Foodies
How A Foodnut Celebrates the Royal Wedding
April 30, 2011 | 
Author 
- TV and Tea- Almost as Good As Being There?
Scones and chicken and egg finger sandwiches purchased from The Tea Garden in Valencia.
Open faced sandwiches, homemade. Cream cheese with cucumber and tiny green onions,
and cream cheese and salmon with dill. All very proper. Opps, did I mention the English
Breakfast Twinnings tea and the champagne with Chambord and fresh raspberry garnish?
Chocolate Dipped MMMacaroons
Ok FoodNutters, its COOOOOKie time! Want a gluten-free cookie that tastes like something you bought at a fancy cafe? Having guests over who have celiacs and don’t know what to serve for desert? Need a host gift for a foodie type who doesn’t eat wheat? Look no further, I have your solution in the form of deliciously decadent (but ridiculously easy to make!) Chocolate-Dipped MMMacaroons. I’ve had a great response from this recipe on my blog www.glutendairyfreedom.net, and I wanted to share it with you, the food-nuts-foodies, so you can proudly place your stamp on something that looks store-bought and fancy-schmancy! And if you’re curious, the extra M’s in “MMMacaroons” are for Ummmmmmmm, mmmmmmm, good.
Ingredients:
No, you didn't buy them!
- 5 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
- 2/3 cup rice syrup or honey
- 4 egg whites
- 6 tablespoons rice flour
- 1 tsp vanilla
- Bittersweet chocolate (optional)
What do I do?
- Preheat the oven to 350′F
- Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, mix all ingredients (except chocolate) quite well until entire mixture is wet and the same consistency.
- Form into balls and flatten slightly on cookie sheets with a bit of space in between.
- Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until edges are golden.
- Remove from oven and let cool on pan to set.
- When set, transfer to parchment lined tray and if you are doing the chocolate dip, refrigerate for at least one hour.
- For chocolate dip, melt chocolate in a small pot on very low heat, stirring constantly.
- Tilt the pot to the side, and dip half the cookies one at a time and lay back on parchment lined tray.
- Refrigerate again until set.
These look really fancy and appear much more difficult then they actually are. They are sure to impress when served to guests or as a host gift when wrapped in a white box with some ribbon, or on a plate with some cellophane and tied with a bow. People will think you went to a fancy bakery. Let them think that, then slip in that you made them yourself! You’re such a pro!
Posted in Blogging, Dessert, Foodies, Fun Stuff, Gluten-free | 
Tags: cookies, macaroons | 
No Comments »
Homemade HuMMMus!
I originally posted this on my blog
www.glutendairyfreedom.net in honour of my good friend Christine’s birthday as she is a vegetarian and hummus just so happens to be vegan-tastic! But I wanted to share this with the Food-Nutters because I know you’ll appreciate a great foodie-DIY! Creamy, zesty, mouth-watering, smooth, delicious HuMMMus. Sure you can buy it, but you can also customize your own: more lemon? less garlic? less salt? more creamy? Its totally up to you when you take the hummus reins into your own hands. Once you’ve gone homemade, you won’t want to go back! My mouth is watering just thinking about how good this is, and there’s a whole bowl of it in my kitchen right now, just waiting for me to dive into!
Ingredients:
- Chick Peas, canned or re-hydrated. If they are canned, rinse them well. If you’re using dried, soak them for 24 hours and simmer for 2 hours until tender.
- Tahini
- Olive Oil
- Lemon Juice
- Roasted or raw garlic. To roast, coat a bulb in olive oil and wrap in foil and bake until tender. (Tip: bake along side another meal to conserve energy and save $ on your electric bill!)
- Salt
What do I do?
- In a food processor, blend Chick peas with enough tahini, lemon juice and olive oil to make your desired consistency/taste. Experiment: use a little at first and see what you would like more of as you go.
- Add garlic and salt and continue to blend until smooth.
- Taste. If it needs more garlic/lemon/salt, make adjustments.
Store what you plan to use in the next 3/4 days in a covered container in the fridge and freeze the rest for later use. Spread on crackers, dip veggies, spoon onto chicken GO (food) NUTS! Full disclosure: I have been known to eat it right out of the container. ITS THAT GOOD! Just sayin…
Wishing you health and happiness,
Victoria
***Bonus Tip! If you’re using recently boiled re-hydrated chick peas, the final product will be warm and is so divine if served right away! However, if you are using canned chick peas, you can imitate this effect by boiling them for 2 minutes before you blend. Warm hummus is close to heaven for me, try it and I hope you’ll agree! (Didn’t mean that to rhyme, but kinda glad that it did!) Enjoy!
