The Sage of Discovery

For those of you in the United States (or from the United States) have a happy Thanksgiving. We’ll be going to visit friends, so I’ll just be making the following:

Pumpkin Pie Pudding (courtesy of Stephanie O’Dea) with vegan substitutes (think coconut cream people) and Spiced Cranberry Sauce — the (slightly altered) recipe from Epicurious follows:

Spiced Cranberry Sauce (This is good, trust me)

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Yield: Makes about 2 1/4 cups

ingredients

• a 12-ounce bag of cranberries, picked over
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 to 3 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar, or to taste
• two 3-inch cinnamon sticks
• 6 whole cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, or to taste
• 3/4 cup fresh orange juice

preparation

In a saucepan combine the cranberries, the honey, the brown sugar, the cinnamon sticks, the cloves, the nutmeg, and the water and simmer the mixture, covered, stirring occasionally, for 5 to 10 minutes, or until the cranberries have burst and the mixture is thickened. Transfer the sauce to a bowl and let it cool. The sauce may be made 2 days in advance and kept covered and chilled. Serve the sauce at room temperature.

New Orleans - French Quarter: Place de France - Joan of Arc statue by wallyg on Flickr

Afterward, we’ll be taking a min-vacation to New Orleans: talk about one of the great culinary capitals of the nation! I’ll be looking forward to tasting lots of great food and reporting my findings in a couple of weeks…

Perhaps you like Holiday Cooking (and eating!), but whipping up the same Thanksgiving standbys year after year may get, well, kind of bland. Here are some fresh ideas that build on the traditional tastes of the season.

Looking for something to serve in lieu of Parker House rolls for you Thanksgiving feast; take a swipe at recreating this Maple Bacon Biscuit recipe from the LA Times. [via The Gastronomer]

I love Stephanie O’Dea. With her enormously successful blog, A Year of Slow Cooking, the so-called “Crock Pot lady” hardly strives toward the gourmet. What she does do  is offer up simple and fun recipes that are terrific to come home to (especially when coming home happens at 9:00 PM). Stephanie tries out new recipes almost daily and shares the results with her many fans — at this point there’s quite a collection. Last year’s “Pumpkin Spice Latte” represents a particularly creative, and particularly Thanksgiving-y slow-cooker dessert.

If you live in the New York City area, you can buck the monotony of your usual Thanksgiving traditions by going more traditional! Sarah Lohman, creator of Four Pounds Flour,  is hosting a Revolutionary Era Thanksgiving Feast at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn. The event is free to the public and includes tastings of such delicacies as stewed squab and plum pudding. For more information visit the Old Stone House web page…So long marshmallow green bean casserole!

Green Bean Casserole (Mom Style) by .m.e.c. on Flickr

Brussels sprouts make the perfect perfect complement to mashed potatoes and turkey, except if you hate them that is! Never fear; Diane from the White on Rice Couple swears that this recipe will turn sprouts “haters into a lovers”!

Cranberry sauce is delicious, but if Thanksgiving dinner isn’t enough to curb your cravings for cranberry creations, you can whip up Cake Spy’s “Apple Cranberry Galettes.”  p.s. They are also a perfect addition to your in-law’s holiday buffet.

On January 1st, 1908 Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Nimrod, departed from New Zealand’s Lyttleton Harbor. It’s destination? Antarctica. After being towed 1,650 miles by steamboat, Nimrod reached Antarctic ice, and Shackleton’s team began their push to be the first humans to reach the South Pole.

They never made it. Grappling with poor weather conditions and supply shortages, Shackleton and his men missed their mark by roughly a hundred miles. However, aside from gathering valuable information about conditions in Antarctica, the Nimrod expedition produced one notable success; on January 16, 1909, a group of Shackleton’s explorers discovered the approximate location of the South Magnetic Pole.

But lately, Shackleton’s expedition has produced a fruitful discovery of a different nature. During his 1908 expedition, Shackleton’s group set up camp on Ross Island — a camp he and his crew abandoned hastily in the March of ‘09. Although Shackleton’s 1908 mission produced no human casualties, it did include the loss of two cases of McKinlay and Co. whiskey (and some other supplies), left behind at the camp. In 2006, this whiskey was found buried beneath Shackleton’s Ross Island hut.

