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Clocking in at an extraordinary 25g of fiber/serving (the minimum for a woman’s entire daily need), homemade New York Times Red Lentil Soup. Note the gorgeous food photography, which reminds me of Heidi Swanson’s style.
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Cranberry Sorbet with Clementines and Mint
I love me some cranberries. The cranberry’s tangy, tart taste rivals rhubarb for my fruits-from-up-north-which-must-have-sugar affection. (Even if rhubarb isn’t really a fruit.)
Every holiday season I buy up bags and bags of cranberries to freeze and keep throughout the year. Generally, the vast majority are made into bread using an old family recipe. One or two others become cranberry compote of various flavors - with citrus, ginger, or jalapeno. (We can’t neglect the jalapeno, now can we. Tart and hot: the resident food critic’s favorites.)
After 34 years of the same bread and compotes, it’s nice to branch out into other ventures. Explore new frontiers of the cranberry expanse. No sooner had the thought occurred to me than did I stumble upon a recipe for Cranberry Sorbet by Simply Recipes while reading blogs on my iPhone early one morning before work. All day long I dreamed about the tangy-sweet-COLD combination.
That weekend, I ventured to three grocery stores before I found the requisite white cranberry juice. Save yourself some trouble: go to a mainstream grocer to procure this key ingredient, rather than Whole Foods or Target. Whole Foods, however, is an excellent choice for affordable crates of clementines, also in season now. (Did you know they’re also called “Christmas oranges?”) At any rate, while I didn’t plan the clementines for this recipe when I bought them, their addition offered a nice citrus flavor as well as upped the seasonality ante on the dish.
As for the mint garnish, that was also a last minute addition offered up more so for appearance than for flavor. I just couldn’t bring myself to add a sprig of pine to the vibrant pink sorbet this time. Blame the cats, who delight in nothing so much as eating the Christmas tree, both real and artificial. (A little cat with your sorbet, madam?)
A Spoonful of Cranberry Sorbet with Clementines and Mint
Related Links:
Resident Critic Verdict: Great, intense flavor. None of this watered down bullshit or subtle flavors. To be thorough, it wasn’t smooth. Either puree the mixture more, or use a different strainer. There’s a cranberry residue in the bottom of my cup. [untranslated face.]
NB: The strainer I used was the very cute and extremely multi-functional KitchenAid 7″ Strainer - Red
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While we’re on the subject of cookie baking, I couldn’t help but pass along this NPR segment with food scientist Shirley Corriher that aired yesterday. Flat cookies, crumbly cookies, pale cookies - she’s got a great scientific explanation for each that’ll not only solve your problem, but make you a better baker in the process. (Well, maybe not you, but definitely me!)
Plus - she’s got a book on solving all these baking problems. (I’m such a sucker for a book)
BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes.
And Corriher won a James Beard Foundation award in 1998 for her book Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed
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With Christmas just a week away, I found Gourmet Magazine’s Holiday Cookie Collection 1941-2008.
A Sample of the offering from the Gourmet Magazine Holiday Coolie Collection Beautiful Stained Glass Teardrops!
Honestly, most of them look both scrumptious and beautiful. I also love these “Old Fashioned” Christmas Butter Cookies from 1947 cut in the shape of little Christmas trees. What’s really nice is that they include a bit about each decade’s trend.
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I made pancakes! Stonewall Kitchen Gingerbread Pancake and Waffle Mix
In response to Graham’s frequent request for pancakes, I recently picked up a can of Stonewall Kitchen’s Gingerbread Pancake and Waffle Mix. With Graham as my guinea pig, I figured I could mangle of few batches of pancakes before Christmas when Santa will be kind enough to bestow upon me an ebelskiver. Filled pancake goodness will be mine! (Let’s be honest, if we’re lucky I’ll probably only use it twice.)
Williams-Sonoma Ebelskiver Pan: Rumor has it Santa's got one in his bag of treats for me.
I could have picked up plain ‘ole pancake mix for these pre-Christmas trials, but I figured what with it being the holidays and all, we could go ahead and splurge on the gingerbread stuff since we love gingerbread so very much. Not that this mix costs any more for the gingerbread variety versus the 10 other flavors it comes in including another love of mine - pumpkin. At the last moment, I debated placing the can back on it’s lovely end-cap home there with the good folks of Central Market, mindful of the dreary economy and ever vigilant about my budget. But I didn’t. At a price of only $6.00 at Central Market, we’ll only need to add one additional night of soup for dinner to afford it.
