Autumn and food

Today is the first day of autumn.  The temp here in Kansas City showed it, too:  49 degrees on my thermometer.  

Time to start thinking more about cold-weather foods.  Well, maybe not entirely.  I just did my fall chocolate order and picked up a large bag of the specific chocolate I like to use for my mint chocolate chip ice cream.  Soon you will see that ice cream land on the menu.  I love doing my big fall order of chocolate.  It is part of my end-of-summer ritual:  open up the website, order the standard items I like to keep on hand, check out anything new they are offering, and then decide what else I want to try or what else I want to indulge in.

This week in addition to the menu offerings, I'm going to be making a couple different BLT pasta salads.  I've made these before, and I'm trying to decide if I want to place one of them on the menu.  I'm also going to be dabbling in a test of another new ice cream.  I will bake some rolls.  And I will hopefully start my single-elimination cinnamon roll tournament.  I have multiple cinnamon roll recipes that I like to use.  I'm going to be making them in pairs and after each pair, one will go on to the next round.  By the time I get to the end I will have chosen one to be on the menu.

I'm also going to be mailing a package of cookies up to Zak (and Heidi, but she won't eat them since she's vegan and none of these cookies are vegan).  This is partially a "thank you!" for them since Heidi and Zak are the ones who maintain and enhance the brucebakeryandbistro.com website.  And it's a chance to see how the cookies will come out after being in transit a couple days.  I will have to work on finding a couple good vegan things to send up so that Heidi can eat them too.

Autumn is such a great time to think about all our favorite foods for the upcoming holiday season.  I love the change of seasons.  I love the holidays.  I love the food.  What a great way to head into the end of the year.

Enjoy the new cool weather.  And thank you for reading this blog and trying my food.  I truly enjoy sharing both my words and my foods with everyone.

Cookie dip

The end of summer is almost officially here.  In just a few more days, autumn will begin.  The leaves are already falling from some of the trees.  The evening breezes feel different.  The slanting sunlight of the late afternoon looks markedly different than it did just a handful of days ago.  The turn of the season is here.

As the end of the year approaches, I think about comfort foods a lot.  I've just added a new item to the menu, and this one definitely feels like a comfort food to me.

This is a sweet and creamy cookie dip.  I like to dip spiced molasses cookies in it, and chocolate chip cookies, and use it to make sugar cookie sandwiches.  I've even dipped strawberries in it.   I'm sure there are many foods with which this will pair well.

It is mildly sweet with a pleasant flavor that always leaves me smiling.  And it's creamy texture is what I think makes it a comfort food.

It's on the menu for next weekend.  I hope you'll give it a try. 

Have a great weekend everyone.  And be on the lookout for more additions to the menu.

Lasagna

 

Good morning, everyone.

Summer is almost over.  I can feel it in the air when I put out birdseed each morning.  Leaves are starting to fall from a few of the trees.  The winds are feeling different.  And even a hot afternoon doesn't feel quite as hot.

As we head into cooler weather soon, it's the perfect time to think about hot foods.   With that in mind, it's a great time to announce another new food added to the menu.

Lasagna is now available.  I love pasta dishes and especially lasagna.  This is made with a combination of ground chuck and mild Italian sausage.  This mix of meats is just wonderful, I think.  I'm making these in individual servings.  They come in disposable baking cups, already cooked and then chilled.  (Although if you want to try to arrange a pickup time that coincides with when I pull them out of the oven, you can do that.)  Once you get them home, just pop them in your fridge until you're ready to eat them.  Then remove the plastic lid, put them on a cookie sheet and heat them in a pre-heated 350 oven for 20-25 minutes.  I also like to lay a loose piece of foil over it to make sure the cheese on top doesn't brown.  I usually put a light coating of oil on the foil or tent it so it doesn't stick to the cheese.  Do not try to heat them in the microwave in the baking cup in which it comes because it's metal.  