Shackleton's Hut at Cape Royds on Ross Island from Wikipedia

Now the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust plan to launch an expedition of their own to cut the crates of century-old whiskey from the ice. This could be a boon for Whyte and Mackay, the distillers who own McKinlay and Co. The company sees the extraction as a potential means to sample or recreate the now extinct blend of scotch.

Cheers to that.

[story from BBC NEWS via npr]

For more information see An Antarctic Time Line and “Ernest Shackleton” on Wikipedia

Ever wonder how they get your breakfast cereal to contain 100% of the daily recommended intake of iron? The answer: it has bits of metal in it. Yes, that’s actual bits of iron in your breakfast cereal. Check out the video below to see iron filings extracted from breakfast cereal.

Beware, even though it looks like this cereal is choc full of iron, it may not be the kind that is bioavailable, or easy for the body to absorb. The USDA cautions that not all forms of iron found in food are good for health, many types simple pass through the gastrointestinal system. According to the USDA, too little research has been completed to be able to make useful distinctions about which kinds of additives work best.

The following is a video on YouTube from touristpictures. It briefly recounts the history of American warfare from WWII through the present. Although it deals with sensitive topics, such as the bombing of Hiroshima and the destruction 0f the World Trade Center, it is very creatively done. Sometimes it’s good to get some comic relief when confronted with tragedy and I hope you enjoy it.

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA), a government department intended to “protect the public’s health and consumer interests in relation to food,” has teamed up with the UK’s Good Food Channel to create reality TV series Family Supercooks.

In each episode, two families will square off to whip up the best family meal and to win a spot in  the show’s finale. The FSA’s role will be to provide the contestant families with sound nutritional advice, making the meals healthier. The agency also hopes to reach out to viewers in order to encourage regular British families to create wholesome, homemade meals together and to pass down food preparation knowledge to younger generations. To augment this message, the FSA will post advice and nutritious recipes on the Family Supercooks website.

As part of a marketing campaign for Family Supercooks, The FSA has released a series of videos featuring anthropomorphic food. Enjoy “Talking Nuts” and “Talking Pizza” below.

[via Neatorama]

With a glance at the subject matter, one might think that Mark Kurlansky’s book, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, would be as bland as a frozen fish stick. Not so! The book reads instead like a history channel mini-series; it’s loaded with action and it delves into each topic just enough to keep you turning the pages. Informative and broad in scope, Kurlansky’s Cod offers up something for everyone.

Did you know that Vikings used cod to sustain themselves on long sea voyages, making it possible for them to cross great distances of water or that cod figured heavily in shaping the United States? Or did you know that in the middle of the 20th century, Iceland and Britain fought a series of “friendly” sea battles known as the “Cod Wars?” From the harbors of Nova Scotia, to the home of the Basque, to the shores of Africa, the intriguing story of cod barely leaves any land untouched.

Of central importance in this story is Kurlansky’s message of conservation, which is seeded throughout. Far from coming off as preachy, the author draws you into concern about overfishing by making you enamored with his fishy hero and by providing accounts of the slew of negative consequences that have already involved everyone from North American fishermen to the British naval forces.

Aside from the main content, one of the neatest touches in the book is its whimsical chapter headings, which highlight cod quotes, vignettes, and recipes. These vignettes sample the contributions of  notable individuals from Dickens, to Dumas, to de Cervantes. This impressive list of contributors serves to further highlight cod’s wide cultural and historical importance. Foreshadowing the book’s cautionary message, the prologue opens with a verse from Yeats:

“The herring are not in the tides as they were of old/ My sorry for many a creak gave the creel in the cart/ That carried the take to Sligo town be sold/ When I was a boy with  never a crack in my heart.”

Anyone who’s ever been interested in how food interacts with culture or how a single industry can shape the world should pick up this book.