In general, I find these prepared mixes have the tendency to be a little bland and/or cook up to an odd consistency. There’s a particular brand of muffin/coffee cake mixes that invariably leaves a sugar water by-product that coats the bottom of my pans. It’s a sticky, icky mess and, after one too many of these culinary disasters, I stopped buying the manufacturer’s mixes altogether.
Other prepared mixes just leave you thinking, “is that all?!” because all the flavor is lost in the time that passes between the product’s original “born on” date and when it’s actually made it to your taste buds. Special added bonus: preservative after-taste.
Stonewall Kitchen Gingerbread Pancake and Waffle Mix - The product description says: The aroma and flavor of this spiced pancake and waffle mix make it the ideal choice for holiday breakfasts. Topped with our Cinnamon Apple Syrup they are incredible.
Not so on either count for this Stonewall Kitchen mix. The instructions were clear and the added ingredients - milk, an egg, and a tablespoon of butter - are all readily available in most kitchens. The batter smelled nice, but belied the lovely flavor that awaited us.
But let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves.
Once I’d added my ingredients, I carefully stirred together the mixture, paying particular attention to the Achilles heal of pancake making: batter’s final consistency. Again, no troubles. In fact, the only thing that could have gone wrong was for me to massacre a perfectly good breakfast with poor pancake making technique. Et voila!
Lovely, mostly round!, very nicely constituted pancakes.
The best was yet to come: flavorful gingerbread goodness dominated neither by ginger nor molasses. The word gentle comes to mind, though it may mislead one to believe that the pancakes are weak, which they are decidedly are not.
Stonewall Kitchen Maine Maple Syrup
My only misstep, perhaps, was in not choosing Stonewall’s Holiday Syrup to go along with the gingerbread goodness. Stonewall Kitchen has this to say of it:
The delightful blend of cranberries, raspberries and pears makes our Holiday Jam a top selling preserve year after year. This luscious syrup was made to compliment this incredible flavor blend. The color, flavor and smooth rich texture of this syrup make it ideal for the holidays.
The Holiday Syrup would have paired quite nicely with the gingerbread flavor, though I’m not convinced it would have been as extensible as good ‘ole maple syrup is.
On Christmas morning, should Santa decided I was indeed a good girl as we expect (or a bit naughty, but still pretty nice), Graham shall once again enjoy gingerbread pancakes cooked anew in my prized ebelskiver.
Goods by Stonewall Kitchen also available at amazon.com:
Let’s just exhaust this whole gingerbread subject by visiting these other fun! exciting! links:
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Gingerbread Barn in Gingerbread: Things to Make and BakeWhy settle for the same, boring gingerbread house? You know the book's a gem when it's listed on
Why settle for the same, boring gingerbread house? You know the book’s a gem when it’s listed on amazon’s marketplace
Gingerbread: Things to Make and Bake
But if the recession dashed your dreams of home ownership, there’s something for you instead.
The Gingerbread Architect: Recipes and Blueprints for Twelve Classic American Homes
With The Gingerbread Architect: Recipes and Blueprints for Twelve Classic American Homes
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As I mentioned last week, I’m a huge fan of soup for dinner. It’s easy to make, good for the waistline, and good for the body. And it’s just the thing for the cool fall/winter nights. (Yes, even though I’m in Houston, it gets a bit chilly here. To be sure, it’s no Iowa, but overnight temps now regularly visit the 30’s.)
A Texas favorite is tortilla soup. For years, I missed out on it in restaurants and “easy-make” versions, though, because my strict vegetarian food choices conflicted with the liberal use of chicken and chicken stock in most recipes. Even once I added fish and discovered a meat-free version at a local fine grocery store, I still felt the meal lacked “umph.” A couple of veggies, some veggie broth, and oodles of boiled tortilla shells isn’t exactly the bastion of nutrition.
Imagine my delight when, strolling the soup aisles during a recent visit to Central Market, I discovered South of the Border Tortilla Soup by Frontier Soups. No chicken broth listed in the ingredients, and a substantial base corn and black beans. Sweet.
