Plums won't be here for a couple more months, but this image was far too pretty to wait until later in the season. It's a nice reminder that plums come in many different colors, a fact we sometimes forget because grocery stores typically carry only the purple ones. It gets me excited for the coming of the summer fruit!
It sits alone and untouched at the end of a long buffet table -- a bowl full of apples and bananas, maybe a seedy orange tossed in as an afterthought. Don't let your fruit salad meet this awful fate, spruce it up instead!
Are you a fan of bad puns and fresh produce? Ho, boy, do we have a fashion line for you.
FoodTee.com features t-shirts, canvas bags, aprons and camis with pics of produce and cute accompanying slogans (a pic of cherries reads "no sugar added" and a radish simply reads, "rad"). Cute, eh? Although the "stalker" slogan aside the stalk of celery is a little creepy.
If you purchase a bag or tee for your favorite all-natural friend, a portion of the proceeds go to Food Studies, Two Angry Moms, and Better School Food, all of which support child education on nutrition and good eating habits.
And that's, to borrow a slogan from the cucumber shirt, pretty cool.
What a fantastic idea: splitting waffles into individual squares and filling them with chutney! Genius.
The recipe comes to us from Vegalicious, and you'll find a recipe for the waffles as well as for the chutney.
Hmm - what if we can't find papayas? Perhaps mangoes would be a good substitute?
And just a reminder: this is most definitely a vegan recipe, so the recipe calls for "egg replacements" instead of eggs, as well as soy milk and soy margarine. And before you go changing the ingredients to real-milk products, try it vegan! You might just like it...
When I was growing up, once every eight weeks or so, my dad would surrender to our cajoling, drag out the waffle iron, and create some of the best waffles. Even the waffles I now make for myself (still on a every-other-month schedule) just don't compare. However, I think that I've discovered a waffle that might just best my dad's fare, as these waffles look crisp, have good, deep wells (all the better to hold your maple syrup) and also contain raspberries. Be still my heart.
This image comes to us from Meliass and she's got the recipe up on her blog, The Boastful Baker (her recipe also comes from her dad. Are waffles a father thing?).
Is it just me or is a lot of food being recalled lately? Or maybe it's just that food has always been recalled, but we're just more aware of the news.
Whatever it is, the most recent news is that the FDA has issued an import alert on cantaloupe from Agropecuaria Montelibano, a Honduran grower and packer. Fruit from this company appears to be associated with a Salmonella Litchfield outbreak in the United States and Canada. Apparently, about 50 people have fallen ill.
I'm not exactly sure what an "import alert" is and whether that's better, worse, or not really associated with a total recall, but if you've got the orange-fleshed melons, check the sticker for the origin, and if there's no sticker, well, when in doubt, throw it out.
I was watching an episode of some Emeril show recently in which Emeril adds chili-infused vodka to his Bloody Mary. I remember thinking that I just HAD to do this, but by the time I turned off the TV, I had forgotten the steps and lost my motivation. This happens frequently, which is why I love the Food Network web site.
I may be primarily re-inspired, however, by a how-to post over at WIRED about vodka infusion. The process described works with number of fruits and vegetables, and I think it would be fun to try a bunch at once and do some taste testing. At any rate, attempts will likely surpass the one made by some friends last spring to infuse vodka into a watermelon (though I've seen it work before, I'll bet the process goes a lot smoother when you infuse the fruit into the drink, and not vice versa).
Anyone have vodka infusion success (or failure) stories to share? Fruits or veggies that work especially well?
I was just reading about a survey done by a U.K. group called the Food Commission. The group looked at several products that were fruit flavored (they actually concentrated on strawberry flavored foods) to see what the actual fruit content was. Well, it wasn't so great. Only about 40% of the products had any fruit in them at all, and those that did only had minimal amounts.
The Food Commission is upset. They say that the products which have no fruit but are flavored and have that fruit pictured all over the packaging are misleading consumers, at the very least. But in this day and age, with all the studies that have been done and all the information available, can anyone really claim to not know what they're eating? Maybe companies can be misleading on packaging, but they can't outright lie on the label information (though they do find tricky ways around some information).
I just assume that big corporations are lying to me. I assume that anything in a box or other packaging has very little nutrition, especially real fruit. If a food says it's fruit flavored and has that picture on the front, you still need to read the ingredient label to know what you're really eating. I feel like people should take charge of their own consumption. Read the label. Then if you still eat it, at least you know what you're getting.
If you ever happen to find yourself with 7,200 -- that's 600 dozen -- bananas, you could bake a year's worth of banana bread for you, your family, friends, neighbors, and probably people you don't know, or you can create a work of art like Stefan Sagmeister's.
The artist's work, which includes this banana wall thing (I have no idea what to call it -- a sculpture?) are on display at Deith in NYC. All 7,200 of the bananas are real, and according to Make, "it smelled like 7,200 bananas too, slightly rotting." There are more pictures on flickr.
