Poor corn. Sometimes I feel sorry for it. It’s been the subject of exposés putting it at the center of America’s industrial food problems, including obesity and diabetes. In Michael Pollan’s (highly recommended) Omnivore’s Dilemma and the movie it inspired, King Corn, it’s nearly criminal.
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People have been curing meats for millennia. For most of that time, no one understood the chemistry behind the process. But for centuries before refrigeration was invented, even if folks didn’t know why curing worked, they knew that once it was done—a process that could take a few weeks to a few years, depending on […]
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Think of springerles as the medieval greeting card of cookies for the 14th century’s 1%. Many of the foods we sell started out as peasant foods, the cuisine of the 99% in a way. Springerles are not one of them. Springerles (pronounced shpring-er-lees) are cookies originally from the Swabia region in southern Germany, where they’re […]
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Over the years that I’ve been making fruit cakes, I’ve been asked to modify them for the health regimen or the passing fancy—possibly both—of any number of customers. Don’t change the taste, just make it vegan. Or gluten-free. Just leave out the eggs. The butter. Or the flour. The salt for one with heart problems, […]
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New England Yankees have made cider jelly since the 1600s. It was the standard way to preserve the apple crop in the days before refrigeration, and provided a year-round sweetener for cooking and baking. But by the mid-twentieth century it fell out of fashion. That it still exists commercially today is primarily due to the […]
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A few farmers are raising the breeds of turkeys our grandparents would remember from their childhood. This is a story of one of them.
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Here’s a general rule about good food that can help us all: the longer you keep food intact, the better the flavor will be.
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The counter to the side of your stove. It’s where you keep the foods you need most often. The ones you grab every day. Your kitchen’s speed dial. Your food friends list. Here’s a written snapshot of the space next to my stove, circa late spring 2019.
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More than half of the Australian state of Tasmania is preserved in national and state parks. That doesn’t mean there’s no enterprise. But instead of loggers or miners, the workers are much smaller.
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The first English written reference to toast appears in 14th century cookbooks. Back then, after grilling your bread over the fire, you didn’t slather on butter or jam. Instead, toast was served soaked in ale or hot wine and spices. (They called this dish sops, which turned into our words soup and supper—a light evening […]
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