In which "camping" is defined as "spending thirty days working a writing project or two"

And in which the author gets perhaps a little more personal than usual.

I am not much of a fan of New Year's Resolutions because such a specific label is restrictive, as if there is only one day a year when you can resolve to make changes and improvements in your life.  Then, if you don't follow through for some reason, do you have to wait until the next January 1st to start again?

I think not.

Every day is an opportunity to take stock of what you have (or have not) accomplished in previous days and then decide what to do going forward.

I have discovered that goals are more helpful, motivating, and achievable, if they are a combination of general and specific.  For example, I find "get some exercise at least five days a week" to be a more realistic achievement than "run five miles a day."  Sometimes goals evolve from being vague to specific.  After I finished one knitting project which had been lingering for quite some time, "knit more" evolved into "finish these three projects by the end of the year."  I didn't specify an order or hierarchy for the projects, and I am not going to worry about actually having more than three unfinished projects (not to mention other projects I want to start).  Instead, I am going to stick with these three.  I think it helps that they are a bit of a mixed bag.  The largest project is the simplest (no fancy pattern).  The smallest project is the most complicated, and the one in between is, well, in between.  The current order seems to be to finish the middle project first and then alternate between the large, simple project and the small, complicated project, but that may change.  The point is that I keep making progress and even if I don't do any knitting for several days, it is easy to pick up where I left off because I have a plan.

As a contradiction, the specific reading goal of fifty-two books a year is finally working out.  Last year I managed fifty-three, so this year, the goal is to read fifty-five books.  So far, so good, and hopefully it is a long-term trend which I can continue.

Cooking goals remain nebulous beyond "read cookbooks, try new recipes, be mindful of ingredients and where they come from, support local farmers and businesses," but that's okay because I think that it is working well so far.  I eat less processed food, and while my brain occasionally craves a fast food hamburger, my taste buds remember that the food I cook tastes so much better.  I do have a subscription to an online cooking school which I need to work into the schedule somewhere somehow, but I haven't figured out how to make that work just yet.

My favorite accomplishment so far this year is the successful baking of oatmeal cookies, but they deserve their own post, which fits in nicely with the goal I really wanted to discuss in this post: writing.

Writing used to be a necessary cathartic process to quiet the clamoring voices in my head.  As I have made progress on various projects and goals and have generally found a better balance between work and life, the voices have quieted significantly on their own, so that while I still enjoy writing, it is not quite the necessary survival skill that it has been in the past, which means that I often find myself thinking, "I should write about that at some point," but I don't make it to "some point," especially if I am going through a "stay away from the computer while not at work" phase.  (Now *there* is an extreme compound, complex sentence for you.  Watch out Marcel Proust!)

With the advent of the April session of Camp NaNoWriMo, I have decided to set a goal of getting back to writing.  I have given myself the choice of writing a blog post a day for thirty days or finishing a draft of the cookbook.  Obviously, I am starting with the blog, but I think that I will end up doing a combination of the two with the notion that if it takes thirty days to make or break a habit and if I can write every day for thirty days, then at the end of the month, I will have a new good habit.  That's the plan at any rate.  We'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I wanted to share the following story which came in one of the e-mail newsletters I received from the NaNoWriMo folks because I just love the positive power possibilities of the written word.  Enjoy!

Wrimo Spotlight
"My daughter Logan is borderline autistic and deals with extreme anxiety. She struggles significantly when things are not "perfect", and just couldn't get her words on the page. Any more than five sentences was a struggle for her. Still, I decided to try and see what would happen if I signed her up for NaNoWriMo.

By midmonth, she had attended her first write-in with my students and after that was writing non-stop. By the end of the month, she had written more than double her 1,000-word goal. What's more, she had become a completely different child.

She was so excited about her writing, she was carrying her manuscript everywhere, had read her story to the whole class, and was writing like mad. It's been inspiring to see the happiness and ease writing now brings her." — Holly B.

