Dates on the Way!

A couple days ago, I recieved an odd voicemail. It was a woman from a date farm in California calling to tell me that the date crop is being harvested and what would I like to order?

I had forgotten that months and months ago, I contacted The Date People to get something called "peanut butter dates". I love fresh dates and had been told by a couple of people that the peanut butter dates from The Date People are AMAZING. Alas, at the time, the harvest was done and I was told that they would contact me in November when the dates became available again. Lo and behold, they called.

But, alas again: No peanut butter dates this year. Evidently, the darn wind blew them all off of the tress...for the second year in a row. Much like the 30 minute conversation I had to order my Thanksgiving turkey, I ended up chatting for a bit with the date farmer about which dates I should now order since the peanut butter ones were not to be had.

I couldn't make up my mind so I went for the sampler pack. And, then, this happens every so often and I think it's so quaint -- they don't take credit cards so there will be an invoice with the product and I'm to send a check after I get the dates. There will be four different kinds of dates in the box. I'm hoping they will be here for Thanksgiving because they will be a great little treat stuffed with peanut butter and/or cream cheese.

Unfortunately, the website for the Date People is no longer up (although you can get a phone number if you google them) -- but here's the link to a video. After you watch it, you will understand that this is another example of people who are committed to bringing the best food to others and not out to make a buck by any stretch of the imagination -- like my turkey farmer and my CSA.

Food & Kisses, GiGi

What I Would Cook if I Could Cook Right Now...

Sounds kind of like, "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck...?"

Busy weekend and now, another busy week. I will not get into my kitchen until Wednesday at the earliest. My farm share items are ganging up on me and Thursday is almost here again!!!

Two board meetings tonight so, all I can do is fantasize about what I would cook if I could cook.

(1) Crown Roast of Pork Stuffed with Wild Rice and Cranberries served with a Dijon Mustard sauce -- love this dish. Actually, it's my own creation too. The thing is, it makes a very large amount of food because when you order a crown roast, you are ordering a rack of pork chops and you need so many to make a circle. And, this is the time of year for it too. Unfortunately, no events on my horizon that call out for this dish. Boo Hoo. I continue to fantasize.

(2) A big pot of Spaghetti and Meatballs -- my all time favorite food in the world. I have not made sauce in ages. For starters, my freezer isn't large enough to hold the overflow. Secondly, I have to be home all day on a weekend day. Maybe one day this winter when it snows...

(3) Waffles -- especially, pumpkin waffles. I have a relatively new waffle maker. It could be that I've only used it once.

(4) A big day of using my new, fancy commercial dehydrator (an early and wonderful Christmas present).

(5) A day of getting comfy with my Green Star juicer.

(6) A successful sourdough bread experiment. I've had many, many failed ones. One day, my ship will come in.

That is enough for now. Why torture myself further? Working is getting in the way of cooking. Life ain't fair.

Food & Kisses, Gigi

A is for Apple

Dear Readers,

Today is a very significant day. Just a few minutes ago, I finished the preliminary work on "the cookbook". All the prep work is done!!!!

I have identified the 130ish dishes that go in the book. I know it doesn't sound like much but consider that I sorted and sifted through over 9,000 recipes to decide upon what I considered to be the real essentials. I'd rather the book be the best of the best and have fewer recipes rather than be some big, fat kitchen sink thing that you need two hands to lift.

And, after all this research, it turns out that the first dish I'm going to be playing with is none other than Apple Pie.

So, now the fun begins. Now, armed with my road map of 130 ideas, I begin my trek. How fun!

Food & Kisses, Gigi

A Coconut Comes to Cockeysville

Last weekend my SO and I took a trip to Miami Beach (combination business and pleasure). Saturday it was too rainy for the "swamp critter safari", so we opted to travel down to the Keys. We ran a little short of time to get all the way down to Key West. At the point we decided to turn around, we drove to see both the Gulf side and then the Atlantic side. On the Atlantic side, we spotted a lone, green coconut that had recently fallen off its tree. We tossed him in the car and decided to bring it back to Maryland.

On Monday, we set out to return home and I had the fear that the coconut would not make it through airline security. I wanted to abandon the coconut rather than deal with the dreaded "bag check" at the airport. SO convinced me to forge ahead with the coconut transport.

At the airport, I did endure a short bag check episode related to the coconut. It got swabbed for explosives while SO pointed out that the coconut was tamper-free. With that, all three of us were off for our Baltimore return.

Coconut came home and rested in the fridge for a few days -- the rest as they say is history as evidenced by the following pictorial:

Pre-hacking!

Half-hacked!!


Now we have an almost defenseless coconut...but this part of the shell was pretty hard to hack through.

We've broken through!

Digging for white gold.


The end result.

The final analysis: I love the water inside the coconut and all I got was about a tablespoon. Rats! The meat is very dry. I am going to make coconut milk out of it. At least I now know what the heck is in those big green coconuts!!

Food & Kisses, GiGi

My Hero

See, I could never be this guy, but I want to!!!










It's been a long day. Workout at 6:00 AM this morning. Put away laundry and unloaded dishwasher. Cleaned the litter box and then took a shower and went to work for a board meeting. Conference call scheduled for 5:00 PM didn't start until almost 6:00 PM. Got out of work around 6:30 PM. Returned phone calls on the way home. Finally dinner at 7:30 PM. Not much of a dinner -- I confess it was Lean Cuisine tonight (I do like the Tortilla Crusted Fish). Then, spent a little time cleaning up my desk. Ready to work on my cookbook project when I remembered I really need to get back into the blogging habit. So, here I am with a quick post.

