I'm sure we're all aware by now that there's a rice shortage going on. Lots of factors contribute, but the bottom line is that even in the first world there is some rationing going on. But what happens if it gets worse?
The BBC recently posted this article about some possible rice replacements. Quinoa, the native South American grain, was first on the list. I think a lot of people are aware of quinoa by now, but how many people have heard of fufu? That's a west African dish made from cassava, but apparently it's not well known outside of that region's population.
Most of the other grains in the BBC article are familiar, like millet and bulgur. I know there are plenty of other grains out there, and lots of edible plants that we just don't eat. Maybe we should start thinking about that kind of thing, now that we're having shortages of some of our staple foods.
The name of this recipe immediately brought to mind Chinese food, of course, and I've never thought of fried rice as a particularly breakfast-ish food. But if you think about it, a lot of fried rice has eggs and onion in it, so why not? And this one goes one step further and includes bacon.
The recipe is from Chow, but the picture is from flickr. It's a different recipe (ham instead of bacon and no soy sauce), but I couldn't find a pic of the Chow recipe, which is after the jump.
If you keep up with the news, you've probably heard about the food shortages and riots in Haiti and Egypt. You've also probably heard about the drought in Australia and the fact that China and India are limiting exports of rice. That's all going to lead to a lot of problems worldwide, as it already has in some places, but have food shortages hit the US?
According to this article in the New York Sun, the answer is yes. Some stores in New York and California are limiting the amount of rice and flour that consumers can take home. Retailers are also complaining about spotty deliveries for rice in California.
We tend to think of food shortages as something very far away, something that doesn't affect us. With the possibility that Americans could be affected by this, will we be able to come up with a solution in time to prevent a real crisis?
As many of you may know, I'm a complete sucker for bizarre Japanese snack foods and their equally bizarre packaging. Take Gorira no hanakuso,a bean-based treat whose mascot is a cartoon gorilla. But until the other day I'd never encountered a Japanese snack designed to mimic pet food.
Despite what the package indicates, Hamster's Lunch is not a meal for your furry friends, but rather a rice cracker. Each morsel is shaped like a sunflower seed, which a Japanese web site points out "is Hamster's favorite food." The site also contains these valuable words to the wise: " Attention: Please do not provide real hamsters with Himatane."
It makes no such warning about trying to feed said Himatane to any of the dozen cute hamster figurines contained in each package of Hamster's Lunch. Apparently this faux hamster chow has developed such a following online that one purveyor has run out. And just when I was about to complete my miniature hamster army with that twelfth figurine. [via Boing Boing]
Remember the good old days? You'd lounge out on the porch in the summer, licking away at your Slo-Poke Sucker, Jr.? Sadly, I'm too young (my summers days were spent at sleep-away camp, divided into organized activities like volleyball and instructional swim) -- but if you do have nostalgia for foods or sweets that are no longer easily available, check out Hometown Favorites, a site dedicated to selling food items that are currently difficult to find.
The site features a grocer, a gift center, and a candy store that lets you search by decade (though admittedly, there's a lot of overlap). Some of the items are pretty recent and others I don't think really qualify as hard to find, but it was still fun to scroll through and see what the store has to offer.
My favorite "oh yeahhhh..." moment was when I spotted Maypo oatmeal -- my dad loves the stuff and used to make it all the time when I was little. What do you think, any old favorites? Other sites offering similar products?
Today's featured cookbook, Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert, is one that I mentioned several months ago here on Slashfood, but I like it so much that I thought it deserved a second mention. I pulled it off my shelf a couple of days ago, because I've been in something of a cooking funk lately and thought it might help to inspire me. I find that without the abundance of the farmers market, I have a hard time finding new things to cook. I've been rotating between pots of soup and loaves of bread for weeks now, without much variation. I thought that reading some new recipes, geared towards the quite austerity of the winter, might help me at least alter the variety of soups I'm making (I switch between carrot based soups and chicken with veggies and rice).
And inspire me it did. I'm excited to try out the recipe for Maple Parsnip Soup as well as the Shredded Beet Salad (it's amazing to me how just changing the way you cut a vegetable can change the way your taste buds experience it). Over the weekend, I'm planning to make Bounty Rice, which is a sort of deconstructed stuffed cabbage, spiced with oregano and basil. You can find the recipe after the jump.
I first saw this picture yesterday afternoon, when the post describing it appeared in my Google Reader. I read the entire post, and spent a full minute gazing at those perfectly sauteed scallops. For a moment I considered tossing out my dinner plans (sushi with my boyfriend) in order to replicate this dish. We still ended up going out for sushi, but I've continued to think about that risotto for most of the day. Imagine my delight at discovering this picture in our Flickr pool! Thanks Sunday Nite Dinner, for producing such delicious food and drool-worthy images.
If you create something for dinner tonight, don't forget to take some pictures, join our Slashfood Flickr group and add your photos to the pool! We want to see your tasty creations!
If you stand in front of the shelves at the grocery store with a blank stare on your face, maybe you're just not able to decide on which of the bazillion protein bars you want to get. If that's the case, why don't you just make your own?
With YouBars, you can make your own, and you don't even have to go to the kitchen to get them; unless your computer's in the kitchen. You just pick all the ingredients you want in your bar, submit your order, and magically, they appear at your door! You get to pick the base, protein source, and any number of dried fruit, nuts, seeds, and other "stuff." The handy ordering form also keeps a running total of nutrition information as you make your choices.
It costs $40 for a box of 12, which comes out to about $3.33 a bar. That's quite a bit more expensive than what you'd pay at the store, but getting to name your own bar might be worth it.
