Welsh Rabbit is a funny name for multiple reasons. It's just silly sounding, first of all, especially since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with what it is (which is cheese sauce on toast), and especially when someone says "rarebit" instead of rabbit. But once you know where the name came from, it's actually even funnier. It's basically a big dis of the Welsh. Since it is a meatless dish, made to use up leftovers or make due when the day's hunt went badly, it came to be known as "Welsh Rabbit" as an insult, as in, "those men in Wales are terrible hunters." Those crazy Englishmen. They sure know how to throw the insults! (Like in Family Guy: "Oh Reginald.... I disagree!")
I love cheese sauce in all forms. I love Welsh Rabbit's Scandinavian, French-adopted cousin, fondue. Like fondue, Welsh Rabbit is traditionally a way to get dinner on the table when all you have is stale bread, cheese, and some sort of wine or ale. However, for whatever reason, I've just never gotten around to actually serving Welsh Rabbit. Ever. I am not sure why this would be. I've made a million versions of cheese sauce to have on and in numerous types of things, just never toast. Well, I finally got around to serving it for dinner yesterday. It was delicious and easy and I have absolutely no freaking clue why such a meal wasn't already in my cheese-loving repertoire. Shame on me. I'll make up for it by serving it regularly from now on.
I made my Welsh Rabbit with white wine, and I used cheddar cheese, swiss, and a little monterey jack. The toast I simply brushed wtih a little olive oil and sprinkled with parmesan before baking. I served half the toasts with chopped tomatoes and half without to see how that went, and I actually did like the tomatoes very much. But, come on, there's not much you can do to white wine-cheese sauce over bread to make it bad.
I also boiled some cauliflower to have on the side, so I basically just piled the toast, tomatoes, and cauliflower on the plate and just doused everything in the cheese sauce. Yum, right? Of course.
Happy eating!
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Scary Things About Juice
We all know that fresh produce is always more nutritious than packaged foods, but recently I learned something that really brought it home, and more than a little freaked me out. I read an article regarding the process a standard bottle of juice goes through before it gets to your grocery cart. I'm not talking cheapo juice, or the flavored corn syrup we all just call juice... I mean real, supposedly high-quality juices.
As it turns out, most of what we buy on grocery store shelves has sat around for so long, that manufacturers have to add in what is called a "flavor packet" just to get the juice to taste like what it should taste like. Most juices sit on shelves for a least a few months and some up to a year before the flavor packet is added and then it's sent to a grocery store. There are various reasons why this happens this way, which I won't get into, because my point isn't really the reasons behind it, but the impact on us, the consumers.
We all know that fresh produce loses nutrients over time. Juice an apple and you have a lot of nutrients. Come back to the same glass the next day and the nutrients have reduced significantly. Come back six months later, and... well, you see my point. The fact that they have to add in flavor packets is evidence that the nutritional value is basically nil. Flavor packets in, for example, apple juice, are part of the manufacturing process for basically every major apple juice brand on your grocery store shelf. A flavor packte isn't listed on the ingredients because it isn't required to be. Basically, except for the vitamin c which is added to the bottle, you may not be drinking more than flavored water, from a nutritional standpoint.
You think when you are drinking apple juice that you are getting the benefits of what is in an apple. But nope! Just another screw-you from our fabulous food manufacturing system. If you want your kids to have the nutition of an apple, they are going to have to eat an actual apple. Or... like I've decided... you could just make your own juice.
Yup, I'm one of those people now. I bought a juicer. Take that, food manufacturers! I will still buy crummy store juice sometimes, but I wanted to give this whole juicing thing a try, now that I know the evils of grocery juice. It's a little more expensive but it's certainly healthier. I already made apple juice and it was soooooooo good. Like fresh cider from the cider mill. And I certainly will be getting more nutrients than the bottled kind (not to mention none of those evil plastics chemicals everyone is screaming about now).
I also bought a bag of oranges and I'm looking forward to delicious fresh squeezed oj in the morning. I guess I'm a juicer-owner.
Happy drinking!