Cooking at the Improv

I am a huge fan of applied knowledge.  I love being able to take something I have learned and use it as a frame of reference to learn or figure out something else. If I am really lucky, the knowledge takes on a life of its own, and I don't even recognize the extrapolation right away.  Instead there is just a natural flow from known into the unknown, which then turns into the known.  (Beats the unknown unknown any day of the week, if you ask me.)

That sort of extrapolation is exactly what has happened with my cooking, and I find it exciting.  I have reached the point at which I can think about recipes and techniques I have already used and create something new, or, even better, something familiar.  I think that I am even getting to the point at which I can look at a recipe someone did not care for and see why it did not work.

A couple of weeks ago it was time to make lentil soup again.  I make a lot of lentil soup, especially once the weather begins to turn colder.  I make big batches and then freeze individual portions that I take take to work for lunch.

So the time came to make another batch of lentil soup, and, horror of horrors, I couldn't find the recipe that I usually use (at least as a starting point).  This happened before my discovery of eatyourbooks.com, so I had to search my cookbook collection the old fashioned way.  I checked Moosewood and The Joy of Cooking and Marcella and Julia and a few others.  No luck.  My usual lentil soup recipe was not to be found.

What's a hungry cook to do?

Improvise, of course.

Ingredients waiting to be chopped

I had the ingredients.  I had the skills and the knowledge.  I just had to figure out how to put the two together.  So I did.

I chopped up the magical trifecta that is mirepoix -- celery, onion and carrot -- along with a bit of garlic, added salt and pepper, and sauteed the lot in some olive oil, using Lynne Rosetto-Kasper's recommended method of lower heat and a covered pot for a longer period of time (15 minutes as opposed to about 5).  When things started to stick to the bottom of the pan -- an occurrence which I believe to be caused by my preference of using less than the recommended amount of oil for sauteing -- I deglazed with a generous splash of white wine.

Chopped ingredients

Any excuse to add wine, right?  Not that you really need one.  Wine is just as powerful a flavor enhancer as stock if you ask me, and I think that it helps all of the other flavors get along.  I have also discovered that, at least for white wine, the specific variety of wine isn't all that important, as long as it is something you would like to drink.  I have used Riesling, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and even flat Champagne (which can be seen in the corner of the ingredients photo), all to excellent effect.

Returning to the lentil soup at hand, while the magical mirepoix was sauteeing, I finished chopping up the rest of the vegetables -- mushrooms, cabbage, broccoli, zucchini.  Then I added a few tablespoons of tomato paste, paprika and some other herbs to the mirepoix and stirred everything until well mixed.

Sauteeing mirepoix

In went the vegetables, a bag of lentils, more wine, and vegetable broth made from homemade vegetable bouillon which I absolutely adore and is so easy to make (basically blend a bunch of vegetables in a food processor with a bunch of salt to preserve it and then put the lot in mason jars and freeze it).  I brought the whole concoction to a boil, reduced to a simmer and, as the saying goes, cooked until done -- which I have discovered with lentil soup is always longer than you think that it should be.  Trust me on this one -- if you taste the soup and it seems pretty good, tweak the seasoning just a bit more if you want to and the let it simmer another fifteen or twenty minutes before tasting it again.  The result is yummy, hearty, rich, melt in your mouth lentil soup.  Then again, I am not a huge fan of al dente pasta, so if you prefer a bit of toothsomeness to your soup, then you might not be a fan of that extra few minutes which really causes all of the ingredients and flavors to melt together.

Soup!

So, to sum up: chop up a bunch of ingredients, saute the mirepoix, deglaze with wine, add seasoning, add rest of ingredients and liquid(s) of choice, bring to boil, simmer, sample and season along the way, and voila!  Soup!

P.S.  Just as I did when making the soup, I almost forgot the prosciutto.  I love prosciutto.  It's less fatty and more delicate than bacon.  If I hadn't forgotten it, I would have sauteed it briefly in a pan and then added it toward the end of the mirepoix sauteeing step.  But I did forget it until I was at the bring to boil step, so I tossed it in then, and it worked its salty, savory magic just as well.