South of the Border Tortilla Soup (Frontier Soups) - Our tortilla soup mix is a sure-fire winner! This chicken tortilla soup is so good it may call for a party. Add chicken, salsa and chips for this Mexican specialty. ($6)
I modified the directions on back, and boiled the ingredients in vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. I made Graham a separate pot of boiled, shredded chicken to include in his bowl, but I wondered if there was something more I could add to give it a bit of umph for me. Since I added fish into my diet a year ago, I wondered if a bit of shrimp would work. (Until now, I’d never heard of shrimp tortilla soup. This version sure looks good too, doesn’t it? )
The choice of salsa the recipe calls for is huge. I used a roasted habanero salsa that was HOT, but added a nice roasted flavor to the meal. This particular salsa was completely pureed, so we did not have small bits of tomato floating about in the soup. The 8 oz of salsa the recipe calls for (about 1/2 a jar) is really a matter entirely of personal choice, and I could envision a scenario where I made each batch of this soup differently.
The soup itself cooks up nicely. In previous soups I’ve used with dehydrated black beans, despite cooking for the prescribed time period, the black beans remain grainy and dehydrated. Not so with the Frontier Soups version, which cook up quite nicely and provide an extra bit of fiber to the meal.
As for the addition of shrimp, that stroke of genius worked out marvelously.
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Dr. Benjamin Franklin, wearing fur hat and spectacles, facing left, in oval tied with a ribbon at top and festooned with ivy. Maverick, P. R. (Peter Rushton), 1755-1811, engraver. c. 1794 (Library of Congress)
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Midnight, 22 October, 1780.
FRANKLIN. Eh! Oh! eh! What have I done to merit these cruel sufferings? |
1 |
| GOUT. Many things; you have ate and drank too freely, and too much indulged those legs of yours in their indolence. | 2 |
| FRANKLIN. Who is it that accuses me? | 3 |
| GOUT. It is I, even I, the Gout. | 4 |
| FRANKLIN. What! my enemy in person? | 5 |
| GOUT. No, not your enemy. | 6 |
| FRANKLIN. I repeat it, my enemy; for you would not only torment my body to death, but ruin my good name; you reproach me as a glutton and a tippler; now all the world, that knows me, will allow that I am neither the one nor the other. | 7 |
| GOUT. The world may think as it pleases; it is always very complaisant to itself, and sometimes to its friends; but I very well know that the quantity of meat and drink proper for a man, who takes a reasonable degree of exercise, would be too much for another, who never takes any. | 8 |
| FRANKLIN. I take—eh! oh!—as much exercise—eh!—as I can, Madam Gout. You know my sedentary state, and on that account, it would seem, Madam Gout, as if you might spare me a little, seeing it is not altogether my own fault. | 9 |
| GOUT.in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreation, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterwards you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition. But what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends with whom you have dined would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours! This is your perpetual recreation, which is the least eligible of any for a sedentary man, because, instead of accelerating the motion of the fluids, the rigid attention it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct internal secretions. Wrapt in the speculations of this wretched game, you destroy your constitution. What can be expected from such a course of living, but a body replete with stagnant humors, ready to fall prey to all kinds of dangerous maladies, if I, the Gout, did not occasionally bring you relief by agitating those humors, and so purifying or dissipating them? If it was in some nook or alley in Paris, deprived of walks, that you played awhile at chess after dinner, this might be excusable; but the same taste prevails with you in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre, or Sanoy, places where there are the finest gardens and walks, a pure air, beautiful women, and most agreeable and instructive conversation; all which you might enjoy by frequenting the walks. But these are rejected for this abominable game of chess. Fie, then, Mr. Franklin! But amidst my instructions, I had almost forgot to administer my wholesome corrections; so take that twinge,—and that. | 10 |
| FRANKLIN. Oh! eh! oh! Ohhh! As much instruction as you please, Madam Gout, and as many reproaches; but pray, Madam, a truce with your corrections! | 11 |
| GOUT. No, Sir, no,—I will not abate a particle of what is so much for your good,—therefore— | 12 |
| FRANKLIN. Oh! ehhh!—It is not fair to say I take no exercise, when I do very often, going out to dine and returning in my carriage. | 13 |