As it turns out, most of what we buy on grocery store shelves has sat around for so long, that manufacturers have to add in what is called a "flavor packet" just to get the juice to taste like what it should taste like. Most juices sit on shelves for a least a few months and some up to a year before the flavor packet is added and then it's sent to a grocery store. There are various reasons why this happens this way, which I won't get into, because my point isn't really the reasons behind it, but the impact on us, the consumers.
We all know that fresh produce loses nutrients over time. Juice an apple and you have a lot of nutrients. Come back to the same glass the next day and the nutrients have reduced significantly. Come back six months later, and... well, you see my point. The fact that they have to add in flavor packets is evidence that the nutritional value is basically nil. Flavor packets in, for example, apple juice, are part of the manufacturing process for basically every major apple juice brand on your grocery store shelf. A flavor packte isn't listed on the ingredients because it isn't required to be. Basically, except for the vitamin c which is added to the bottle, you may not be drinking more than flavored water, from a nutritional standpoint.
You think when you are drinking apple juice that you are getting the benefits of what is in an apple. But nope! Just another screw-you from our fabulous food manufacturing system. If you want your kids to have the nutition of an apple, they are going to have to eat an actual apple. Or... like I've decided... you could just make your own juice.
Yup, I'm one of those people now. I bought a juicer. Take that, food manufacturers! I will still buy crummy store juice sometimes, but I wanted to give this whole juicing thing a try, now that I know the evils of grocery juice. It's a little more expensive but it's certainly healthier. I already made apple juice and it was soooooooo good. Like fresh cider from the cider mill. And I certainly will be getting more nutrients than the bottled kind (not to mention none of those evil plastics chemicals everyone is screaming about now).
I also bought a bag of oranges and I'm looking forward to delicious fresh squeezed oj in the morning. I guess I'm a juicer-owner.
Happy drinking!
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Cherry Spice Cookies
I have a few dried cherries left from a bag of dried Michigan cherries we bought. I wanted to make some sort of cookies with them, and this recipe is what I ended up with. I found a recipe online that sounded about right and then altered it to suit what I was going for, which included adding rum-soaked cherries. Below is the final recipe. These cookies are lightly spiced, and if you want lots of spice, you can double the amounts of cinnamon and ginger. Another option is to use some other type of dried fruit, such as cranberries, or even some chopped up dried apricots.
Cherry Spice Cookies
2 T rum (or other liquor)
1/4 c dried cherries, roughly chopped (or other dried fruit)
2/3 c canola oil (or other neutral veggie oil)
1/2 c sugar, plus extra
1/2 c brown sugar
2 T honey
1 egg
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt
Pour rum over dried cherries in small bowl and allow to soak at least 10 minutes (up to a few hours for stronger flavor). In large bowl, beat oil, sugars, honey, and egg until well mixed. In separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and seasonings. Sift flour mixture ove wet ingredients. Add cherries. Stir batter until just combined.
Add extra sugar to shallow bowl or plate. Make balls of batter about an inch to inch and a half wide, and roll balls in sugar. Place on baking sheet (sprayed with nonstick spray) about 2 inches apart. Bake at 375 for 14-16 minutes or until edges just barely start to get golden. Allow to cool a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a cooling rack.
I hope you like my cookie recipe. Happy holiday baking!
Cherry Spice Cookies
2 T rum (or other liquor)
1/4 c dried cherries, roughly chopped (or other dried fruit)
2/3 c canola oil (or other neutral veggie oil)
1/2 c sugar, plus extra
1/2 c brown sugar
2 T honey
1 egg
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt
Pour rum over dried cherries in small bowl and allow to soak at least 10 minutes (up to a few hours for stronger flavor). In large bowl, beat oil, sugars, honey, and egg until well mixed. In separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and seasonings. Sift flour mixture ove wet ingredients. Add cherries. Stir batter until just combined.
Add extra sugar to shallow bowl or plate. Make balls of batter about an inch to inch and a half wide, and roll balls in sugar. Place on baking sheet (sprayed with nonstick spray) about 2 inches apart. Bake at 375 for 14-16 minutes or until edges just barely start to get golden. Allow to cool a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a cooling rack.
