Archive for the 'food' Category

buttermilk

Published
by
Dory
on February 7, 2010
in food
. 5 Comments

woman with buttermilk

I have a new favourite: the Smitten Kitchen’s Broccoli Slaw. It’s a salad of broccoli and cranberries and almonds and red onions, with a dressing made out of buttermilk. As a devoted mayonnaise avoider I love the idea of slaw that is mayo-free. I’ve used the dressing on other things too, most recently quinoa salad (made while Zach was making chicken salad–we used all the same additional ingredients: celery, apples, pecans, cranberries, but diverged in our paths when it came to dressing. He opted for mayo and I balked and grabbed the buttermilk).

But buttermilk comes in one-litre containers and I don’t really need that much. So I’ve been making other things with buttermilk, including Lemon Poppyseed cake (taken from the Smitten Kitchen again, her lemon cake but with poppyseeds added–why would you ever make lemon cake WITHOUT poppyseeds?), and this morning, buttermilk pancakes from the joy of cooking.

——

So while we’re talking about food, I want to highlight just how fascinated I am with Fed Up With School Lunch, the blog of an elementary school teacher who is eating the school lunches everyday. It’s very simple, usually a photo and a short reaction, and the constant reassurance that this is not some big political statement from someone’s who’s been doing food and nutrition campaigning for a long time. It’s a simple project–the blog’s description is “Eating school lunch just like the kids every day in 2010″–and the author is very clear that she’s no expert in nutrition. The’s a naive aspect to this that makes the project have a lot of impact.

——

Also, on monday I’m taking a cooking class at the Brooklyn Kitchen Labs! It’s the chinese takeout class, taught by Cathy Erway who writes Not Eating Out in New York, and I’m very excited about it.

new york and food

Published
by
Dory
on November 27, 2009
in The World, drawing, food and grad school
. 0 Comments

All of my work these days, for my final papers and such, is about New York and Food. So I sit in piles of photocopied printed and stapled articles and reports and draft legislation about food and agriculture and farm-to-cafeteria initiatives and maps of food deserts and on and on.

It is wonderful. It makes me happy to read these things.

The American Journal of Public Health Research and the Journal of Planning Research and Education do not have pretty pictures though.


But this week there is new Maira Kalman in the New York Times! And it is about thanksgiving and food and bounty and cities. It is lovely, twee & smart at the same time.

real

Published
by
Dory
on November 13, 2009
in food
. 2 Comments

I saw a bottle of Canada Dry Ginger Ale in the store, with a big “made with real ginger!” front-of-package claim. The ingredient list, though, did not have ginger listed! Just high-fructose corn syrup and “natural flavours.” WTF, Canada Dry?

canada dry sign
(photo from coreyu)

No matter, because my ginger beer is almost ready! It’s easy to make–just start with some ginger bug, which is grated ginger and sugar in a jar on the counter, fed every other day until it gets all ferment-y. Then make some tea/syrup, boiling ginger with sugar (exact measurements available upon request), then pour that into an empty pop bottle with strained gingerbug. Put a lid on and let sit somewhere warmish for 2 weeks. Then refrigerate and enjoy!

putting food by

Published
by
Dory
on November 6, 2009
in books and food
. 2 Comments

putting food by On one of the hottest days in July, I went over to Emily’s house to help with the canning of some jam and some dilly beans. On her dining room table (the one that has all the food on it in that post about Brooklyn thanksgiving a few posts back), she had a copy of Putting Food By — the classic 1970s (revised in the late 80s) book about food preserving. I found my own copy of it at Value Village in Toronto and was thrilled. How often do you find exactly what you’re looking for on thrift store bookshelves?

No-so-secretly, I’m excited that it’s no longer jam-making time…I’m a much bigger fan of salty and spicy things. I am particularly excited about making pickled mushrooms, pickled onions, maybe some beets, and some apple chutney.

USD-YAY!

Published
by
Dory
on November 4, 2009
in food
. 0 Comments

The USDA has really wonderful old images on Flickr! Look how excited I am about the USDA! Here are two canning-related ones that I think are super.

canning lady

deposit seed co

I found these through the Know Your Farmer Know Your Food website, which is the most beautifully designed government thing on the web.