| GOUT. That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most slight and insignificant, if you allude to the motion of a carriage suspended on springs. By observing the degree of heat obtained by different kinds of motion, we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by each. Thus, for example, if you turn out to walk in winter with cold feet, in an hour’s time you will be in a glow all over; ride on horseback, the same effect will scarcely be perceived by four hours’ round trotting; but if you loll in a carriage, such as you have mentioned, you may travel all day and gladly enter the last inn to warm your feet by a fire. Flatter yourself then no longer, that half an hour’s airing in your carriage deserves the name of exercise. Providence has appointed few to roll in carriages, while he has given to all a pair of legs, which are machines infinitely more commodious and serviceable. Be grateful, then, and make a proper use of yours. Would you know how they forward the circulation of your fluids, in the very action of transporting you from place to place; observe when you walk, that all your weight is alternately thrown from one leg to the other; this occasions a great pressure on the vessels of the foot, and repels their contents; when relieved, by the weight being thrown on the other foot, the vessels of the first are allowed to replenish, and, by a return of this weight, this repulsion again succeeds; thus accelerating the circulation of the blood. The heat produced in any given time depends on the degree of this acceleration; the fluids are shaken, the humors attenuated, the secretions facilitated, and all goes well; the cheeks are ruddy, and health is established. Behold your fair friend at Auteuil; a lady who received from bounteous nature more really useful science than half a dozen such pretenders to philosophy as you have been able to extract from all your books. When she honors you with a visit, it is on foot. She walks all hours of the day, and leaves indolence, and its concomitant maladies, to be endured by her horses. In this, see at once the preservative of her health and personal charms. But when you go to Auteuil, you must have your carriage, though it is no farther from Passy to Auteuil than from Auteuil to Passy. | 14 |
| FRANKLIN. Your reasonings grow very tiresome. | 15 |
| GOUT. I stand corrected. I will be silent and continue my office; take that, and that. | 16 |
| FRANKLIN. Oh! Ohh! Talk on, I pray you. | 17 |
| GOUT. No, no; I have a good number of twinges for you to-night, and you may be sure of some more tomorrow. | 18 |
| FRANKLIN. What, with such a fever! I shall go distracted. Oh! eh! Can no one bear it for me? | 19 |
| GOUT. Ask that of your horses; they have served you faithfully. | 20 |
| FRANKLIN. How can you so cruelly sport with my torments | 21 |
| GOUT. Sport! I am very serious. I have here a list of offenses against your own health distinctly written, and can justify every stroke inflicted on you. | 22 |
| FRANKLIN. Read it then. | 23 |
| GOUT. It is too long a detail; but I will briefly mention some particulars. | 24 |
| FRANKLIN. Proceed. I am all attention. | 25 |
| GOUT. Do you remember how often you have promised yourself, the following morning, a walk in the grove of Boulogne, in the garden de la Muette, or in your own garden, and have violated your promise, alleging, at one time, it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy, too moist, or what else you pleased; when in truth it was too nothing, but your insuperable love of ease? | 26 |
| FRANKLIN. That I confess may have happened occasionally, probably ten times in a year. | 27 |
| GOUT. Your confession is very far short of the truth; the gross amount is one hundred and ninety-nine times. | 28 |
| FRANKLIN. Is it possible? | 29 |
| GOUT. So possible, that it is fact; you may rely on the accuracy of my statement. You know M. Brillon’s gardens, and what fine walks they contain; you know the handsome flight of an hundred steps, which lead from the terrace above to the lawn below. You have been in the practice of visiting this amiable family twice a week, after dinner, and it is a maxim of your own, that “a man may take as much exercise in walking a mile, up and down stairs, as in ten on level ground.” What an opportunity was here for you to have had exercise in both these ways! Did you embrace it, and how often? | 30 |
| FRANKLIN. I cannot immediately answer that question. | 31 |
| GOUT. I will do it for you; not once. | 32 |
| FRANKLIN. Not once? | 33 |
| GOUT. Even so. During the summer you went there at six o’ clock. You found the charming lady, with her lovely children and friends, eager to walk with you, and entertain you with their agreeable conversation; and what has been your choice? Why, to sit on the terrace, satisfy yourself with the fine prospect, and passing your eye over the beauties of the garden below, without taking one step to descend and walk about in them. On the contrary, you call for tea and the chess-board; and lo! you are occupied in your seat till nine o’clock, and that besides two hours’ play after dinner; and then, instead of walking home, which would have bestirred you a little, you step into your carriage. How absurd to suppose that all this carelessness can be reconcilable with health, without my interposition! | 34 |
| FRANKLIN. I am convinced now of the justness of Poor Richard’s remark, that “Our debts and our sins are always greater than we think for.” | 35 |