Posted in Blogging, Foodies, Gluten-free, Recipes | Tags: dairy-free, vegan, vegetarian | 3 Comments »
No Cake at a Wedding? Say It Ain’t So!!!
A good friend of mine, Cindy, attended a wedding recently. She shocked me with some astounding news, so it’s a good thing I was already seated or I might have keeled over and knocked a tooth out when I collapsed onto my desk: There was no wedding cake.
C’mon, join me — clutch at your chest as your eyes bug out, gasping for breath as though all the air has been punched out of your lungs.
No … cake? No cake! It’s a sacrilege! There has to be cake at a wedding! Guests ooh and ahh over it, vie for the best pieces, hope to get some of the edible decorations. Brides and grooms indelicately shove some into each other’s mouth. Cake at a wedding is a tradition!
But perhaps not so anymore? Cindy said that people she spoke with that evening told her that there hadn’t been cakes at other weddings they’d attended recently, either.
I’m sufficiently ancient and decrepit that my friends and relatives have either been married for 30 years or they’re divorced, and our children aren’t yet old enough — please, God, make sure they’re aware of that! — to get married. So I admit that I’m not an authority on this subject.
I hadn’t been to a wedding in years until attending one in July, and thankfully there was a cake. (Who knew it was now possibly considered optional?) It was really good, too, with luscious creamy white frosting … But I digress.
I’ve known of people who offered tiers of cupcakes that were arranged to resemble a cake. I’ve known people who offered an array of treats and sweets in addition to the cake, but the cake was still a major attraction.
Cindy said that other desserts were available at the wedding. There just wasn’t a cake, and from what she can gather, having no cake is becoming a trend. So, in horror, I started to do some remedial and less-than-scientific research.
Here is an assortment of quotes and responses gathered when I tossed this life-altering notion out into cyberspace and sought comments via Facebook and Twitter (so excuse grammatical/spelling quirks inherent in trying to type on a phone or cram a message into 140 tidbits!):
What else would the bride shove up the grooms nose? 
Seriously, yes…cake, of some sort, is a MUST!
What are people going to do, cut into a cupcake or a cookie? Sheesh!
That is ridiculous! If anything I have heard people turning to options but not getting rid of cake entirely! Thumbs down!
Haven’t heard this in the UK, though some friends had tiers of cheese instead.
I don’t know if I want to go to a wedding that doesn’t have cake. It’s a travesty!
We had cupcakes as our cake and then an ice cream sundae bar with cookies and brownies and no one ate the cake! We had like 100 cupcakes left over. Maybe it’s true 
Shut up!
Some things are just wrong, this is one! weddings=cake
Not any weddings I’ve been to.. no.. wait.. there wasn’t a wedding cake at the most recent one. Probably because the bride and groom didn’t want to spend $1,000 on a cake.
Plus, you have to save the top of the cake for your first anniversary! I have such fond memories of our wedding cake — made at a Swedish bakery in Minnesota with lemon filling… and it’s been almost 36 years!
So, there you have it — I’m apparently not alone in feeling weak and dizzy at the notion of not getting my cake fix at the end of the festivities. Deep sigh of relief.
I also did a search and found a website called Exquisite Events Seattle that addresses the cake-less issue:
“Cake has dominated the wedding industry for years. However, right now there is a growing trend to skip the cake all together. Maybe cake is not your thing. For many people cake is okay, but they have a dessert that they simply swoon over. So, why not have that dessert at your wedding?”
Why not? Because people expect a cake and want a cake! And they won’t leave your ceremony talking about how beautiful the bride was, but instead will leave talking about how deprived they felt at being denied cake!
I am fully aware that there are more earth-shattering and life-altering situations taking place in the world than not serving cake at a wedding, just in case anyone was wondering. However, this clearly struck quite a nerve for many of us.
In my obsessive compulsion to learn more about this issue, I’ve discussed it with many people who are in their 20s and 30s, those on “the wedding circuit,” in other words. Almost universally, there has been cake at the receptions they’ve attended. One of my co-workers told me that she’s never been to a wedding that didn’t serve cake.
Cindy (who may regret, at this point, ever having mentioned this to me!) brought up the issue of the Jewish dietary laws, and having to serve a non-dairy cake — which is very often inferior — with a meat meal.
In that instance, settling either for the lesser cake or for a vegetarian meal wouldn’t make for an optimal situation. The better dinner served without a cake might easily take precedence over the butter-less dessert.