Also, I finally got around to buying a canning pot and tools–from Amazon of all places. (I still think it’s a bookstore, and I still I think I don’t shop there). Next year, I guess, unless y’all like pickled brussels sprouts.

Everyday I write the book. Er, blog?

Published
by
Dory
on November 2, 2009
in Blog, brooklyn, food and friends
. 0 Comments

This post from my dear friend Kirsten reminded me that last year I successfully participated in NaNoBloPoMo–and so even though it’s already the second I’ll give it a go this year as well. Hi Kirsten! (And Emily and Kurt with whom I participated last year, a slightly drunken pinky-swear sealing the deal).

Yesterday I woke up late, ate eggs AND waffles for breakfast with Zach, watched Crooklyn, and then drove up to Connecticut for a long-weekend (election!) holiday at the farm-mansion with Anna and Naf.

The night before was Halloween. Zach and I made matching Max-from-where-the-wild-things-are costumes (full disclosure: I am still wearing my grey sweatpants with the tail attached. I am a costume-obsessed 9-year-old this week) and then split up for the night. At my shindig Kelly was decked out as KW (with little stuffed owls tucked into her belt), so we had fun howling together.

kw and max
(photo by Tanveer)

A few weeks before that, the same group of wonderful people held Brooklyn Thanksgiving — a whole slew of people were actually going to be away during real thanksgiving, so we held it early. This photo comes from Emily:

thanksgiving spread

I tried to uphold the tradition of making waffles on thanksgiving, but Em’s waffle iron was mysteriously missing. So we had thanksgiving pancakes with corn salsa. Totally yum.

on coffee and neighbourhoods

Published
by
Dory
on September 17, 2009
in The World, cities and food
. 3 Comments

There are a lot of empty storefronts in my neighbourhood, in what I think is a one-man gentrification scheme spearheaded by my landlord. In my estimation, he’s sitting on these spaces waiting for fancy coffee shops and boutique kitchenware stores to open up and attract more folks like Zach and I. I remember learning somewhere that landlords actually get tax breaks on vacant retail space, so there’s actually quite a bit of incentive for this sort of behaviour.

But nonetheless, across the street there’s been construction for a while on the soon-to-open Breukelen Coffee House (blogged about on I Love Franklin Avenue here). Exciting! Hooray! Now I don’t have to walk the full block to the Glass Shop when I need out of the house for some reading-and-coffee.

Except, maybe not so much.

There’s been a lot of discussion about this new cafe on the Crown Heights message board (excuse: I got sort of addicted to the message board after I fell down the stairs and couldn’t explore the neigbourhod on foot. Thanks, internet), including posts from the owners who describe the new cafe as such:

The Breukelen Coffee House is a holistic and organic coffee shop. Our intention is to serve organic whenever we can (we are aiming for 100% of the time- but it’s not always available and accessible).

We are proudly serving Stumptown Organic Coffee. And organic milks: almond, hazelnut, oat and hemp milk. Milk will not be available nor conventional sugar. We will only be serving non processed, all natural sweetners such as stevia, agave syrup and Manuka honey.

We’ll also have delicious organic smoothies!

Equally important are the holistic workshops we’ll be holding. They will focus on proper breath, proper hydration, eating with ‘life foods’, etc, etc.

Our motto is: Order anything from our menu without guilt! Holistic, healthy eating is what we do and where we pride ourselves.

Last but not least- we’ve heard your requests! We will adjust our weekend hours of operation to:

Mon-Fri 7:00AM-7:00PM
Sat 7:00AM-6:00PM
Sun 7:00AM-5:00PM

And here is a photograph of the space. It’s not my photo, but it could be, because this is pretty much what I see when I leave the front door of my apartment. It’s slightly unsettling to share a corner of the city with someone I don’t know who blogs about it all the time, with overly wide-eyed enthusiasm (look! a new bus shelter!), but that’s neither here nor there.
breukelen coffee house

So the discussion on the board is mostly “milk please,” for a few different reasons, mostly “I want it” and “you’ll lose customers.” In truth, I would like real milk (which could be bought from Ronnybrook at the Grand Army Plaza farmer’s market once a week, and be walked over to the store and support local economies and upstate farms), and it probably will push people over the also soon-to-open cafe run by Tony Fisher of Fisher’s Market (actually the cafe which started the thread on the message board), who does a good job of keeping me away from his store by talking too much about the number of hot girls in the shop over on his twitter account.

