dark cupboard for at least three weeks.(No need to refrigerate)
• At the end of the three week resting period, place the bacon vodka in the freezer to solidify the fats. Strain out the fats through a coffee filter to yield a clear filtered pale yellow bacon vodka.
• Decant into decorative bottles and enjoy.

(Originally published on BrowniePointsBlog.)