I hope you like my cookie recipe. Happy holiday baking!
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Blue Cheese Fritters And Stoplights
My sister might remember this, I don't know. Long, long ago, she took me out to the tapas restaurant in Grand Rapids and then out to a few bars for my b-day. My TWENTY-FIRST b-day. Oh yeah. Par-tay. We had a few drinks. I remember few things from that night, partially because it was quite a long time ago . I remember having a shot called a stoplight at one point. I vaguely remember running into some old high school classmates (that I wasn't even really friends with in hs) and to their astonishment, suddenly asking them for a cigarette for some reason (we'll blame that one on the stoplight). Yeah, it was an interesting night. But despite all that silliness, after a decade and a half, I clearly remember the blue cheese fritters we had at the tapas restaurant for dinner.
I love cheese. I love blue cheese. And I've certainly had blue cheese in various forms in my possession many times over the last 15 years. But for some reason I've never gotten around to trying my hand at making homemade blue cheese fritters, despite intending to all that time. I really don't know why I never tried to make them. Well, last night I finally did. I had a little blue cheese in the house, and I was cooking, and I thought, 'hey, I could try to make those fritters I once had'.
I didn't use all blue cheese for the filling. I used about half blue cheese crumbles and half shredded mozzarella. I grated a little bit of onion into the batter. I used a tiny bit of flour - a mixutre of chickpea flour and regular flour - with a tiny bit of egg to bind it. Salt and pepper too, of course. I added just enough egg until it seemed wet enough to hold together. I formed little balls and then rolled the balls out to make oblong shapes, and refrigerated them until they were nice and firm so that I could coat and fry them without them melting everywhere.
I wanted the coating to be crisp, so I used panko. I coated the fritters in more chickpea flour first, then egg, then the panko. When they were fried, a few did actually melt a little out of the coating, but mostly they held together fine.
I surprised Dan with my creation, and he and I both enjoyed the fritters while we watched a rerun of Big Bang Theory. I had a spicy cherry sauce that I'd made to go with something else that also went fine with the fritters, but what really went well with them was a little balsamic glaze that I happened to have. The vinegary tang really offset the richness and earthiness of the blue cheese.
I can't believe it's been so long since I turned twenty-one. I'm an old geezer. But I'm an old geezer with lefttover blue cheese fritters in the fridge!! Yum!
Happy eating!
I love cheese. I love blue cheese. And I've certainly had blue cheese in various forms in my possession many times over the last 15 years. But for some reason I've never gotten around to trying my hand at making homemade blue cheese fritters, despite intending to all that time. I really don't know why I never tried to make them. Well, last night I finally did. I had a little blue cheese in the house, and I was cooking, and I thought, 'hey, I could try to make those fritters I once had'.
I didn't use all blue cheese for the filling. I used about half blue cheese crumbles and half shredded mozzarella. I grated a little bit of onion into the batter. I used a tiny bit of flour - a mixutre of chickpea flour and regular flour - with a tiny bit of egg to bind it. Salt and pepper too, of course. I added just enough egg until it seemed wet enough to hold together. I formed little balls and then rolled the balls out to make oblong shapes, and refrigerated them until they were nice and firm so that I could coat and fry them without them melting everywhere.
I wanted the coating to be crisp, so I used panko. I coated the fritters in more chickpea flour first, then egg, then the panko. When they were fried, a few did actually melt a little out of the coating, but mostly they held together fine.
I surprised Dan with my creation, and he and I both enjoyed the fritters while we watched a rerun of Big Bang Theory. I had a spicy cherry sauce that I'd made to go with something else that also went fine with the fritters, but what really went well with them was a little balsamic glaze that I happened to have. The vinegary tang really offset the richness and earthiness of the blue cheese.
I can't believe it's been so long since I turned twenty-one. I'm an old geezer. But I'm an old geezer with lefttover blue cheese fritters in the fridge!! Yum!
Happy eating!
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