Baggin’ It: Lunch Packing Tips

brownbagThe lunch tips from our Baggin’ It Challenge are in, and our winners have been declared!* In this post, we’re compiling some of the ideas we received so that our readers never again have to worry about the grim prospects lurking within that brown bag.

Some Assembly Required: Picnics are inherently fun, so take one to work with you. Tearing off hunks of baguette and putting together the perfect combo of pesto, cheese and tomato is the kind of thing that never fails to cheer me. And as an added bonus, packing your lunch piecemeal keeps the bread or crackers from getting soggy over the course of the morning. (One caveat: If you’re packing a lunch for people other than yourself, you might want to clue them in beforehand—my father once choked down a plain dry bagel before finding the container of peanut butter my mother had packed in the bottom of the bag.)

Changing Form: Just because you have leftovers, doesn’t mean you need to eat them in exactly the same way the next day. My office has a microwave, but I rarely use it. You’d be surprised how good (and different) take-out like Chinese or Indian food tastes cold. Put some cold General Tso’s Tofu atop a bed of lettuce and veggies, and you’ve got yourself an excellent salad for tomorrow’s lunch. Continue reading

Baking 101: As Easy As…

dutch apple pie

Proof that I baked a pie! And that it bubbled over.

I can cook, at least at a level at which I can be reasonably confident of eating and enjoying the result, but I can’t boast the same self-assuredness about baking. A friend and co-worker recently asked me to bake something for the Havemeyer Sugar Sweet Festival (more about this awesome upcoming fundraiser in future posts) and blanching, I realized that, food blogger or no, I don’t know how to bake a damn thing.*

So this fall and winter, I’m going to try to teach myself to bake, and you will have the pleasure of watching all my mistakes. I considered doing a “Julie and Julia” sort of thing in which I try to go through all of the recipes in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that my mom gave me when I moved out of the house more than a decade ago, but there are like four or five whole sections in there filled with just baked goods, and really, who has the time? At any rate, I figured that whether I was seeking the alphabetical or philosophical beginning of any dessert list, apple pie would appear near the top. Besides, we had a lot of apples in the fridge.

pie ingredientsI came home with the ingredients for a Dutch apple pie and felt sort of ashamedly intimidated and decided to nap for a little while. Finally, though, screwing up my courage, I embarked on a crust. I had forgotten to buy shortening (doh!), so I used butter, and I also don’t have a pastry cutter, so I used a fork. Let’s just say that this was not ideal, and it was not the most beautiful piecrust in the history of piecrusts. But from there, the process got easier, maybe because I decided to start drinking beer while I peeled the apples. By the time the whole thing was assembled, it looked, if not impressively perfect, at least substantial. I had also made a colossal mess and used up a ridiculous amount of time. Apple pie, unlike Rome, can be built in a day, but if I’m the one constructing it, there better not be too much else going on. Continue reading

Baggin’ It: A Lunch-Packing Challenge

brownbagWith fall in full effect, it’s the perfect time for some work/school resolutions like “I will never again eat from that taco truck that gives me indigestion,” or “I will rise above the vending machines in the school cafeteria.” But even true food enthusiasts might be confounded by how to pack a punch with a packed lunch.

My mom hated packing my lunch when I was a kid. It wasn’t that she disliked feeding us—quite the contrary, actually—but the sameness of the old sandwich/apple/cookie routine bored her. She once schemed that if she packed a thermos of boiling soup in my brother’s lunchbox that it would slowly cook a hot dog that she nestled next to it. Unfortunately, the thermos was too well insulated and my brother ended up with molten soup and a still-chill dog.

Though the experiment failed, I continue to admire the innovative spirit involved in that endeavor, and we’ve decided to celebrate it here with a little contest. We’re calling on our readers to reveal their best lunch-packing secrets. How do you build a killer sandwich? How do you liven up those leftovers? How do you tell your kid “I love you” with only a banana and a toothpick to work with?

The readers with the best brown bag tips will not only achieve instant fame by having their ideas appear here on the blog, but will also win a special PitchKnives prize! Yes! So send your stories to submissions@pitchknives.com by next Wednesday, October 3. As always, creativity and taste both matter, so go ahead…make our lunch.

Single Ladies: There is a Recipe at the End of This Post

Single ladies eat

Click to see how much Beyonce loves Tanya's tahini tacos.

I’m a single lady. I live in a small New York apartment with a kitchen the size of a deluxe port-a-potty. I have to move furniture to use the oven. I don’t really cook so much as get in, prep something, and get out. Recently my diet’s been mostly raw, and that’s mostly due to laziness. Spend hours sweating over a roast of some kind, only to watch it decompose next to the dwindling six-pack in my fridge? Not so much. But chop fruit and vegetables? Sure, I’ll chop shit all day long. I even have one of those fancy knives with the air pockets, and a miniature cutting board that’s just the right size for my 8×10” counter. You wouldn’t think I make very good-tasting meals using this method, and you’re usually right. But sometimes I manage to surprise myself. The key to my success lies in employing the same approach I’ve used for online dating: keep expectations low and an alcoholic beverage on hand, and if things go sour, eat quickly.

I’ll often look in my fridge and wonder what can be done with what’s there. The aptly named myfridgefood.com is good for helping with that. But the other day I made something delicious on my own that I’d like to share with you if I haven’t already scared you off. It’s light and simple and can be put together in the amount of time it takes to call your mother and complain about your dating life. (How many chick lit clichés can I inject into a single post?) Continue reading

Tomato Porn

Witness the Brandywine’s bawdy sense of humor.