If you are a big fan of meat, the piggy, savory sorts work well in this soup -- ham, kielbasa, linguisa, other sausage (though it probably doesn't need to be pork sausage).

Baked Not Fried

Crab rangoons are one of my favorite not so healthy food vices -- all crispy and crackly and cheesy and salty -- but ever since I learned to make my own fried rice, I don't get Chinese take-out nearly as often as I used to (which, I might add, has the noteworthy side effect that for the first time pretty much ever I have had to purchase a bottle of soy sauce).  While I should certainly be able to learn how to make my own crab rangoons, I am not so good with deep frying.  It's a whole lot of oil, and it seems like so much of it goes to waste if I am only going to make a single batch of something, and having an actual frying appliance is one more thing that either has to be stored or else takes up a bunch of counter space.

I briefly considered the possibilities of an Actifry made by T-fal, but the overabundance of reviews and opinions on the internet offered confusion rather than clarity.  I never know whether to believe internet reviews.  Some people are always going to be ecstatic about a product, and some are always going to think that it is the worst thing ever in the history of everything.  Without knowing any background of the people posting, I can't tell if what they say applies to me.

Besides, while I am not quite willing to cut oil out of my life completely, I do try to be mindful of exactly what I am asking my body to process.  I am looking at food and recipes from different perspectives.  Sometimes the full fat, deep fried, high calorie indulgence is the way to go, but what about people who really have to watch their intake of fat or salt or sugar or have allergies or sensitivities or just plain don't like something?  They have to eat, too, and they should be able to eat tasty food right along with the rest of us.  Given the number of recipes available for almost any dish, there is more than one way to make almost anything, so why not try it?  (And try more than one variation or method, especially if the first attempt didn't turn out quite the way you had hoped it would.)

One of my favorite discoveries of a better way to do something is when I decided to try steaming ravioli rather than boiling them.  I find the pasta in pre-made ravioli to be too thick, and I still haven't gotten quite organized enough to make my own.  Somewhere I came across the recommendation of using wanton wraps instead.  I boiled them the first time.  They turned out pretty well as far as taste and texture, but the ravioli stuck together impressively once they came out of the water and were piled on a plate.  Also, if I punctured one or didn't seal it properly (I have since learned that egg is far more effective than water), all of the filling ended up in the water.

The second time I made them, I decided to try steaming them in my handy dandy double decker bamboo steamer.  Way better.  Punctures and less than perfect seals did not cause any problems, and the ravioli only needed to be steamed for three or four minutes.  An added bonus is that the steamer has two layers, so I could cook more than a few ravioli at once.  The stickiness was still a bit of an issue, but a bit of oil or butter or using a bigger plate or several plates or adding the sauce of choice right away or maybe even a dusting of semolina (though that might interfere with the sauce) helps considerably.

The finished rangoons and egg roll (on a special, snazzy
plate made just for such things)

Returning to the crab rangoons, I recently had a craving for Chinese take-out, but I really wanted to try to do it myself.  It's less expensive that way, and I have far more control over what is in the food, which becomes more important to me the more I cook.  In fact, cooking more of my own food actually means that restaurant food -- especially "junk" food -- doesn't taste nearly as good as it used to.  My brain still occasionally tries to convince me that I want a greasy hamburger, but I just find something else which will taste better and be better for me.

I found this recipe and decided to try it since it called for baking rather than frying.  I improvised heavily -- more cheese, scallions instead of onion powder, no chives -- and ended up with a filling that I probably could have eaten right out of the bowl with a spoon.  I had a little trouble not putting too much filling in each wrap and getting it sealed properly so that the filling didn't ooze out when heated, but I am sure that it is the sort of thing where practice makes better, and even the ruptured rangoons were tasty.

