Bread crumbs, thyme, Old Bay, Chesapeake Bay Seasoning and other spices combine for grilled Flounder.
Hey DC readers!
So we’re trying to decide what brand of puppy food to keep Biscuit on, and I was hoping some of you fellow foodies could help!
We did some online research and found that Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul has good quality ingredients and is reasonably priced, so we’ve been trying to change him on to that food. But at our first vet appointment yesterday, the vet suggested that Iams and Science Diet are good brands that have a lot of long term research under their belts. When we pushed back a little he said that Iams were the people who broke the story about melamine in pet food a few years ago but that they didn’t get any credit.
I like science and data… so I appreciate that companies like Iams put a lot of money and research in to their product. I also understand that millions of dogs have been on Iams for years and done extremely well. I also understand the philosophical argument that better quality foods (without things like corn gluten meal and meat byproducts) should be more nutritious. We know that a fast food cheeseburger isn’t good for a person everyday, so we’re likely to think it’s not good for dogs either. But aside from passionate debate and outcry on the message boards, I haven’t seen much actual data about what’s better.
Have any of you run across data about what is actually healthier for dogs in the long run? What does your vet recommend?
When I traveled to Germany last year I had the opportunity to sample a lot of cuisine that was new to me. While in Heilbronn I went to a small wine festival and had a slice of something called zwiebel kuchen, which basically translates to onion cake. It wasn’t a cake so much as it was a quiche (I can’t image children wanting this for dessert, or better yet on their birthday!), with egg playing a major role. Tasty but pretty egg-y (it was from a food stand at a festival, after all).
I decided I wanted to lighten it up, take out the egg and replace it with more vegetables. Doing a little research I came across a French dish called Pissaladière, which is more of a pie or pizza, rather than a cake. This sucker sports olives and anchovies, however, which are not Edwin-Approved (to be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever had anchovies, but I try to stay vegetarian when I can). I played arround a little trying to add some sweetness (I was thinking cake, after all) with red bell pepper and a teensy bit of sugar and then threw in some tomato for kicks.
The result? Pretty rockin’ if you ask me! I would have preferred the filling a bit thicker, so next time I’ll cut back on the tomato juice (updated in the recipe below). Other than that, the only note is that this is a bit of a time intensive task, so clear some space out.
Vegetarian Pissaladière
Filling:
4 tablespoon oil
2 large onions (or three small); sliced thin
1 red bell pepper; chopped
2 garlic cloves minced
1 tsp salt
leaves of one small sprig of thyme; roughly chopped
1 can chopped or diced tomatoes (I recommend draining out half the juice)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon corn starch
Crust:
4 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil (your good stuff)
2 1/4 teaspoon yeast (or one envelope, if you must)
1 1/2 teaspoon honey
2 cups flour, plus more for kneading
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon italian spices
For the filling, cook your onions, pepper, garlic, salt and thyme in oil under low to medium low heat until the onions are soft and thick; approximately 30-40 minutes. Be sure to stir everything up from time to time to prevent burning. Add the tomatoes, sugar and corn starch and bring to a simmer, cooking away some of the liquid until slightly thick, almost syrup-like; approximately 10-15 minutes. If you’re having problems with this, consider adding a bit more corn starch.
For the dough, combing the water, honey, yeast and olive oil in an electric mixer bowl followed by 2 cups flour and salt. Using a dough hook, mix on medium-low speed, adding additional flour to prevent the dough from sticking to the bowl. After ten minutes, move the dough to a floured surface and kneed for one minute. Put your dough in an oiled bowl, turn a bit to cover with oil, cover with a damp kitchen towel and let sit for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 425. Lightly roll out your dough until it’s slightly larger than a 9 inch pie pan. Take an oiled 9-inch pie pan and stretch the dough to cover it, raising up the dough slightly over the edge so it sticks. Spoon your filling into the pie evenly and bake until the crust begins to golden; approximately 15 minutes. Bon appetit!
I’m so excited about this comment that I had to pull it out of the post and paste it here. A DC reader and friend of mine, Maggy, just commented on Edwin’s post from last week – “Do Organics Taste Better.” Maggy says,
“This is my favorite conversation to have in general. I think it’s not so much the ‘organic’ as the way it’s grown and also, especially with fruits and vegetables, the variety. Both Clark and I come from families where the same tomato (and potato, and everything else) plants have been passed down from house to house and family to family, and because they’re bred to taste good, rather than to pack well in a box or to stay ripe-looking for two weeks, they taste much more incredible and different, even as sauces.
You can see the same thing with meat, too. Heather knows I’m into the beef thing, but a few years in the past we had identical cuts from beef raised on Clark’s farm and beef from the grocery store; we did blind taste tests and everyone could tell the difference.