The sauce is wonderfully flavored with many herbs and seasonings.  There are three different cheeses.  Oh, I love eating this.  And I love how convenient it is that I can make them ahead in individual serving sizes and then just heat them up.

So order some lasagna and let me know how you like it!  It's on an upcoming weekly menu as I write this.

Cheese spread

A new item has appeared on the menu:  cheddar cream cheese spread with horseradish and paprika.

I love dips and spreads.  Anything creamy and flavorful that can be eaten with a cracker or a raw vegetable or a hunk of bread .... these things are good in my opinion.  

I've always loved cheese.  Who hasn't?  I mean, does anyone not like cheese?  If you're out there, please stand up and be recognized.  I suppose those who are lactose intolerant might not like cheese.  However, I think they really do like cheese, but they just can't have it without feeling too icky.

This spread, or dip, depending on how you want to use it, is great with so many things.  When I first began working on this item, I wanted some strong contrasting flavors and textures.  Horseradish ended up in this, and I've never really worked much with horseradish before.  But I like it in this and perhaps I'll find more uses for it in the future.

Paprika is always something I love to use.  After all, deviled eggs just aren't quite the same without a dusting to give them color and flavor.

The sharp cheddar cheese in this is shredded and then mixed into the cream cheese.  This means that the main ingredients by volume give a texture combination that I find very pleasing as the shredded cheese is not pureed or mashed into a paste.  The bits of cheese are abundantly evident in every spoonful.

A few other ingredients are tossed in and they shall remain secret for now.  

I hope you'll give it a try.  It will be appearing on a weekly menu offering very soon.

Have a great late summer day!

Tolkien and food

On today's date, September 2, in 1973, J. R. R. Tolkien passed away.   Tolkien, as almost everyone knows, wrote The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and some marvelous short stories, poems and essays.  If you've read the three works I've mentioned but want more, try Leaf by Niggle, Smith of Wootton Major, and Farmer Giles of Ham, all among my favorite short stories from any author.  There are still others I haven't mentioned, too.  Tolkien created an entire world in his stories and left behind many unpublished notes and writings that give more details and history about Middle-Earth which is where The Lord of the Rings is set.  Thankfully those notes and writings have made their way out to the world via a series of volumes organized and published largely due to the efforts of his son Christopher. 

Why do I mention the anniversary of his passing on this food blog?  Well, I remember so vividly the first time I read his books how he wrote about how all hobbits loved food, and celebrations, and had more than the typical three meals per day that seems so normal now.  There was talk of seed cakes, second breakfasts, and the appreciation of food in general as one of the luxuries of life to be most enjoyed.  That stuck with me from the time I was 13 years of age which is when I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.   

I love the concept of enjoying food.  Sure, we all talk about how we love certain foods.  But this world moves at such a fast pace that I think many times people are too consumed with the idea of consuming food quickly and without thought.  (How's that for interesting phrasing?)  We all have to eat.  We might as well enjoy it, truly savor it, honestly revel in our favorite foods.  I don't mean we should eat in such a way that we become less healthy.  I simply mean that we should endeavor to make food more than just a simple function of life.  It should be a joyous part of life.

The foods which I put on my menu are always my favorites.  I don't put anything out there that isn't something I personally enjoy immensely.  So when I get to share these foods with all of you, it is a personal thing for me, something I am happy to do.  And it makes my enjoyment of my favorites more complete when I get to serve them to people who will enjoy them, too.

Kitchen clean-up

Today I have been experimenting with some different foods and recipes in the kitchen.  At the same time, I've been nibbling on spoonfuls of one delicious food or another, grabbing a quick bit of a muffin, eating a few grapes -- basically grazing like a deer in a meadow.  These kinds of days are fun.  They are unscheduled.  They are free-form.  They are creative.  They also make a mess as I tend to dirty a lot of utensils and pans and serving plates.