Well, we’ve set back the clocks, the days are getting rapidly shorter, and the nights are getting really, really cold. My little apartment by the Rockies has seen three snowfalls already this Fall — I think it’s time to accept that winter is right around the corner (or three snows ago). I am all geared up for comfort foods and festive holiday fare.

When I think of winter, I can’t help but think of my days as a college student, freezing my butt off during Michigan’s months of bitter cold. Food Wolf pays homage to a couple of my favorite college food haunts (Zingerman’s and the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market) as well as some others throughout this frigid northern state.

Just in time for the winter holidays, British chemists from the Royal Society of Chemistry have come up with a recipe for the perfect gravy. [via The Food Section]

Speaking of winter holiday food; what cover model is more perfect for this month than the mouthwatering, golden roast turkey? But an article in the New York Times draws some eye opening comparisons between images of these stuffed supermodels and those of their human counterparts, including the possibility of, *gasp*, body part enhancement!? (More airbrushing on that left drumstick!) [via boingboing]

"Our Thanksgiving Turkey" by Mandie on Flickr

Okay, I’m not a sweets person, but I have a serious weakness for 1. desserts from my childhood (don’t we all) and 2. anything with citrus curd. What better way to merge both these concepts than with this uber-cozy lemon curd s’mores recipe from The Atlantic.

If you are a sweets person, or if desserts from your childhood include an amalgamation of bad chocolate, Cake Spy offers up a clever way to revive leftover Halloween candy: candy pie. I don’t really enjoy Halloween candy, but I do enjoy that the post title for this melted candy creation is  “Candy Massacre.”

Fossil Fuels XPort by Steve Kocino on Flickr

In 1995 scientists Raul J. Cano and Monica K. Borucki uncovered endospores from a bacteria related to Bacillus sphaericus, a fungal bacteria, in the stomach of a bee. Endospores are dormant spores, surrounded by a thick protein wall, and created by bacteria in response to environmental stress. In this dormant, dehydrated state, Bacillus endospores can withstand heat, radiation, chemical agents, and pressure.

The cool thing was that the bee was a Proplebeia Dominicana, a form of extinct, stingless bee , and it and the bacteria were fossilized in 20 to 45 million year old amber. And, somewhat surprisingly, some bacterial endospores were more or less intact. According to Cano and Borucki,  “In the state of dessication some bacteria may remain in a cryptobiotic state for millions of years.”  To extract the Bacillus, the researchers first chemically sterilized the amber surfaces to eliminate extant bacteria. After placing the resin in liquid nitrogen, they cracked the amber shell under a sealed hood to retrieve the bee’s stomach contents.

But what they did next was really, really cool: they were able to revive the ancient spores. After bacteria was spread on petri dishes, fed, and incubated, it began to colonize. An ancient organism had been brought back to life! (or so it seems). Cano and Borucki’s findings astonished them and raised surprise and skepticism throughout the scientific community. Their results were published in Science.

But the story didn’t end there. Over the next months, Cano revived more specimens using the same method. One particular find was a bacteria related to Saccharomyces, a genus that contains brewer’s or baker’s yeast. Just for fun, Cano and Chip Lambert, Cano’s partner at the Ambergene company, used the Saccharomyces to brew up a batch of Eocene epoch beer to serve at Cano’s daughter’s wedding. The verdict? not a bad flavor, and not bad for a couple of amateurs.

It wasn’t until 2006 that they decided to take their ancient brew commercial. In 2006, Cano and Lambert teamed up with Stumpton and Kelley Brothers Brewing Companies to create Fossil Fuels Beer with their prehistoric yeast. The beverage was launched in 2008. So far, the beer is available for consumption only at these two breweries, but Fossil Fuels is slated for distribution soon.

So when can you have your own taste of pre-history? Keep up with the Fossil Fuels website to find out!

[via Wired] [for another take, check out Time Magazine] OR

Cano, R., & Borucki, M. (1995). Revival and identification of bacterial spores in 25- to 40-million-year-old Dominican amber Science, 268 (5213), 1060-1064 DOI: 10.1126/science.7538699