The whole subject fascinates me, especially since we’ve started a garden and we have tried raising different varieties of the same thing (i.e. sweet corn).Oh, and on the eggs…it’s not that they are organic, it’s what they eat. One of my dad’s employees has four daughters who, as a 4H project, separated their chickens and fed them different things to see how the yolk colors were affected…the darker yolks came from higher-protein diets.”
Maggy’s fiance and his family own a cattle farm. Boxwood Farm is currently accepting orders for winter beef delivery – check it out!
to bring you something adorable!
Meet Biscuit. Morgan and I brought him home yesterday. He is a big sweetheart. He also enjoys kibble, his cow and constant attention! Today is our first full day with him – please wish us luck!
A couple weeks ago I talked about making your own stock as a cheaper and more flavorful alternative to buying it. Hänni made a great comment I failed to touch on in that post: using scraps or older vegetables as stock ingredients. When you’re cutting your carrots or your onion or whatever you usually trim stuff off and those trimmings usually end up in the trash. Older vegetables past their prime often end up in the same destination. Such waste! It’s sad, you say, but cannot be avoided.
I’m here to tell you that there are many ways to reduce your waste and one of of my most cherished methods is through making stock. Carrots don’t need to be crisp, potatoes don’t have to be firm without sprouts; because all you’re really doing is sucking all the precious flavor you can out of them and tossing them out! Clearly, you have judge what is suitable for stock and what is beyond saving and Barbara of over at Tigers and Strawberries has a great post on this with guidelines to follow (be sure to check out her other articles on food preservation as well).
So next time you’re about throw that vegetable away, ask yourself if would make a tasty addition to a well made stock.
A few days ago MSN posted a photo essay titled “What The world eats,” showing all the food eaten by families from various countries. My first reaction to this was “wow, that’s a lot of food!” but then living the life of a bachelor I’d never really given that much thought to what your standard nuclear family consumes. I was also struck by the variation between families such as all the processed foods in the United States photo compared to a complete lack in Ecuador’s.
United States: The Revis Family
What do you guys think? Be sure to check out the “Wealth and health in 10 countries” spreadsheet on the bottom as well. Also, that’s a lot of soda, Mexico!
Ecuador: The Ayme Family
(via Becoming Minimalist)
You know those crazy people who don’t like sauce on their pizza (cough-my husband’s sister-cough)? Well this one’s for you!
Remember the other week when Morgan and I went to a neat gourmet store/cafe in Charlottesville called Feast? Well we also bought a little jar of basil pesto.
I have a great memory of going out late for food one night with a friend in college – for some reason we thought pesto pizza washed down with giant milkshakes at midnight was a great idea. We were wrong (dead wrong), but that doesn’t mean pesto pizza isn’t delicious!
Pesto Pizza
1 ball of dough
1 jar of basil pesto or make your own (see recipe links below)
1 tomato
1 cup of freshly grated mozarella
a little bit of oil and a bit of flour
We bought a delicious and inexpensive bag of pizza dough at Chandler’s Bakery in Charlottesville.
If you have a pizza stone, preheat the oven with the stone in there to 525F. Flour a baking sheet and roll out the dough – preferably on a baking sheet that will make it easy to transfer the pizza to the stone (that’s always the hardest part!).
Drizzle a small bit of oil on the dough and then spread your basil pesto over it. It doesn’t take much pesto, maybe 1/4 cup for a medium size pizza. If you’d like to make your own, I recommend 101 Cookbooks’ recipe; Simply Recipes also has one but I haven’t tried it.
Slice the tomato and then cut the slices in half (I hate it when you bite into a piece of tomato but can’t bite through it all the way… let’s just go bite-sized!). Spread the slices over the pizza. Grate your mozzarella and sprinkle gingerly over the tomatoes.
Pull out the oven rack as far as you can, and get another person to help you carefully transfer the pizza to the stone. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.
There’s been a lot of debate and discussion over the value of organic foods since they first gained popularity years back. Many experts claim there is no additional health value from organics, though I seriously doubt the demand will decline anytime soon.
But what about taste? I have a friend who swears the organic apples he buys from his local farmers market are better than the ones at the grocery store. I have to admit I’ve never given it much thought; usually only buying organics if it’s on sale or if it looks really really good (or the alternative looks really really bad).
Have any of you noticed any difference? With everything, particular fruits/veggies?
I was browsing the foodie blogosphere for some outside inspiration when I came across this delicious looking recipe from Kristin over at Picky Cook. I’m quite fond of broccoli so this was right up my alley.
I upped the veggies (of course. hey, broccoli was on sale) a bit and gave up a bit more of a broil for more of a burn; what I expect from a good bar potato skin. Other than not giving the potatoes enough of an initial bake (making it harder to hollow out and mash), they turned out great! If you’re looking for more potato skin ideas, check out Heather’s recipe with rutabaga.
