Meet The Team / Marisa McClellan

In the last year and a half, Slashfood has been an integral part of my life. Over that time, I've written nearly half a million words, posted countless recipes and taken so many pictures of my food that I had to get a larger harddrive installed in my computer in order to store them all. It has been a delight to have the opportunity to write for and interact with the amazing community of readers and writers that come to this space everyday. However, the time has come for me to move on and so today is my last day as a Slashfoodie.

Thank you to all of you who came here, read my posts, cooked my recipes and kept me on the grammatical straight and narrow. You made it all so worthwhile. I also want to thank the amazing team of writers with whom I had the opportunity to work with, I feel so fortunate to have worked with so many talented, passionate foodies.

For those of you who are interested in what's next for me, I will continue to make noise on these here interwebs. I'm going to be blogging about local foods, canning, pickling, jam making, food preservation and the occasional cookbook at Food in Jars. Scott and I will continue to make food in front of a camera for your amusement on Fork You. I'm still writing Apartment 2024, the blog that started it all. And finally, if that's not enough, you're welcome to follow me on Twitter.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Last week, I decided to make a batch of turkey chili. My younger sister and a friend of hers were staying with us and I figured chili was a easy way to cover at least one dinner and lunch the next day. I put a pound of beans in to soak overnight and then the next morning, popped them into a slow cooker. At lunchtime, I ran home to get the rest of the chili ready, browning ground turkey with some chopped onions and breaking up a can of whole peeled tomatoes.

I poured the meat and veggies into a different slow cooker and added the partially cooked beans and their cooking liquid, figuring that they would soften the rest of the way over the course of the afternoon (experienced dried been cookers may have already spotted my mistake). Except that when I got home later that night, the beans were still crunchy. We waited an hour more, and but they never got soft. We ended up picking every bean out of the chili by hand and then adding in a couple of cans of beans, in order to create a dinner we could eat.

Later that night, as I beat myself up for ruining dinner, I flipped through the Rancho Gordo Cookbook, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong. Suddenly, I found the illuminating passage. It explained that you should never add high acid foods to beans before they are fully cooked, as the acids will arrest the cooking process and so you'll end up with crunchy, undercooked beans. Just my problem. I still felt bad about having screwed up dinner, but I also felt grateful to have figured out why my beans has been so terrible. It's one mistake I won't make again.

I think that black bean soup, especially when served with rice and topped with chopped onion, sour cream and a squirt of lemon juice, is one of the most perfect meals on earth. Savory and flavorful, low in fat and totally filling, it's just delicious. The picture you see above is actually one of mine, and I eat it just as you see it, out of my little orange pot, perched on a cutting board to protect the table from the heat. If the picture makes you hungry, you can find the recipe over at Super Eco.

Source

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week.

• Kellogg's has responded to the Michael Phelps marijuana scandal by donating all the boxes of cereal with his mug on them to food pantries.
• Looking for ways to keep the food budget in check? Check out these helpful tips that celebrity chefs shared with Oprah.
• Robert Irvine is back on Dinner: Impossible and the new season kicks off soon.
• When you go to a restaurant, do you socialize and chat with your servers.
• Have you ever been curious whether the restaurants on Kitchen Nightmares prosper and thrive?
• Who's to blame for the peanut salmonella scandal?

Recently, Starbucks wowed the world when they announced that they were releasing a line of gourmet instant coffees, in the hopes of capturing an untapped market. The coffee-loving world was immediately agitated, how could an instant coffee qualify as gourmet and was it possible for Starbucks to create something palatable? (Most instant coffee is unmitigated swill, at least in the eyes of the coffee snob.)

I got my hands on a couple of VIA samples late last week and have spent the last few days trying it out, often subbing it in for my regular morning cup. So far, I've been pleasantly surprised by the taste. It's got a fairly full and rich flavor and isn't plagued by the thin, bitter taste that accompanies so many other traditional instant coffees. I did find that it was missing some of the finishing notes that freshly ground and brewed coffee has, but it was far better than some of the brewed coffee I've consumed on airplanes and at diners over the years.

One thing I discovered when making this coffee is that you've got to take care while pouring out your hot water. Each little packet has enough coffee crystals to make an eight ounce cup of coffee, and so if you add more than that, you'll end up with a watery cup. I find this a little disappointing, as I typically drink a cup of coffee that's closer to 12 ounces each morning. If I were to become a VIA regular, I'd end up measuring out half packets all the time, I practice that would get really frustrating. It would be nice if this coffee came in a larger, multi-serving package, so that I could measure out the amount of coffee I wanted, without the constraints of the packet.