Fried rice in matching snazzy bowl

As an accompaniment, I made these avocado egg rolls, which are probably about as Asian as crab rangoons with all of their cheese, but I am a huge fan of avocados.  Consider these rough chopped guacamole rolled up in egg roll wrappers.  It is one of those great recipes where you just chop everything up and toss it together.  Come to think of it, I probably could have let the fabulous Cuisinart food processor do the chopping, but cleaning one knife and putting one mixing bowl in the dishwasher sound less labor intensive.

The recipe calls for frying, but I brushed them with beaten egg and baked them right along with the rangoons (at four hundred degrees for about 20 minutes), and they were crispy and yummy.  They even reheated nicely the next day for lunch.

P.S. I also tried baking rangoon-shaped ravioli (i.e. using one wrapper per ravioli rather than two), and I think for them, steaming is better.

Eat Your Books ... and Magazines and Blogs

While I am becoming more improvisational in my cooking, I still like to use recipes as a starting point (at the very least).  As I read and acquire more cookbooks and magazines and find more food blogs I enjoy, it becomes more difficult to remember which recipe comes from where.

Enter EatYourBooks.com where thousands of books and a growing number of magazines and blogs are indexed (titles, authors, publications and lists of ingredients).  I can even add entries for personal recipes.

I especially appreciate the magazine indexing feature with the option to automatically add future issues of a subscription to my bookshelf.

Once I track down a recipe, I can bookmark it for future quick access, adding categories as I feel inclined.

The site is easy to use, and while there are options to add ratings and comments, there doesn't seem to be the usual emphasis on social networking, which I appreciate.

I look forward to making more efficient use of my growing recipe collection.

Italian Country Cooking by Loukie Werle

Title: Italian Country Cooking: The Secrets of Cucina Povera
Author: Loukie Werle
Photographer: Alan Benson
Publisher: Fall River Press (owned by Barnes & Noble, which would explain why I found this lovely book in a remainder stack for $12.98)
Copyright: 2007

Although I spend quite a bit of time reading and daydreaming about France and Paris when it comes to food (especially cheese), wine, fashion, art, history and scenery, when I read a book like this, I can't help thinking that perhaps I should daydream about using Italy as a home base for visiting France rather than the other way around.  Not that I haven't also long been a fan of Italian food, wine, fashion, history, art and scenery, but the daydreams usually have me somewhere in Paris and/or rural France.

The first section of Italian Country Cooking is devoted to pasta, which is probably my second favorite food after cheese, so I was hooked right from the start, and I want to make just about every recipe in the chapter.  Meanwhile, the gorgeous photographs make me want to shop for vintage rimmed soup bowls in which to serve these fabulous dishes.

The recipes in the second section focus on rice and grains.  Another win, given that I love risotto, with the bonus of a few farro recipes I want to try out with the farro I purchased before I really had any idea of what I would do with it.  Polenta falls into that category too, and now I have ideas for that as well, namely Lasagna di Polenta (polenta lasagna with three cheeses).  The Bomba di Riso (rice cake with provolone and sausage) is also on the "to try" list, once I figure out which pan I can use.

Moving on to beans and legumes, the Pasta e Ceci (chickpea and pasta soup) is a beautifully written example of how to really build a soup, layering in the flavors for a hearty result, and while I am very proud of my "improv" lentil soup, the Minestra di Riso e Lenticchie (lentil and rice soup)looks as if it could be equally good.  (Incidentally, I have discovered that the secret to really good lentil soup is to cook it longer than you think you should.)

Salads and vegetables are up next, and I dare you to resist the Asparagus Gratinati (asparagus and provolone gratin).  You will probably learn a thing or two about leafy greens.  I know I did.

La Vignarola (Roman springtime stew) has a detailed description for preparing artichokes which almost has me convinced that I can do it, but they still scare me a little, especially since the author does not offer suggestions of what to do with the outer leaves and so called "hairy choke."  I am wondering if I could maybe cheat and just buy artichoke hearts, except that I really want to try to cook something starting with a whole, raw artichoke.  If the artichokes do get the best of me, I could always console myself with Torta di Patate (potato pie with smoke mozzarells and salami).