In ancient Greece, figs were eaten during frenzied sexual rituals. That fact alone should be enough to get some figs on the Valentine's Day menu!
However, the reason figs are associated with aphrodisiacs is that a fresh fig, when cut open, looks like (not too sound too clinical or anything) a certain part of the female reproductive system. Who wouldn't think of fertility when seeing all those tiny little seeds?!?!
Fresh figs are seasonal, and more than likely, not available during Valentine's day, but dried figs are available year round.
I stumbled across this recipe on Epicurious for these decadent Chocolate Kumquat Egg Rolls, and the idea of the sweetness and creaminess of the chocolate/kumquat mixture layered against the delicate, flaky exterior made my mouth water.
This is food porn at its finest; the ultimate aphrodisiac. It is sticky and messy and unapologetically delicious. This is what you feed to your lover in bed, not caring that the chocolate oozes out and drips onto their chin and the crumbs fall into the sheets.
Though this combination sounds scrumptious, you could easily replace the kumquats with with pecans, coconut, rum-glazed bananas or any other deliciously evil combination. Or, just eschew the chocolate altogether and instead use Nutella or honey or...(fill in your ultimate sweet indulgence here).
The saying is that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but it never specified which kind. According to research from Chang Y. Lee of Cornell University, apples, as well as bananas and oranges, might keep brain doctors away. Antioxidant compounds found in those fruits seem to prevent neurotoxicity in cells. In other words, eating apples, bananas and oranges "may be beneficial to improve effects in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's."
Attention fellow bloggers, desk jockeys, students and anyone else who's chained to a computer all day: eating strawberries and flaxseed can help.
Lifehack.org tells us twenty foods and drinks that will help boost productivity, including essentially any kind of fruit, water and green tea, sunflower seeds and lowfat yogurt.
Flaxseed may sound intimidating, but it's pretty easy to add it to tons of foods, and its chock-full of health benefits like better concentration and lowering of LDL (bad) cholesterol. (To remember which cholesterol is which, I remember "LDL" as lousy cholesterol, and "HDL" as happy cholesterol. Silly, but it works).
My roommate recently bought flaxseed and ground it up in our coffee bean grinder, so we sprinkle a little in everything we can: oatmeal, omelets, yogurt, pasta, smoothies...the list is endless. If it's easier, you can also add flaxseed oil, but a tablespoon or two a day will do it. Then, just keep your fluids up and your heart rate steady, and you'll be a workin' machine.
Every year when I was growing up, there would be one Saturday in late November or early December when my mom would pull out a bowl of oranges and jar of whole cloves and announce that it was time to make pomander balls. The pungent smell of orange zest paired with clove is one the aromas that makes me instantly think of childhood, Christmas and baking.
Yesterday afternoon, I stopped by a local produce stand with no particular shopping list, just a desire to refill my fruit bowl and get something green. I bought a pound of brussels sprouts, two sweet potatoes and a bag of oranges because they looked so fresh and good. Wandering around my apartment this morning, trying to avoid starting in on the tenth revision of my thesis the thought struck me that an excellent way to avoid school work for just a little longer would be to make a pomander ball.
Grabbing my jar of whole cloves, a bowl and the most spherical orange, I set to work. There was something deeply satisfying about inserting the cloves into the orange and being greeted with that smell that takes me back to childhood. I always create a pattern with the cloves, working until it looks like a series of longitude lines around the orange, but you can do it any way you like. The trick I'd like to share is to make sure you poke the clove holes with a toothpick or skewer first instead of using brute force to muscle the blunt end of the clove into the fruit. It makes it a whole lot easier and much kinder on the fingers.
Looking for some spooky treats to take to a friend's upscale Halloween shindig tonight? Well, you could buy these strawberry ghosts from Godiva for $4.50 a pop. If that is a little beyond your budget, you could try following these directions over at the Kitchen at Apartment Therapy and make your own. They say that all you need is fruit, chocolate, paraffin wax, a small pot, toothpicks and wax or parchment paper. Sounds like a delicious, if potentially frustrating, project. If you give it a shot, let us know how it turns out!
Are you a fan of bad puns and fresh produce? Ho, boy, do we have a fashion line for you.
I was watching an episode of some Emeril show recently in which Emeril adds chili-infused vodka to his Bloody Mary. I remember thinking that I just HAD to do this, but by the time I turned off the TV, I had forgotten the steps and lost my motivation. This happens frequently, which is why I love the Food Network web site.
I was just reading about a survey done by a U.K. group called the Food Commission. The group looked at several products that were fruit flavored (they actually concentrated on strawberry flavored foods) to see what the actual fruit content was. Well, it wasn't so great. Only about 40% of the products had any fruit in them at all, and those that did only had minimal amounts.
May is National BBQ Month and National Hamburger Month
Cupcakes, not for dessert (unless beef is your idea of a treat)
Because eating French Fries in the car is so tough
