Bite-Size Trip Down Memory Lane

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I was digging through some old pieces I’d written a lifetime ago and I came across this bit from 2009 – which I think I still rather like:

“Street food is more than just a tasty morsel eaten on the run. It’s great food plus the thrill of the hunt. It’s the absolute bliss of realizing you’ve reached the corner of Broadway and 17th just as the Wafels & Dinges truck has pulled up. If you think ‘bliss’ is laying it on a bit thick, this is because you have not had a dessert waffle from Wafels & Dinges.”

Nuts to That! A Celebration of Peanut Butter

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Tomorrow – the 24th of January- is perhaps my favourite food holiday of the year.

Peanut Butter Day!

Yep, a whole day devoted to just peanut butter! I’m seeing parades with beige banners, complete with majorettes tossing their batons whilst smiling through clenched jaws because their teeth are stuck together with the ol’ pb, and Peter Pan scarfing contests. The works.

I absolutely adore peanut butter, you see. I can go months without sex, but not without peanut butter. It is, for me, the mortar on which the bricks of my life are placed – the greatest solace and greatest reward. And, in a rare show of patriotism on my part, it absolutely must be American.

None of that organic crap for me. That peanut butter that separates in the jar, and tastes gritty and flat even when you stir it back together. Nope. My peanut butter requires the added salt and sugar, and the emulsifying agent that makes it so smooth. Because for me, smooth it must be. And there’s a reason, it turns out, why only American peanut butter works. It’s all about history. So come with me now as we take a skip through the history of the peanut, and the ensuing butter.

First off, let’s dispel a myth or three. Continue reading “Nuts to That! A Celebration of Peanut Butter” →

Musing on Great American Pies Month

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February is, apparently, Great American Pies Month. It may or may not surprise you to know that it appears to have been the brainchild of Crisco brand shortening.

But ignoring the brand behind the idea, the idea of a Great American Pie got me thinking. A ‘great’ pie would be a well-made, delicious pie no matter what the cultural origins. So what makes a pie an American Pie (movie notwithstanding).

Continue reading “Musing on Great American Pies Month” →

Getting Ourselves Sorted After Being Hacked

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After a very disruptive hacking of our previous website, we’re working hard to get a shiny new site up and running. We even managed to save some of our favourite posts – which we are restoring this week.

But hey, we can restore that stuff and keeping talking about our favourite things. Namely, what we eat & where, how we cook it, why we cook it that way. We can still be asking questions, seeking suggestions, making declarations (both grand and silly) and exploring food history, sharing ideas and recipes all while putting things right.

People sharing a meal, photographed from above

So, enjoy the classic posts we’re restoring and keep up with us in real time over on Facebook or Twitter (come on, no one calls it X do they?).

First Signs of Food Trends for 2024

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It’s getting to be that time of the year, everyone. You know what I mean – no, not holiday time. I mean, it IS holiday time and that’s grand and we can talk about all the food related to that if you like. But what I meant is, it’s almost the end of the year so we are starting to see the trend lists for next year appearing!

And like clockwork, Whole Foods Market has released its top 10 anticipated food trends for 2024. And my reactions, off the top of my head: Continue reading “First Signs of Food Trends for 2024” →

The Old Bake and Switch (Useful Swaps)

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Back in Tips for Better Baking, I mentioned that the first thing to do when baking was read the recipe – ingredients and method – all the way through so you weren’t taken by surprise mid-bake.

Have you been doing so? Yes? Excellent. You would make Mary Berry proud. You might even make Paul Hollywood proud but he wouldn’t let on since he’s been practicing his inscrutable face in preparation for the new series of Bake Off – which, did I mention is coming VERY SOON?

What’s that? You haven’t been reading through the recipes before starting? Well, OK. Let’s not mention that to Mary or Paul and see if we can’t come up with a “save” of sorts.

At the end of Better Baking Tips, we talked about what do when you have no buttermilk and how to make your own self-raising flour from the good old plain stuff. But there are all sorts of things you might find yourself running out of so here are a few more last minute ingredient saves. Continue reading “The Old Bake and Switch (Useful Swaps)” →

Lots of Love for Leftovers (and No-Cook Meals)

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There’s been a lot of talk recently about how no one cooks anymore, more folks depending largely on take-away. I’ve no problem ordering pizza or Chinese now & again. I love the time-saving genius of my microwave. But everyday?

The cost aside (my wallet weeps at the thought), sodium content alone gives me pause – it makes my hands feel puffy just thinking about it. But yes, sometimes I don’t want to cook or shop; I’m too tired or busy or broke. So I embrace the leftovers (hence this posts inclusion in my Looking at Leftovers series) and the basic building blocks found in my kitchen cupboards.

Quick No-Cook Meals from Leftover Chicken and Standby Staples:

Chicken looms large in the menus at TransAtlantic Towers. Chicken Pesto Pasta, roast chicken pieces, chicken stews, etc. We always have breast or thigh fillets in the freezer and keep an eye out for particularly good bargains during our regular shop). As a result, we quite often have cooked chicken in some form left over.

And while I’m perfectly content to grab a cooked chicken breast and nibble away as is, it’s nice to jazz it up a bit too.

If you have some left over chicken, why not shred it and use it in: Continue reading “Lots of Love for Leftovers (and No-Cook Meals)” →

Still Looking at Leftovers: Bread, Part 2

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We were talking about leftovers – and then specifically about leftover bread.

Needless to say that one of the best ways to use up leftover bread is – as I said at the time – French toast.

french toast - or if you are in the UK, eggy bread

So let’s talk about French toast. Or eggy bread, if you prefer that name. Continue reading “Still Looking at Leftovers: Bread, Part 2” →

Looking at Leftovers: Bread, Part 1 (of 2)

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Welcome to the first in my ingredient-focused posts in my Looking at Leftovers series (check out the kick off post to see what the rest will be about). I figured we’d start big with bread. Why big, you ask? Well, first – bread is one of the most thrown away foods in the US and the UK. It’s a big part of the leftovers landscape.

Second – big also refers to the size of the topic. Bread itself is an enormous subject – the types, the ways to make it, the ways to use it, store it, serve it.

Leftovers is also a subject worthy of considerable time and effort. So, I was unsurprised when what was supposed to be a single post decided to expand into a multi-part “series within a series.” We’ll tackle the basic issue here and discuss ideas for tackling it, then I’ll offer up some recipes and variations in the next part. Continue reading “Looking at Leftovers: Bread, Part 1 (of 2)” →

Looking at Leftovers: A Series

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I don’t know about you but I always feel a bit guilty when I throw away food. I always feel like if I’d just taken some time or planned better, I wouldn’t be in the position of tossing half a loaf of bread in the bin.

As the kitchen at TransAtlantic Towers gets busier and busier (what with himself’s weekend cooking marathons and my baking ever on the increase) we’re trying to get more out of our food shop – shopping smarter and wasting less. Making use of leftovers and using the freezer as a pantry are both huge parts of that. And we’re not alone – lots of people I’ve spoken with have been working on the same thing in their own ways.

That’s what the Looking at Leftovers series is about – sharing what we’ve found about what sorts of things get leftover, how people are using them, saving them and thrown away less. There will be ingredient-specific posts, recipe posts and tips and tricks posts – anything I think might be useful. Continue reading “Looking at Leftovers: A Series” →