Having cleansed the palate with salad and veggies, it's on to eggs and cheese.  Frittata al Forno (frittata with scamorza) offers incentive to (learn to) use the broiler, even in the midst of summer when tomatoes are at their peak.  Or perhaps try the recipe for a baked omelette which sounds more like a crepe.

Moving from the land to the sea, recipes for fish and other seafood, especially mussels and clams, are up next.  There is a swordfish recipe which promises to be "very lemony, herby and garlicky," and all I could think was "Sign me up!"

As an aside, the author does show a strong penchant for rosemary, which I don't care for, but I think a substitution could be made without undermining the recipes.  The same is true for chiles.  In fact, I think that almost all of the recipes could be adapted with ease to individual preferences and tastes, not to mention to what is actually available to hand.

Other meats follow in the next two chapters -- chicken, beef, veal, lamb, including several recipes for offal, and even a couple of recipes for rabbit and one for oxtails.  The final two chapters round out the meal, er, book with bread and pizza and desserts.

There are recipes simple and complex, vegetarian and meat loving.  Anyone with a love of hearty, classic Italian food should find recipes in this book to make, enjoy and share.

Small rant

Part of me is still hasn't recovered from the abrupt realization that the FDA is owned/run by massive pharmaceutical companies, and when I drove by a large, almost billboard-sized sign in a local farmyard (on my way to pick up some yummy, organic, locally grown produce) telling me that the country was going the wrong way and that I should do something about it come November 6th or God help us all, I risked driving off the road as I blinked in disbelief.  It was another "Seriously?!?!?!?" sort of moment.

I guess it is a sort of backwards way of saying God helps those who help themselves, but somehow I doubted that was the message intended by the sign.  Perhaps I should drive back and ask.

Here was a local farmer growing food and selling it to local consumers, which is a grand and glorious thing.  And yet this farmer thinks that a politician, any politician is going to improve his lot in life?  Really?

When did the amnesia epidemic break out?  Was it when elections weren't really won but rather decided in the courts after much wrangling and hemming and hawing and noise and bluster?  Every four years, and often it only takes two years, there is all of this screaming about how those who are in office are terrible and horrible and never did anything worthwhile and we should throw the bastards out.  And then if the bastards do get thrown out, they seem to only be replaced by new bastards.

Federal and possibly even state level government has ceased to be effective in any kind of widespread way.  What is good for or works in Maine is not necessarily good for Nebraska or Arizona or Hawaii.  It just can't be.

Olive Tapenade

Making my own olive tapenade has been on my list for a while, and had I known just how easy it is to make, I wouldn't have waited so long.

I'm not sure where I got the idea that olive tapenade was complicated.  Probably the price.  Little jars have price tags much higher than a regular can of olives, so I figured that there had to be special secret ingredients.

Today I picked up a store brand jar of olive tapenade, and when I was finished shuddering at the sodium content (46% for the green olive tapenade and 38% for the black per serving), I read the ingredients list, which turned out to be olives, olive oil, garlic, mushrooms, spices and salt. Since I already had everything else, I bought two six-ounce cans of pitted olives, one black and one green.

When I got home, I did a little research to find out what the "spices" might entail and looked at a few different recipes -- some called for sun dried tomatoes and others for capers and anchovies.

It turns out that this is one of those fabulous recipes where you pull out the food processor, throw in the ingredients, pulse to desired consistency and voila!  Yumminess.

I decided on:
6 ounces each of black and green olives, pitted and drained
4 or 5 small portabella mushrooms
1 small jar of oven dried organic sunburst tomatoes (somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup) and their associated 3 roasted garlic cloves, seasonings and coating of olive oil (which I had made about a week ago but had not yet figured out how to use)
1 anchovy filet packed in olive oil
1 tsp (total guess) Pasta Sprinkle

Once everything was pretty well blended, I added a little bit more olive oil, maybe a tablespoon.  There is enough moisture and oil to be had in the ingredients that you really don't need much.  If you prefer the spread to be a little more chunky and crumbly (think tabbouli salad), you could omit it all together.