How did we enjoy her?

I laid her in slices, along with slices of a Purple Cherokee, alongside Bulgarian sheep feta, Damascus Bakery wholewheat pita charred on the stove top, and local beefsteaks roasted with salt, pepper, garlic, and rosemary and basil from the garden.

Super good.  Super easy. Continue reading

Name that Kitchen Gadget!

In scouring the Internet for this Friday’s pop quiz, I found an OK Cupid page devoted to “singles interested in obscure kitchen gadgets.” Believe me, they covered quite a spectrum, these singles, from a chipper looking New Zealander making a peace sign at the camera to a scowling woman from Tempe whose eye shadow was almost as impressive as her cleavage.

At any rate, gadgets clearly have wide appeal and since we had fun a few weeks ago with our historic utensil puzzle, we thought we’d let our readers test their wits with some more modern marvels. If you can identify all nine of the items below, you should start your own culinary school…or at least troll for some new admirers on OK Cupid.

gadget 1gadget 2gadget 3gadget 4gadget 5

gadget 6

gadget 7gadget 8gadget 9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t follow this link until you’re ready to see the answers! Continue reading

Lasagna Roll-ups…Olé!

lasagna rollsIn the dog days of summer, most people are loath to turn on their ovens, but I always think of it as lasagna weather. My sibling’s birthdays in July and August were occasions upon which they were allowed to control the culinary fate of the rest of the household. Ryan birthday comes first and, sensibly enough, he always decreed that my mother should make Lasagna Roll-Ups. Dawn, forced into making a choice a mere fourteen days later and feeling pressure to change it up, usually went with Chi-Chi’s Mexican Restaurant. (Despite her yearly pleading with my father not to reveal to the singing waiters at Chi-Chi’s why we were there, we have many photos of my sister as a sullen teenager with a sombrero crammed on her head, scowling at a softball-sized serving of fried ice cream with a candle stuck in it.)

I have nothing against Chi-Chi’s but I always felt like my sister got a raw deal, being robbed annually of those lasagna rolls. This recipe has ruined me for any other variety of lasagna. When I first tasted the layered version, it seemed like a slapdash disaster compared to the firm cheesy bundles that my mother would pull sizzling from the oven. Below, I’ll post my Great-Aunt Mary’s original recipe as well as a video showing how you can tweak it to your own tastes.

And here’s the original recipe. Continue reading

Independence Food Contest Victor!

It was PitchKnives’ 4th of July challenge, but that was nothing new to me.

Two summers ago, my wife and I threw a 4th of July party and asked everyone to bring some food to share. Most people brought the usual stuff — pasta salad, guacamole, beer — but one friend arrived with a loaf of homemade “Red, White, and Blue” bread, which looked as though it had just been lifted from the display window of a European bakery. It was delicious, filled with chopped sundried tomatoes and topped with slabs of Zingerman’s blue cheese.
I assumed she’d spent hours in her kitchen, kneading the thing herself, put she told me confidentially that she’d only put a half an hour of work into the process. The secret? Jim Lahey’s “My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method,” a cookbook that allows you to bypass the difficult parts of the bread-making process. All you need is time (for the bread to complete its slow rise) and a cast iron pot.
To be specific, you’ll also need the following:

3 cups unbleached bread flour

1 and 3/4th cup water
3/4th cup teaspoon active dry yeast (Fleischmann’s is a good brand)
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup chopped sundried tomatoes (you can use olives, too, in which case you’ll probably want to omit the salt)

Continue reading

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Ice Cream

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson: America's first ice cream scribe

Our nation’s love of food runs deep. Thomas Jefferson was a known gourmand who kept notes on French cooking, and is thought to have scribbled down the first American recipe for ice cream. So this Fourth of July, pull out your Sabotiere (that’s the inner canister of an ice cream maker, for those of you not up on your 18th century lingo), and give Tom’s recipe a try. No word on who made the first American ice cream cone, but my money’s on Benjamin Franklin.

6 yolks of eggs
1/2 lb sugar
2 bottles  of good cream

Mix the yolks and sugar together. Put the cream on a fire in a casserole, first putting in a stick of Vanilla. When near boiling, take it off and pour it gently into the mixture of eggs and sugar. Stir it well. Put it on the fire again, stirring it thoroughly with a spoon to prevent its sticking to the casserole. When near boiling, take it off and strain it thro’ a towel. Continue reading

The Allure of the Secret Ingredient

Chartreuse bottleWhen I was working my first job out of college, my boss Cathy and her husband Ken were a charming and sophisticated and unfailingly cheerful couple, the kind of couple that it is easy to envy, the kind of couple that one suspects of stumbling upon some hidden secret to a happy life.  If there was, indeed, some magical key to their happiness, they never told me what it was. But Ken did once tell me how to make amazing mashed potatoes.

“Do you want to know how to make the best mashed potatoes in the world?” he asked me. He had a glow of office-party wine and benevolent wisdom about him.  “Do you?”

And I did. In fact, I was dying to know. There is something alluring, maybe even thrilling, about the idea that just one simple component has the power to utterly transform the whole.

There are, in my opinion, a few different categories of secret ingredients. Continue reading