When I was younger, I would be all gung-ho about cooking up multiple things on a single day and it was always fun.  Fun, that is, until it was all done and I had to do all the clean-up.  Oh, I hated that.  Seeing a mound of dishes and pans and spoons and spatulas all waiting for me after a lot of cooking, well, it was sometimes maddeningly disheartening.  I hated all that clean-up.  Who wouldn't?  As I finished the final recipe I was making on one of these long cooking days, that pile always mocked me, always laughed at me, always dared me to stay enthused about my day in the kitchen.

Then one day, I just decided to do "clean as you go".  At first, I hated disturbing my cooking momentum with constant stops to clean a pan or a mixing bowl.  But it didn't take long for me to feel differently.  These days, as soon as a single pan or plate or spoon is done being used, it's cleaned right away.  Often those things are done while cookie doughs or cake batters are in the mixer so that I get the satisfaction of multi-tasking, or perhaps while a tray of cookies is in the oven.  So now when I finish of day cooking multiple foods and tons of cookware and dishes are being used, the clean-up is already done.  There is never a pile of unwashed dishes ready to break my good mood.  

One might ask, why don't I just use a dishwasher?  I prefer to wash the dishes by hand for many reasons.  I won't go into all the reasons at this time, but let me mention one that may seem unexpectedly unusual.  I love the feeling of the hot water on my hands as I wash the dishes on chilly autumn mornings and cold winter days.  Admittedly, this reason doesn't hold up in summer, but for every other season where the temps are frigid, cold, or even mild, there something about soaking my hands in hot soapy water that I find to be a nice perk of choosing to do all my dishes by hand.  

Have a great week, everyone!  And remember to take the time to enjoy some good food.  

Hot chocolate

 

It's late August, and the weather is hot.  The sun is bold, and the humidity is high.  Yet we aren't that far away from the change of the season to autumn.  I'm already thinking ahead to copious rainfall, cloudy afternoons, leaves falling, and holidays that seem to be in such a hurry that they trip over each other in their push to get us to the end of the year.

So what am I thinking about during what may be the last bit of real hot weather for the summer?  Why, hot chocolate, of course.

I love hot chocolate any time of the year.  Some people tell me that's crazy.  But people love hot coffee all year, so why not hot chocolate!

Some people mistakenly call any chocolate drink "hot chocolate", including all those mixes that come in single serving packets to which is added hot water or hot milk.  But in reality, most of those are made with cocoa powder and no chocolate, and that means hot cocoa.  You want real hot chocolate, you have to use actual chocolate.  And when you do, it is definitely worth it!

Here's an easy hot chocolate recipe:

180 g  bittersweet chocolate, 60% cacao

100 g  milk chocolate

32   g  cocoa powder

40   g  sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp allspice

a pinch of cardamom

a pinch of salt

The higher the quality of chocolate you use, the better the flavor and smoothness you will get.  (And by chocolate, I do not mean chocolate chips.)  Break up the chocolate into relatively small pieces.  Then toss the pieces into a food processor.  Add all the remaining ingredients and then pulse the processor many times in medium-length spurts.  I don't like to run it continuously because the blade generates heat, and I don't want to melt the chocolate.  Instead, I want to chop it relatively fine.  If you have some chunks of chocolate left over, don't worry, it's OK.

Now heat up milk and add it to a measured quantity of the mix.  The hotter the milk, the better.  You want this hot milk to melt all that chocolate in the mix.  You can use the microwave, or a saucepan, either is OK.  Generally, 1/4 cup of this mix per 1 cup of milk is a good ratio.  When they are combined, stir it until the chocolate is all melted.  Voila!  There it is!

You can vary the spices to whatever you want, but this combination is one I particularly like.

I've had several cups this week already even as the summer is trying to enforce it's will one last time (I hope!) before autumn arrives.  I love it any time of day.  I especially like to add a bit of almond-flavored whipped cream.

Anyway, give it a try and let your mind wander to the cooler months and holidays ahead.

Cauliflower mash

Good morning and Happy Saturday to everyone!

This week cauliflower mash makes it's entrance on the full menu of Bruce Bakery and Bistro.