But really, this shop seems to be sending a big f-you to the neighbourhood, which is now mostly discount stores and roti shops and hair braiding. I would like more retail diversity, yes, but this just seems like it’s skipping over too many steps in a reasonable evolution, and ignoring a whole mess of people who really would just buy coffee and a brownie if they could. I think agave nectar and almond milk are good things (though I am much less fond of the reported hollistic health workshops–seriously, gag me with a spoon and then maybe buy me a beer), but to the exclusion of other things is to the exclusion of other people.

As David says, “white people are great, but they’re not the end-all be-all.”

the North Brooklyn Blogger’s Banquet

Published
by
Dory
on August 17, 2009
in brooklyn, food, friends and up to something
. 12 Comments

I sometimes think that it’s silly that I live in New York because I don’t really care about all the stuff that goes on. A really good day for me is about bike rides, coffee, and making and eating food with good people. It’s not even that I’m content to miss some world-famous DJ spinning in some club–I don’t even know that it’s happening and I’ve never heard of the dude.

It’s a good thing that I live here though, because there are lots of good people who want to make food and hang out and dance around the kitchen and debate the merits of zucchini versus summersquash while shelling peas and drinking bottles of Brooklyn Lager.

I appreciate it when these nights are informal and spontaneous, but a little while ago a group of very wonderful North Brooklyn friends and I started plotting and planning about something a little more structured. This group of friends includes photobloggers (Jake, Tanveer, and Joe), comicbloggers (Kenan), breadbloggers (Liz), food+bakingbloggers (Cate), and all-sorts-of-everything-bloggers (me and Emily)–so the logical conclusion was an over-blogged dinner party: The North Brooklyn Blogger’s Banqut (NB3)!

an annotated picture of salad

(photo courtesy of Tanveer Badal, annotations courtesy of me)

Inspired by Mark Bittman’s recent article about salads, I put together the watermelon-tomato-basil-goat feta salad pictured above. I picked up most of the ingredients on saturday at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket and the Park Slope Food Coop, and got the watermelon from Nam’s* on Sunday on my way up to Greenpoint (to Liz & Joe’s) for the event.

THEN: we shucked corn and shelled favabeans and snapped photos and danced around eachother in the kitchen and stirred and baked and put things in the oven and we used all the knives and bowls and cutting boards and we rearranged things in the fridge and took things out of the oven and we stirred and took more photos and peered in the the neighbours backyard and got caught in a rainstorm and drank rose and played with some puppies and made a mess and cleaned it up.

prepping in Liz and Joe's kitchen
Photo by Joe

And then we ate dinner.

And now we’re talking about doing it again before the end of the summer. The same principles will probably apply: no spectators. Well, no spectators at the event, only afterward. Read everyone’s takes on the evening!

watch out, tanveer!

*I don’t love Nam’s like the dude who writes I Love Franklin Avenue loves Nam’s–it’s too pricey and the produce isn’t particularly awesome or plentiful–but I’m glad that it’s there.

gastrophonic stimulation

Published
by
Dory
on November 28, 2008
in Craft and food
. 3 Comments

I’ve been telling all of you about this, but coming up soon–December 9th–is Gastrophonic Stimulation, an evening of music and food at the Bowery Poetry Club.
gastrophonic stimulation, music and food, holidays, december, winter, party
(click photo to embiggen)

I’m making latkes, so is Shira Kline, Leah Koenig and Avigail Hurvitz-Prinz are making Eggnog, Avi Fox-Rosen and a large assortment of wonderful individuals will be playing music. It will be an evening of serious sensory overload. It will be awesome.

