"cooking" news and stories

• Someday, San Franciscans will find it -- the rainbow connection. (But not at the local pastry shop, sadly.)
• Forty years ago, a cultural revolution. Today, a cookie revolution?
• One of these cookies is not like the others -- because it's actually a pretzel.
• Marion Nestle reminds readers of the best way to eat healthfully. Hint: It's not a complicated process.
• But back to cookies. Le Boulange store-bought cookie dough takes the cake (as it were).

A lot has changed over the last 102 years, both in and out of the kitchen, and nothing makes that hit home more than this gem, published in the New York Times in 1907. It's a letter to the editor, written by Gabrielle Stewart Mulliner, entitled: "Women Enjoy Cooking, A Pleasure, Not a Drudgery, Once the Art is Acquired."

Gabrielle was inspired to write her letter after reading an article that discussed training women in the art of domestic service -- you know, cleaning, cooking and doing all those other house things for your man.

Her claim: Women wouldn't hate cooking and serving men if they were trained properly. Man, if only men knew this ... they could have quashed that annoying Women's Lib movement in a blink! It wasn't about liberation, but an organized outcry of mediocre frustration! They just needed to learn how to do it right.

I'll let you read the letter in all its glory yourselves, but here are a few highlights:

"As long as the race exists, men will have to eat, and some one will have to do the cooking."

"Housework done intelligently is not drudgery."

"Anything a woman can do well, she enjoys doing."

2009 suddenly has a wonderfully sweet ring to it. 1907 can stay well in the past.

Do you have a tendency to set off your smoke alarm when you cook?

Until earlier today, I had no idea that the first Thursday in November held any particular significance (especially in light of the importance of the first Tuesday). However, during my regular trip through the blogosphere today, I discovered that there is a group out there that has declared the first Thursday in November to be National Men Make Dinner Day.

It's a 'holiday' designed specifically for those men who rarely get near the stove and know the refrigerator mostly as a place where the cold beer and soda is kept. The website that is devoted to this day offers a set of qualifications and perky guidelines in order to suss out whether 1). you're the type of man who should be participating and 2). whether you're really prepared to take on the evening meal.

Source

I love cooking on Sunday morning. Sunday is usually the one day of the week I can do whatever I want, so they're pretty laid back and slow. It's only been a recent discovery that I enjoy cooking on my one easy day of the week, as opposed to a bowl of cereal, but I'm glad I finally did come to that realization.

Some of you may remember a post from earlier this week about Nazuki, a spice bread from Georgia. Well, everyone's been pretty busy this week, so the second loaf was starting to go stale. Of course one of the best ways to use up stale bread is a nice bread pudding, and that's what I made for my Sunday morning. My first thought was to make a savory bread pudding with some tomatoes that I need to use up, but I just couldn't see using a sweet bread in a savory dish. The flavors wouldn' mesh.

After breifly flirting with making French toast instead, I mixed up some milk and eggs with some cinnamon and brown sugar, then pourd it over the crumbled Nazuki in a baking dish. The bread pudding didn't take very long to bake, and it was delicious when it was done. It was a sweet dish, but not any more so than French toast and less so than sweet syrup on pancakes. If you don't have any Nazuki on hand, I bet this would be great with cinnamon raisin bread. The recipe is after the jump.