So finally, as my brain was starting to hurt from all of this contemplation, I consulted a true expert: my favorite baker, Bryant Stuckey of Ann Arbor’s Decadent Delight. Here’s his professional opinion:
“I don’t know if I would say it’s a trend, but I have had many instances in the last couple years where couples have forgone the wedding cake … I think this is to stay within their budget. It seems a shame to me… I just can’t see a wedding without a wedding cake. The wedding cake is another character in the wedding. It’s symbolic to an idea of a ‘sweet life’ together.”
I think the notion of cake playing a role and symbolizing a sweet life together is absolutely perfect. And I think that symbol should be enjoyed with all the loved ones who’ve joined the happy couple on their special day, literally and figuratively sharing that sweet life with all of those who have been — and will continue to be — integral to it.
So skimp on the rose petals that flower girls toss along the aisle; they’re just going to get ground into the rug or the runner anyway. Do away with having 14 bridesmaids and save money by not ordering so many bouquets. Don’t bother with an ice sculpture that will just melt. There are so many non-essentials at weddings.
But cake — cake is an absolute! It’s a classic that never goes out of style. Change the shape, the colors, the flavors, and even the doohickeys that go on top.
But never, ever shun the cake! And if you do, please know that I will not be offended if you leave me off the invitation list.
“floo·zie \ˈflü-zē\: a usually young woman of loose morals.” Thus a Food Floozie is not a woman who can be seduced by virtually any man, but rather a woman who can be seduced by virtually any food (other than sushi).
For more blathering about recipes, restaurants, beverages, ingredients, and anything else even tangentially related to food, please come visit me Monday through Friday at Food Floozie or check out my mostly-regular Tuesday posts on AnnArbor.com.
Milk – au naturel
Milk is one of those things that nary a thought is given to when choosing in the grocery store. The exception to this is perhaps only which fat content to buy. We don’t think a lot about it; grab and place in the cart, move on to the next item on the list.
A Jersey - Hard-working and the source of this wonderful substance
Milk, obviously, is the basis of all dairy products, especially bovine. Name it, it’s made of milk. Cheese and its multitudes, various forms of creams, butters and whey, they all come from it. Although we can obtain milk from other animals (sheep and goats, to name two), for my discussion I am going to focus only on milk from the bovine, as it is by far the major one in the Western world.
Alton Brown commented once that Americans have never seen real milk. This statement caused some discussion amongst close food friends of mine, and then, surprisingly, it appeared on facebook as a question amongst friends there. I am not one that believes in coincidence, so I took this to mean that there was a meme in the air in regards to this topic. Specifically, both discussions centered on a very charged topic: Milk au natural, otherwise known as raw milk.
This, as anyone who has entered into this fray will know, is a topic that seems to have no end. I have consumed raw milk all my life, and my earliest memories of it are filled with politics of its legality, nutritional value and whether or not it is safe to consume, not to mention the difficulty in obtaining it and the incessant interruption in its supply. I am going to steer clear of this mine field, my dear readers, and focus only on what it is. At the end of this article I will include a couple of links where you may go to read more for further edification. Also, feel free to ask any questions as the forum allows.
Raw milk is completely legal in most states. However, if one goes to the grocery store to purchase it, you will find that you can’t. If you go to a regular dairy to buy it direct, they won’t sell it to you. If you try to special order it, it will be unavailable. So, how does one obtain it? Like most things of value, it may require a bit of work and effort on your part.
The only way, that I have found, to obtain this product consistently, is via “cow share”. In our new location, my wife has found a cow share source. And it works thus; you lease the cow.
That’s right; you become part owner in the cow. You can’t take it home with you, but it gives you the ability to receive from it the milk, in its raw form. This is the only consistent way that I have ever found to be able to obtain this product.
As to what it is and how it is different, well, that’s another thing. It ain’t homogenized, nor is it pasteurized, so chances are, no one, unless they are older and lived on a farm, has had it in this form. The first thing you will notice is that there is a separation of the cream from the milk (in cow’s milk, not goats). It floats, on top. In order to drink this (unless you are going to be unfair to others and drink the “cream off the top”) one needs to shake it up and mix it all back together. Here’s what it looks like:
How it comes to us - in a mason jar...
(The arrow marks the level of cream that rises to the top)
This is the cream at the top; thick rich and waiting for use in your morning coffee. But, if this is not your preference, just shake it up. Its taste is pretty much the same as homogenized, but richer in flavor.
freshly opened jar and a sample of the cream
Being an amateur cheese maker, this is the best milk to be working with. No calcium needs to be added, and it forms a strong curd. I have made many cheeses, but I have never attempted a blue because I lacked the ability to deal with the complexity of the process nor did I have this available. I now have it and need only over come my own apprehension at attempting it. I’ll save that for another article…