Tuesday December 9th
10 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
$12
(here’s the facebook link if you’re into such things)

I’m making a new apron for the event, using this pattern from the Purl Bee, and this Heather Ross fabric:
yellow, with octopi

Just so you can visualize what this is sort of going to look like, here’s a snap of me making waffles at Thanksgiving last night:
dory makes waffles

hand-turkeys

Published
by
Dory
on November 27, 2008
in food and friends
. 2 Comments

Tomorrow is thanksgiving! My first American thanksgiving! I am going over to the lovely Emily’s house, and making savory waffles from the Rebar cookbook. (I made them once, about 4 years ago, and swore I’d never do it again, they were so time consuming…).

And yes, while I like to pretend that I don’t really understand how America works, I do know that waffles are not a traditional thanksgiving food.

But my favourite favourite thing about thanksgiving…Hand Turkeys!

Look at this photo, from the big brunch party here on south fourth street a few weeks ago:

comparing hands See how Jon and Rachel are comparing the size of their hands? This activity was either right before or right after Jon made his first Hand Turkey. It was a thrilling moment.

A quick google of “hand turkey” brings up these fine results:
screenshot
lolcat hand turkey
TFD
That last one, of course, is from the often brilliant Toothpaste For Dinner.

Here are more pictures of the brunch party because this holiday is all about eating delicious things with people you like.
hey
heater club
floor!

apples and making things

Published
by
Dory
on November 2, 2008
in food and things
. 0 Comments

A few weeks ago when I was up visiting Anna at the farm, we went to a cider party nearby. People brought boxes of apples and milled them and pressed them using the massive cider press. We hung out outside for hours eating food (cider doughnuts!) and drinking the sweet apple cider (different from juice in that it’s not filtered).

The cider press looks like this:
you really turn my crank

The amazing amount of apples:
no doctors here!

And then I got home, and glanced at the calendar hanging up in my kitchen, and it made me smile:
nikki mcclure october 08

I was not sad to switch the calendar to November (or have Emily switch it); it’s just as beautiful.

It’s no secret…

Published
by
Dory
on November 2, 2008
in The World and food
. 0 Comments

dory jon and kenan at the diner

(Jon, Kenan, and I ate breakfast at this diner in Afton that was pretty much the most perfect thing ever. We stopped at the Quickway diner on the way up, and the Roscoe coffeeshop on the way down. I’m happy just thinking about it a week later.)

No secret indeed that I love Upstate New York. Last weekend Jon and Keenan and Lady Grey and I went up to visit Na’aleh. We stayed in the ghost town of a site that Na’aleh is in the off season, and did pretty much everything we did all summer, but compressed into a day and a half: we went to 2 bars and three diners, bought used junk at an “antique store,” ate ice cream at the Treats and Eats, and went to Frog Pond Farms and saw the largest pumpkin ever:

dory and the pumpkin

I don’t mean this to be just a rattling off of things done. It’s just that these away weekends have been wonderful and the folks that I’ve spent them with have made me really happy.

This string of upstate adventures is over for a little while (especially since the trees are bare and the drives are that much less lovely). I can focus on here for a bit.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

Published
by
Dory
on July 12, 2008
in camp and food
. 2 Comments

I wrote a blurb about what we’ve been doing with the kids in the kitchen for the camp newsletter–that’s what this is. The peanut butter has been fabulous and each jar is slightly different. I have them lined up in a gradient from darkest to lightest. Our pyramid of jars of homemade jam is growing too. It’s funny to me that I’ve never made jam before, and now I make it every day. That’s the point though, this learning-by-doing and teaching-by doing.

Anyhow, here’s what the parents know.

Update from the Mitbach.
Dory Kornfeld. Rosh Mitbach 2008

Every kid at Na’aleh this session has made peanut butter. Each kvutzah has rotated through the mitbach (kitchen) and as a group shelled and roasted peanuts, salted them slightly, ground them in the food processor, and spooned it into a mason jar.

Most kids like peanut butter, but not very many of them had thought about what the sweet substance is really made of. While taking turns stirring and grinding, we compared the ingredients in the Price Chopper brand peanut butter (some dextrose, some fully hydrogenated soybean oil) with the ingredients in what what we were making (just plain peanuts). We discussed the various reasons that all these things would be added to peanut butter: for taste, consistency, shelf life, to make it cheaper, and came to the collective conclusion that our homemade batches were far superior than the stuff from the grocery store.