I didn't feel a need to add any salt beyond what was in the ingredients, although a little flake salt sprinkled over the top after spreading the tapenade on bread or cheese (or both) would not be untoward.  Also, for those who like pepper, by all means grind in as much as your taste buds desire.

I considered adding my favorite magic cheese, but decided I could sprinkle a bit on later if the mood struck me.

Spread on freshly baked Italian bread, and yum!  No, let's make that YUM!!!  Also very tasty on Brie, with or without the bread.  Or stuffed into a small mushroom.

The difference between homemade and store bought is on an order of magnitude similar to that of making your own marinara sauce with organic tomatoes rather than opening a jar.

And did I mention how simple it is?  Open a couple of cans or jars, and the food processor does the rest.

If you like olives, you will be hooked in a heartbeat and thinking about the possible variations -- Kalamata, Spanish, California, etc., alone or in combination, with or without sun-dried tomatoes, capers, anchovies.  Play with the seasonings to see which olives like which herbs.  Maybe even add a chile for kick, if you are in to that sort of thing.

Now I need to go learn about olives.

Cooking with Cookbooks

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/19/food-friday-why-do-we-buy-cookbooks.html

For some reason this article irritated me.  For several reasons, actually.  I thought about ranting against each point, but instead I have decided to wish the author inexpensive gadgets, extra long battery life and a stable high speed internet connection so that she never need consult another paper cookbook again.

Me, I love cookbooks.  I love the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook I inherited from my grandmother.  I love the old, battered, much used paperback edition of The Joy of Cooking which sits on the shelf next to a shiny, less stained hardcover copy of the 75th edition of the same book.  I love my well used copy of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.  I love the newer acquisitions such as How to Eat Supper and Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet.

I used to buy cookbooks because I thought I needed recipes in order to cook, and quite a few of them were pretty much collections of recipes without a lot of pictures or context and narrative.  I have since learned that I do not so much need the recipes themselves as I do the skills which they teach.  One of my long-term hopes and goals is that this self-directed culinary education will help me figure out how to prepare and update the recipes in the family recipe boxes.

If I want to try a new recipe, find out what to do with an unfamiliar ingredient or learn a new skill, however, I look in a cookbook.

I love reading cookbooks written by restaurant chefs -- even if the recipes aren't exactly designed for home cooking -- because they include their philosophy and process.  While the results of some of their experimentation don't appeal to me, they are still educational.  They tell me that I probably wouldn't like things it would never occur to me to put together, but they also encourage my own mind to think "off menu."  Sometimes way off menu.

Nor do I read only cookbooks when it comes to learning about food and its preparation.  I read memoirs and books of food writing and even food-centric novels.

Cookbooks can be delightfully specialized, and I am not talking about the latest diet or nutrition craze.  (One of the many joys of living without television reception or cable is that I tend not to hear about such things.)  You can get books such a Bones, Meat, Fat , Roots and Salted.  If you want to be more inclusive, there is the Nose to Tail approach.  There are new (or maybe not so new -- again, no tv) and different genres -- whole foods, raw foods, sushi, miso, tofu.

If cookbooks are on their way out, why are book deals part of the up and coming chef's road to celebrity?  People want to connect with or associate themselves with these celebrities, and what better way to show your connection than a shelf full of books by Giada or Emeril?  By purchasing all of the other merchandise they endorse, of course -- pots, pans, knives, bakeware, and even foodstuffs.

(I will confess to owning several books by Giada and two Martha Stewart enameled cast iron pots, but I actually use the books and the cookware regularly.  Giada has some great recipes which I make often, and those Martha Stewart pots get the job done without the Le Creuset price tag.  In fact, last weekend, I made a modified version of Giada's basic marinara sauce in the larger of the two Martha pots.)