There's no doubt that parents are more and more feeding their babies organic foods. The question now isn't whether or not the food should be organic, but how that organic food is packaged -- glass jars, directly from the vegetable bin, or frozen. With no kids of my own, and basically no knowledge of this part of the kitchen, I'm looking at Cookie Magazine for advice. Cookie Magazine writers Deirdre Dolan and Alexandra Zissou say that while jarred foods are probably the most convenient, they're not the most nutritious because the foods are heavily cooked and many have preservatives to prolong shelf life. They taste tested organic baby foods on their own kids and highlighted these seven, most frozen:
I am nearing the end of my masters thesis these days. It is a collection of essays about women in my family and their relationships to food. One of the essays is about my Auntie Tunkel, the woman who raised my grandmother and her siblings. She immigrated from the Ukraine when she was 14 years in order to marry a man who she had never met. It wasn't a happy marriage, but according to family lore, she still managed to enjoy life and make everyone around her feel loved and appreciated.
Auntie Tunkel was an excellent cook and was particularly known for her stuffed cabbage. For the last few weeks, I've been bugging my mom for her stuffed cabbage recipe because I needed to include it in the thesis draft, and on Tuesday she finally came through. As she talked me through it on the phone, I could tell that she was recalling the taste memory of the dish as well. Writing down the recipe, I started to get hungry and by the time we got off the phone I was ready to bolt out of the house and head to the store for the necessary ingredients.
It's a time-intensive dish, but perfect for the weekend when you want to put a little more energy into cooking. When this dish is done, you'll be rewarded with a fragrant kitchen, an excellent meal and tasty leftovers (unless you are cooking for a crowd). The recipe is after the jump.
Naturally, every Food section around the country is covering Thanksgiving, and The Los Angeles Times is only different in the approach: looking at the Thanksgiving table as a palette of colors:
I am a sucker for risotto. There's nothing like the creamy toothsomeness of cooked arborio rice to really set my heart afluttering with joy. I'm also a huge fan of butternut squash and kale. Happily, I just stumbled across a recipe that all those items into a single, hunger-inducing dish.
This recipe is over at GastroKid, so it's designed as a way for parents to help their kids eat and enjoy their veggies. However, I don't think anyone is going to get mad at me if I make it with nary a kid in sight.
Last week Bob wrote a post about how cookbook author Peg Bracken had died. I followed up his post with one of my own that included her recipe for Fake Hollendaise. It was only after that post went up that I noticed that a commenter had specifically asked if anyone had Bracken's recipe for Hellzapoppin Cheese Rice. Mary, this one is for you.
Hellzapoppin Cheese Rice
4 cups cooked rice 4 eggs 2 tablespoons minced onion 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 2 teaspoons salt 1 pound grated sharp Cheddar small pinch each of thyme and marjoram 1 package chopped frozen spinach 1 cup milk 4 tablespoons melted butter
Last Saturday, I had an opportunity to help a friend do some cooking for a dinner party. We had a terrific time in the kitchen, but the stand out moment was when I got a chance to taste the Risotto with Butternut Squash and Leeks we made (thankfully I was able to get her to confess that the recipe was from Epicurious). It was one of those dishes that makes time stop for just a moment, as your taste buds struggle to identify the chorus of delicious flavors before giving up and simply surrendering to the rapture of the moment. It was that good.
So good, in fact, that I decided I had to make it for myself so that I could have more than a few bites. I stirred it up Monday night, in my bright green knock-off Le Creuset pot. I couldn't wait for the rice to cook, knowing that I would soon have an entire pot of heaven all to myself. Finally, when it was all done, I served up an indulgently large bowl and settled down at the table with a spoon and book. It was so good. Perfect for a fall dinner party or for just eating by yourself, on a Monday night, when you want to be just a little extra nice* to yourself.
*I omitted the whipping cream. I like to treat myself, but I do not need to eat a half cup of whipping cream by myself this week.
I'm beginning to believe that there's something special about the eggplants that grow in Pennsylvania. About a month ago, I posted about a suburban Philadelphia woman who discovered that the seed pattern in her eggplant looked like it was spelling out the word God. Last night, as I was slicing my own white eggplant for a broiled eggplant dish, I took a closer look and don't you know, but it resembles the that same divine word. Now, I realize that it's sort of a hard sell. It does look a little more like Gob than God. But it leads me to wonder if I shouldn't look more closely at my future eggplants. Maybe they've been trying to speak to me for years, and I just haven't been paying attention!
I'm sure we're all aware by now that there's a rice shortage going on. Lots of factors contribute, but the bottom line is that even in the first world there is some rationing going on. But what happens if it gets worse?
The name of this recipe immediately brought to mind Chinese food, of course, and I've never thought of fried rice as a particularly breakfast-ish food. But if you think about it, a lot of fried rice has eggs and onion in it, so why not? And this one goes one step further and includes bacon. 
If you keep up with the news, you've probably heard about the food shortages and riots in Haiti and Egypt. You've also probably heard about the drought in Australia and the fact that China and India are limiting exports of rice. That's all going to lead to a lot of problems worldwide, as it already has in some places, but have food shortages hit the US?
As many of you may know, I'm a complete sucker for bizarre Japanese snack foods and their equally bizarre packaging. Take 
If you stand in front of the shelves at the grocery store with a blank stare on your face, maybe you're just not able to decide on which of the bazillion protein bars you want to get. If that's the case, why don't you just make your own? 
I am a sucker for risotto. There's nothing like the creamy toothsomeness of cooked arborio rice to really set my heart afluttering with joy. I'm also a huge fan of butternut squash and kale. Happily, I just stumbled across 
Chocolate-stuffed bananas on the grill
Tyler Florence welcomes new daughter
Beware kids' menus!