Personally, I've never been one to eat cauliflower much.  Some people really love it, but it seems more people can just as easily do without it.  But I love being able to take a food that is not a favorite of mine and turn it into something that is irresistible.  And that's what we have here.

If you like mashed potatoes, you'll like this.  The texture, the flavor, the appearance all are very similar to mashed potatoes.

Cauliflower is cooked in boiling water until very tender.  Then it's puréed with butter , cream cheese and various seasonings, and finally shredded parmesan cheese is processed into the mixture.  When it's done, it tastes amazing.  I am not exaggerating when I say that when it's sitting in my fridge, I can't help going back to it multiple times throughout the day.  

An here's an amazing thing.... it's even good when it's cold!  Hot or cold, I enjoy it immensely.

That's all for today.  Just a short post that I'm squeezing in between cooking brownies, hazelnut shortbread and Swedish visiting cakes for this weekend's orders.  

Have a great week!  Enjoy the waning summer.  Autumn will soon be here.

Sweet spiced roasted pecans

A new item has been added to the full menu:  sweet spiced roasted pecans.

While I am more than happy to indulge in sugary sweet treats that are the complete opposite of healthy, I am also very happy to have healthy snacks that are also delicious.

These roasted pecans are coated in a mixture of  several spices and extracts, as well as the sweet coating that helps bring it all together.  They roast in the oven for about a half hour and when they come out I am eager to dive into them as soon as they are cool.  I've roasted these for as long as 45 minutes and they are still great.  By that time however, much more of the natural pecan flavor has been baked out, so I prefer to keep the cooking time down to 30.  But it's nice to know the cooking time is extremely flexible.

I put these in a sealed container on my kitchen counter, and I can't help but repeatedly return to it to nab a few more throughout the day as the hours pass.  They are healthy so your body feels good as you eat them, and they have a great balance of sweet and spicy, and I love the lightly crunchy texture

They will be offered on a weekly menu soon.  I hope you will try them out.

Stay cool if you can.  It's a hot day here in Kansas City, and many other places around the world.  

Textures

 

Isn't food great?!  I mean .... can you imagine life with nothing but nutritional supplements that have no taste, no flavor, no color, no texture?  I like to think especially about texture a lot.      

Food textures, the words themselves, refer specifically to properties of foods which can be sensed by touch, either by mouth or by hand. 

For instance, take the crispy rice treat shown above.  The combination of the crispy (from the puffed rice) and the chewy (from the marshmallows and butter which are melted to create this treat) is amazing.  Or take a simple chocolate chip cookie -- the slight bit of crispiness on the outside, the slight bit of chew on the inside, the pools of liquid chocolate interspersed with the actual cookie.  The texture contrast is wonderful.

The tricky thing with some foods is that textures are very likely to be easily changed (most often in a bad way) completely by accident if one is not being careful.  This week I made sweet spiced roasted pecans.  They were great.  I always love to have them around to snack on.  They were crispy and crunchy both from the roasting which dried them out a bit as well as from the sweet and spicy coating in which they were roasted.

I stored them in a sealed container and every time I wanted some, I popped the lid, scooped some out and resealed.  But then something terrible happened.  I got distracted.  I went to grab a few.  And I left the lid open.  For some time they sat open on the counter and slowly bit by bit they seemed to absorb some of the humidity in the air.  When I went back to get more and I saw that I had left the lid open, I knew they wouldn't be the same.  And they weren't.  The taste was the same but also different because texture affects our evaluation of taste. 

The same thing happens to potato chips if you leave them out on warm humid day.  That's why some people have made a fortune on little clips which make sure you chips bags are closed.

Well, I'm going to make another batch of pecans.  And this time I'll try to be more careful.  I tossed the remains of the texture-disadvantaged batch out for the squirrels.  I don't know if the squirrels could taste the sweet or the spicy on these pecans, but I hope they appreciated my efforts.  I happened to catch a glimpse of a young brown squirrel nibbling on one of the pecan halves.  He seemed to be enjoying it.  

Have a great week, everyone.