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Carrot Crazy: A Recipe for Pickled Carrots
by Diana Zahuranec 
Why did I eat half a pound of carrots before tearing myself away from the refrigerator? It is not a Vitamin A deficiency. Nor was I hungry. It was this magic “pickled” carrot recipe with drugs in the ingredients – just kidding, of course, about that last part. I am not kidding about the magic part.
These carrots aren’t exactly pickled. I suppose they could be if the water-to-vinegar ratio was double-checked for optimum bacteria inhibition, and of course if all canning and preserving steps were followed. But there’s no point in actually canning these if they’re eaten in under a week (ahem, sometimes under 4 days). Anyway, they should keep for 4 weeks refrigerated – provided they last that long.
I first tasted these crunchy, addicting snackies during a University of Gastronomic Sciences potluck dinner. A jar of carrot sticks amidst homemade quince tart, cinnamon sticky bread, cheesy focaccia, and endive leaves filled with oniony salsa – who had time for carrot sticks? But all it took was two or three unsuspecting students to reach into the jar, get hooked, and munch through 2/3 of the supplies before they kindly, reluctantly, let me in on the secret. I tried two, glanced the other way, and the carrots were gone. My friend told me they were simple to make: “Just blanch the carrots and soak them in boiled water with vinegar for a while. And I add some sugar and spices.” How long do you soak them? What spices? How much sugar? I wanted to know. My friend shrugged.
Four months later, I googled “pickled carrots” and then created my own recipe based on a mix of the ones I saw. My friend’s casually imprecise directions are pretty much the whole idea behind making these, because if you’re not pickling them, just loosely follow these instructions with your ingredients at hand or of choice. There’s little reason to actually be precise. Here it is.
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Simple Sustenance: Fall Greetings — Pumpkin Sage and Sunflower Seed Spread
by Renu Chhabra
Crunchy leaves; a coolness in the air;
Rich deep colors and branches so bare.
Clear starry skies; a harvest moon bright;
Pumpkins, haystacks and scarecrow’s delight! — Teri Anderson
The calendar says fall has arrived.
Pumpkins greeting you at every store front. I can almost hear them sing joyous notes of fall’s arrival, but the weather here in California is in a different mood.
It is reluctant to let summer go. It is still holding on to its one wing.
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Coconut Pound Cake and Ratio Cooking
by Diana Zahuranec
It was soft and yellow-white with a thin, dark crust. The crust was not hard or chewy, but broke away perfectly from the rest of this pillow-y treat. It wasn’t a piece of bread, though it looked like one. Was it cake? It was on the end of a long table under a blue tent shading us from the summer sun. A gold cardboard plate presented perfect slices of this marvelous discovery.
I held the slice in my little sweaty hands, taking small bites that burst with butter, vanilla, and sugar. Its texture was half of the pleasure: smooth, moist, fine-grained, and soluble, I already wanted more. But the table was on the other side of the lawn now, and there were so many long tables laden with food with big people figures milling about, from one end to another. I never found it again.
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What we’re reading today: White Chocolate Eton Mess, Hot Chile Pepper Paintings, Beer Tourism, London Wine Harvest Destroyed
What we’re reading today: the beer archeologist, history of the lunchbox, brief history of spices, saffron bread recipe, etc.
What we’re reading today: Henri IV and chicken, how to eat healthy when traveling, US learns organic farming From Turkey, etc.
Simple Sustenance: Roasted Red Onion, Fennel and White Bean Soup
by Renu Chhabra
The essence of pleasure is spontaneity.–Germaine Greer
Spontaneity in the kitchen can be fun sometimes and a challenge at other times. But it does get our creative juices rolling, and pushes us to bring out our best. Often times, with no set plans, and working with what we’ve got produces great results. New recipes are born, and new talents are discovered. That’s the beauty of spontaneity. Who wouldn’t like that?
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What we’re reading today: food waste, chai splendor, African vinegar, rising cost of food in Arab world
by Jonell Galloway
Click here to keep up with the latest in world food and wine news.
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Sauce for Thought: Coming in From the Cold – An Exploration of Soup
Sauce for Thought: Coming in From the Cold – An Exploration of Soup
by Alice DeLuca
We’re turning down the new thermostat daily, stubbornly staving off the inevitable start-up of the furnace for the coming home-heating season. It’s the hot soup season and the knitting season also, so there are reasons to celebrate. Animals are busy storing everything they can get their paws on, for a long winter of curled up dreaming. I picture them underground and know why some people covet their fur coats. My coat of choice is made from the knitted wool of sheep, and to the sheep I am grateful.
Our new Nest thermostat is “smart” in that it knows what we are doing, but we maintain the illusion of control by tweaking it via tablet technology, even from remote locations. The designers thought of everything, down to the specially designed stickers for labeling the wires during installation. We’re hoping we won’t have to fool this new thermostat in to turning on when the temperature dives like a submarine, the first week of January; nor will we be tempted to put a space heater under it to keep it warm so it won’t activate the furnace, as my father used to do with his mercury-switch driven thermostat from those days.
When the temperature drops, the Canada geese start making tracks. Often they are flying south, but sometimes they appear to be confused and fly east or north, which is because some of them winter-over. The V-formations of confused geese overhead is another clear indication that the time has come to consider hot soup.
Japanese soup
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