Roger's View of the World, Love and Seafood Gumbo!
Seize the Day! Put no trust in the morrow! — Horace
Well… I obviously enjoy it very much when my daughters come home from their busy lives … and their lives are busy. However, I do feel a bit guilty when they jump into various tasks that are so un-vacation-like… like picking apples, making apple flaps and eating them… hmmm… I guess there is method to their madness! Oh yes, the apple flaps were wonderful!
Anyway, thanks for coming home ladies… I always enjoy the time we spend together.
Dad
If ‘nothin says lovin like somethin from the oven‘ then Apple Flaps are near the top of my list! There are a few different ways to make this treat as they are sometimes fried or baked, I prefer baking. Sometimes the apples are mixed into the dough and sometimes they are a filling, I prefer a filling.
I use my standard apple pie filling recipe in this pocket dessert and you can use a puff pastry or a standard pie crust. After a little trial, I like a little of the syrup in the flap, but too much will ooze everywhere. Painting with an egg mixed with water over the top is a nice way to hold some natural raw crystalline sugar on top! And yes, it is as good as it looks! 😉
Karen was the inspiration for this with her trip to Amsterdam and Dutch friends Jacques and Kitty helped when I asked for recipes… along with cookbooks from Karen…
So these two are awaiting Karen when she comes home shortly !
Dad
Do you ever wonder why you eat the same things as you have always eaten, but somehow you are getting fatter? At first you might be thinking,”I am getting older and the old metabolism is slowing down, so the calories are just sticking around.” Although this may be true to some point, the latest research points to something that may be far more disturbing.
Interestingly enough, if you compare when America started going into the ‘plus sizes’ and the advent of high fructose corn syrup becoming universally accepted in the food industry, there is a correlation. Although correlations do not prove causality, this is far and away an ‘early warning sign’ that can’t be ignored. Check your pantry and see what doesn’t have HFCS in it and you will be surprised! It was even in my prized RICE KRISPIES!
Laura wrote a post a while ago with a link to a site that demonstrates that in two sets of animals given identical calorie diets, those fed high fructose corn syrup got obese and those with plain sugar did not. Here’s part of Laura’s enlightening blog:
American Like Their SweetsIn 2005, the average American consumed nearly 30 kg (66 pounds) of HFCS, as corn is heavily subsidized by the federal government, making corn products unusually cheap. In addition to being suspected of contributing to America’s obesity epidemic, products containing HFCS also have high levels of reactive carbonyls not found in table sugar. Carbonyls have been implicated in tissue damage, such as nerve damage and foot ulcers, in diabetes.
Thank you , Laura… as someone struggling with diabetes and ‘drug free’… staying away from HFCS is more than a choice, it is a necessity.
Fortunately food marketers are starting to get the message, in part, and as the comparison between two popular maple syrups attests… one contains HFCS and the other does not. Guess which one I am buying now and they were both on my shelf!
Good luck and good dieting to all! Oh yeah, let me plug Jenny Craig... it worked for me!
Roger Freberg
There is a rule that says ‘the right tool for the right job’ and when it comes to cooking, this is especially true.
Well before the advent of microwave cooking came the pressure cooker. The history of the pressure cooker is under some debate, depending on how you define it. One explanation goes as follows:
“In 1679, the French mathematician and physicist Denis Papin invented the first pressure cooker or steam digester as he called it. The story is whilst he was presenting his new steam digester to the Royal Society it exploded, leading him to invent the safety valve. Three years later he represented it to the Royal society and gained positive reviews.
The pressure cooker title was first seen in print in 1915. In 1927, the first pressure cookers were sold in Germany and in 1939 the world’s first commercial pressure cooker made by National Presto Industries was exhibited at the New York World’s Fair.”
However, if you define a pressure cooker as a vessel that is sealed and heated and the trapped steam helps cook the meal, then the pressure cooker has truly ancient roots… some might say, as early as the classical Greeks.
I found this rather inexpensive, but highly useful pressure cooker at the store chain Bed, Bath and Beyond. You can find a lot of opinions ( on-line) on which type of pressure cooker you need for cooking or canning, but this one will suits my immediate purposes.
I suspect we will do more canning down the road and this will be helpful.
Roger Freberg
My mother has a fondness of a great many culinary rarities: liver, sweetbreads, spinach and , yes, tripe. As a child of the depression, these were foods that were very familiar to her on the farm in which she grew up and for her 80th birthday, she asked me to ‘cook some up’ for her.
So before you turn your nose up, remember that you have had far more interesting things in that hot dog you so enjoyed… and some of that probably contained tripe! However, to be fair, the expression ‘that was the worst kind of tripe’ is well deserved because so many people do not know how to prepare it properly… especially in this century. The father of Greek Poetry and William the Conqueror both praised the dishes that eventually became “Tripe a la mode de Caen” ( read Laurousse Gastronomique 1961 or original French edition 1938)… and these dishes were featured in both Escoffier’s “A guide to Modern Cookery” (1907) and the American classic “Epicurean.” If it is made anywhere today, it is made very differently and hence the problem.
I am still sifting through the various debates of this famous Norman dish, but several things are clear. First, traditionally this meal is cooked in a hermetically sealed container to prevent any of the vapors from escaping, I think a modern pressure cooker will substitute. Secondly, I found a reference to the fact that the best animals to be used were those in the fall. Why? The reason is that they had been feeding on fallen apples and the traces remained in the flesh… which I think is why cider and Calvados (apple brandy) is called for in some recipes. So the search goes on.
Next, another forgotten art is the making of cider. And since I have many many apples, we’re going to brew some up!
Lastly, the art of home distillation is intriguing. It is important to know, that unless you live in New Zealand… this is still illegal in America…. but worth reading.
So, what was once old and forgotten tastes and techniques are making a resurgence.
Roger Freberg