Now we’re in the next set of rotations and this time around we’re making jam. As we mash and boil strawberries with lemon juice and sugar, we’ve been talking about local food, eating things in season, the weird world of corn farming subsidies and high-fructose corn syrup, and whether the higher price of organic produce is worth it.

It’s been really exciting to have the chanachim (campers) in the mitbach. We’re making the kitchen a really active and integral part of machaneh this summer, and through the Mitbach Sadna (workshop) I’ve been able to meet every kid and have them meet me, and everyone at machaneh has been able to learn about and get more involved in what goes into their mouths to power them through our busy days at Na’aleh.

the deeds were done and done again as my life is done…

Published
by
Dory
on June 28, 2008
in books and food
. 0 Comments

I’ve been keeping a list on my arm of things to order, and right now it says:

  • Watermelon
  • Sugar cereal

Which makes me think of this:
Richard Braugtigan's In Watermelon Sugar

Excitement, advenutre

Published
by
Dory
on June 18, 2008
in camp and food
. 3 Comments

Lord knows why, but I wandered into Urban Outfitters today. I spun around in a daze for about 8 minutes, then left, really excited that I’m going to camp on Friday. The next two months will be spent making giant pots of chili, wearing an apron, teaching kids about sourdough, and hanging out in the woods where my phone doesn’t work. Things are gonna be good.

woman on the pie

If you have any suggestions about what I should do with the campers (I’m in charge of food-based education stuff), I’d love to know. Right now my notebooks are full of lists that include growing sprouts, making jam, baking bread, talking about the whole local/organic/etc debate, planting an herb garden, pickling eggs, having a Kraft Dinner vs Real Mac’n'Cheese cook-off, making ritz cracker “apple” pie…

scones

Published
by
Dory
on May 3, 2008
in food
. 0 Comments

So the apple-ginger scones that I made up, in my head and in my kitchen, turned out awesome. I gave up on following the recipe I found in one of my cookbooks about halfway through, because I didn’t have any buttermilk, so I just threw in yogurt and regular milk and some other stuff and they’re really spongy lumpy baked goods.

And then I left the kitchen one big mess because my housemate is away until tuesday and it’s fun to have a few days of solitude and disarray. I will tidy before he returns.

Following Instructions

Published
by
Dory
on May 3, 2008
in food and things
. 5 Comments

I’m looking up scone recipes on the internet this morning, and they all suck. They all say things like “2 cups of bisquick” (bisquick? seriously? if was into using premade stuff I wouldn’t be looking up recipes!) or “spray pan with non-stick cooking spray” (that stuff is scary and gross!). Maybe it’s my own cooking up-bringing, raising myself on vegan cookbooks that all say things like “your choice of sweetener” to accommodate all the folks who don’t eat sugar/honey/agave nectar/whatever, but I want these recipes to say things like “do what you need to do to prevent these from sticking to the pan.”

If these recipes were in cookbooks, there’d be a whole intro section on nonstickage (or on sweeteners, or about substitutions, or whatever), and the recipes can refer you back to the what-cooking-is-all-about pages. But with the dumb internet, recipes are not part of a collection of anything, they’re one-offs. They’re hit singles with no album.

This makes me sort of sad–I feel like all these awesome skills, like the ability to curate or edit or collect or compile are slipping away. We get things totally disjointed and discrete.

I know that there are plenty of people curating all the stuff that’s on the internet–that’s what all those lovely blogs like CRAFT or Swissmiss or Kottke do. And I like them, but sometimes the endlessness of them feels tiresome. ESPECIALLY with the CRAFT blog–if anyone does anything crafty on the internet, it gets reposted there. And just as a link. It’s pointing: “look at this!” “look at that!” and most of it sucks. I know I shouldn’t get all righteous about something that is so clearly a promotional marketing tool for an overpriced magazine ($15 an issue!), but somehow it’s positioned itself at the head of the internet craft world.

Now I’m actually going to go make some scones.