As far as Food & Kisses goes, here's what is on my mind:

(1) I am possessed with my cookbook work. I'm making good progress. Feel focused and directed, BUT it is taking time away from knitting and I have so much knitting backed up.

(2) I am still mourning the passing of Gourmet magazine. Grief washed over me in waves again when I went to my mailbox and got the November issue. Here I thought my October issue was the last one. I guess this is the last one. BUT what is with the little cards advertising for new subscriptions??? Surely, they knew by the time this went to press that the handwriting was on the wall. And, if you read my Gourmet post, you know that I'm still kicking myself over old issues I threw out a ton of years ago...yes, I'm still fretting over that.

(3) What pies should I make for Thanksgiving? Help me out here. I believe there will be only four of us. Right now, we are averaging one pie per person: Pumpkin, Cherry, Pecan, and Coconut.

(4) When will my farm share come to an end? I think it's sometime next month. Even though it creates extra pressure to have to make sure to use everything up, I will miss it. I know that when January comes around and it's time to make the commitment, I will send in my payment and start wishing for June to arrive. And, I think I will do two different farms next year. Yes, I'm crazy like that.

(5) I am the Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde of the vegan world: One minute eating my raw vegan green smoothies and pumpkin seed granola and then chowing down on a ribeye steak (I swear that happened just yesterday).

(6) I haven't had a glass of wine in 2.5 weeks but who is counting? On one hand, I like feeling more alert in the morning, but on the other, I am never going to be like the chap pictured above on the beach.

(7) I love Seven Stars yogurt. Run, do not walk, to your health food store to see if you can get it. The maple flavored one is amazing.

(8) Right now, I am dehydrating celery which I am going to grind into a powder as a salt substitute. I will let you know how that goes.

(9) I'm going to Miami this weekend on a business trip and having dinner with co-workers one night. If I were left to my own devices I would go to a place that specializes in ceviche, but they all want to go to a steak house...I'm sure it will be good, but the ceviche joint would have been more of an adventure.

(10) Why did I have to be born beautiful instead of rich? I mean, really, is it fair that I have to work and can't just play in my kitchen to my heart's delight. There's just never enough time...but...

(11) I'm baking a ton of Christmas cookies this year. I've already started thinking about which ones: Iced Gingerbread, Brazil Nut Cookies, Peanut Butter Balls, Double Chocolate Chip, Iced Cutouts for starters.

(12) I found out today that there is an updated Tasajara cookbook. I adore the original so of course, I immediately threw the new one in my Amazon shopping cart. In the next few days, I'm sure I will press the check out button on that. I'm an Edward Espe Brown fan!!

(13) Well, here we are, my last and final food-related thought of the night -- my current death row meal: oysters rockafeller from the Grand Central Oyster Bar, steamed lobster, rack of lamb (in this fantasy I have more stomach capacity), potatoes au gratin, asparagus with hollandaise (and I don't get sick from overly-rich food), grilled romaine caesar salad from Olives in Las Vegas, a bottle of Pauillac, and chocolate mousse.

Food & Kisses, GiGi

Where Have We Been?

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa! Food & Kisses has not been abandoned -- but life did get in the way a lot over the past ten days or so. And, because of that, not much of interest has been going on with cooking/eating/dining. I did have a major food dehydrator problem last week which was then solved rather quickly once I had time to focus on fixing the issue. Then, this morning I sprayed the entire kitchen with soapy water when I sleepily forgot to put the lid on the blender when I went to clean it. Too bad no picture of that debacle!

The farm share is sort of winding down -- it's been lots of greens and a bit of winter squash and eggplant lately. I confess to having been rather uncreative with these items as well.

I do have some pictures of the pizza making at my SO's the weekend before last to share and discuss his process so stay tuned for that.

Food & Kisses, GiGi

Gourmet Magazine, R.I.P.

It’s the end of an institution: Gourmet Magazine will be no more after the November issue. And, I had just re-subscribed two months ago!

It feels like someone has died and I never told them how much they meant to me. True, upon reading the last to issues, I could see this was not the magazine I cut my teeth on way back when. The substance was gone. The pieces seemed puffy. The recipes were uninteresting.

We do have interesting food writing to read – it’s on the internet. But, it’s not the same as that monthly ritual of getting something in the mail and making some time for a nice leisurely pass through the pages – touching and studying the glossy photographs.


There is nothing out there that really fills the space that Gourmet once did – it was a terrific cross-section of what was “happening” on the food scene, what people wanted to cook from their favorite restaurants (“Readers Requests”), and beautiful photography – and not just of prepared food: back in the day, it could have been a photo of some gorgeous radishes (I still have that cover) or a Swiss chalet blanketed by snow (I had that cover framed and gave it as a gift).

When I was first getting into cooking, I clipped tons of recipes from Gourmet and my early experiments were successful. I remember two in particular: Chocolate Chip Meltaways (a shortbread crossed with a chocolate chip cookie recipe) and Pecan Blue Cheese Crackers. The recipes worked even for a novice such as myself.


One of my deepest food-related regrets was that I once had several years of bound copies of Gourmet from the late sixties and early seventies and I discarded them when preparing for one of my relocations. They were unwieldy and took up a lot of space. Plus I’d had them for about twenty years and had hardly looked at them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve regretted that rash decision to discard them. They were so evocative of that time because of the photography and there was some top notch food writing there.





Change is inevitable, of course, but I’m saddened nonetheless.

Sniff, Sniff.

Food & Kisses, GiGi