| GOUT. So it is. You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools in your conduct. | 36 |
| FRANKLIN. But do you charge among my crimes, that I return in a carriage from M. Brillon’s? | 37 |
| GOUT. Certainly; for, having been seated all the while, you cannot object the fatigue of the day, and cannot want therefore the relief of a carriage. | 38 |
| FRANKLIN. What then would you have me do with my carriage? | 39 |
| GOUT. Burn it if you choose; you would at least get heat out of it once in this way; or, if you dislike that proposal, here’s another for you; observe the poor peasants, who work in the vineyards and grounds about the villages of Passy, Auteuil, Chaillot, etc.; you may find every day among these deserving creatures, four or five old men and women, bent and perhaps crippled by weight of years, and too long and too great labor. After a most fatiguing day, these people have to trudge a mile or two to their smoky huts. Order your coachman to set them down. This is an act that will be good for your soul; and, at the same time, after your visit to the Brillons, if you return on foot, that will be good for your body. | 40 |
| FRANKLIN. Ah! how tiresome you are! | 41 |
| GOUT. Well, then, to my office; it should not be forgotten that I am your physician. There. | 42 |
| FRANKLIN. Ohhh! what a devil of a physician! | 43 |
| GOUT. How ungrateful you are to say so! Is it not I who, in the character of your physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy, and apoplexy? one or other of which would have done for you long ago, but for me. | 44 |
| FRANKLIN. I submit, and thank you for the past, but entreat the discontinuance of your visits for the future; for, in my mind, one had better die than be cured so dolefully. Permit me just to hint, that I have also not been unfriendly to you. I never feed physician or quack of any kind, to enter the list against you; if then you do not leave me to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful too. | 45 |
| GOUT. I can scarcely acknowledge that as any objection. As to quacks, I despise them; they may kill you indeed, but cannot injure me. And, as to regular physicians, they are at last convinced that the gout, in such a subject as you are, is no disease, but a remedy; and wherefore cure a remedy?—but to our business,—there. | 46 |
| FRANKLIN. Oh! oh!—for Heaven’s sake leave me! and I promise faithfully never more to play at chess, but to take exercise daily, and live temperately. | 47 |
| GOUT. I know you too well. You promise fair; but, after a few months of good health, you will return to your old habits; your fine promises will be forgotten like the forms of the last year’s clouds. Let us then finish the account, and I will go. But I leave you with an assurance of visiting you again at a proper time and place; for my object is your good, and you are sensible now that I am your real friend. | 48 |
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I love the New York Times Health Section. They’ve got a wealth of interesting health information that rarely borders on trite or overexposed information. The tidbit I found for today is an excellent example: 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating, submitted by nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden.
Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores
Bowden’s most exhaustive list is available in his book “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why” (2007), but here are the 11 he submitted as readily available, but underutilized, healthful foods.
Does anyone have any good recipes for the other 10?
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When I became a vegetarian and started reading ingredients on the products I bought, I was bowled over by the number of items I regularly consumed listing high fructose corn syrup. Not only that, they usually listed it was the first or second ingredient, which meant that it was a primary ingredient. With this information alone I resolved to eat dramatically fewer processed foods. And today, while I’m far from perfect, I still limit the amount of high fructose corn syrup we eat.
It looks like intuition may have done me a favor. The New York Times Health Section reports on a Texas study finding high fructose corn syrup more readily converts to fat than glucose, another form of sugar.
Dr. Parks noted that the study likely underestimates the fat-building effect of fructose because the study subjects were lean and healthy. In overweight people, the effect may be amplified.
…limiting processed foods containing high-fructose corn syrup as well as curbing calories is a good idea, Dr. Parks said.
“There are lots of people out there who want to demonize fructose as the cause of the obesity epidemic,” she said. “I think it may be a contributor, but it’s not the only problem. Americans are eating too many calories for their activity level. We’re overeating fat, we’re overeating protein and we’re overeating all sugars. [emphasis added]
Even though her study findings linked fructose to fat, I liked the fact that she didn’t scapegoat fructose as the singular culprit. Nice touch.
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