At the other end of the spectrum, there are cookbooks that aren't really cookbooks, such as Heston's Fantastical Feasts and Notes from a Kitchen.  Just today, Too Many Chiefs and Only One Indian caught my eye.  The last two are gorgeous works of art, not only for the food which they feature but also graphic design, typography and photography.  (One of my favorite things about them is that they cannot be had from amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.)  A little less extreme but still impressively visually appealing is What Katie Ate, written by a commercial photographer with a passion for food.  She wrote the recipes, cooked the food, and styled and shot all of the photography in the book.

With all of the options offered by computers and other technology these days --digital photography, graphic design, vibrant soy-based inks, non-traditional paper fibers, typefaces, and even page size -- the possibilities for creative publications are more numerous than ever.  Why would you want to stare at a digital screen, when you can get a more complete sensory experience by holding one of these fabulous books in your hands and making a new discovery every time you turn a page?  After all, aren't the best meals the ones which engage all five senses?  So why not start the experience with the recipe source?

It's not that I do not look for recipes online, but I have gotten away from the ubiquitous cooks.com and allrecipes.com and epicurious.com.  They are too noisy.  Too many choices.  Too many recipes and reviews by people I don't know.  Instead I read cooking blogs and follow links found in the Twitter feeds of cooks and food writers.  The only time I use recipe focused sites anymore is when I am trying to find a recipe I saw in a magazine and can't remember which issue.  (If anyone has a way of collecting and organizing recipes from magazines so that they can be easily found and used again in the future, I would love to hear about it.)

These cookbooks and blogs inspire me to not only work on my own cooking but also my writing and photography.  The more I read and the more things I try, the more things I want to learn and the more convinced I become that I can actually cook and write and photograph and have fun doing it.

Finally, there is my most recent discovery: cookbook stores.  Apparently there are loads of them if you just look.  Not only are they independent booksellers, but they are specialized independent booksellers.  (Take that, RAMJAC!!)

Maybe the cookbook publishing business isn't growing by leaps and bounds.  Maybe it is even shrinking, but constant growth isn't a sustainable course.  Maybe, as should be with food, there is a trend toward quality and time well spent rather than quantity and speed disguised as efficiency.

Whatever the case, I will keep reading (and buying) cookbooks.

Pizza Post

Saturday night -- sometimes Friday night -- is usually pizza night, and the local delivery options definitely vary in quality.  Over the summer, I happened to stop by a local bakery on a day that they had fresh pizza dough, which led to this:

I rolled out the dough, spread some homemade sauce over it, and basically cleaned out the refrigerator.  Yum!

Since then, delivery has just paled in comparison, but I have not been quite organized enough to make my own dough, and the local bakery where I found it for my initial experiment can't always sell it, so they don't always make it.  Trader Joe's had some, but the ingredient list was too long.  Then, about a week ago, I found organic pizza dough at a local grocery store for about a dollar, so I brought home a couple of pounds and stuck them in the freezer. One pound makes a decent-sized pizza, as long as you like thin crust, and it turns out that it only takes a couple of hours to defrost (another concern I had about buying pizza dough to have on hand).

I thawed out some sauce cubes and sliced up veggies (again, cleaning out the fridge).

I oiled my largest rimmed cookie sheet with a small amount of canola oil.  Yes, you can use cooking spray, but you don't need much oil to cover an entire pan -- I would guess less than a teaspoon -- and you get the benefit of knowing what you are using, as opposed to whatever additives and propellants are in the spray.  If you are really worried, check out one of those pump sprayers that you can fill with the oil of your choice.  In this case, I used canola oil because it has a higher smoke point than the much beloved olive oil, and pizza does well cooked at high temperatures.

Then I rolled out the dough with a little flour, put it in the pan and spread the sauce.

After the sauce comes cheese -- I like a mixture of finely shredded mozzarella and mild cheddar cheese -- and then veggies -- thinly sliced summer squash, red onion, baby portabella mushrooms, yellow sweet pepper and kalamata olives -- followed by a little more cheese -- in this case my favorite "magic cheese" blend of parmesan, romano and asiago.

After about 20 minutes in a 435-degree oven (yes, 435), voila!  

Crispy, thin crust pizza with very little edge.  Again, I say, yum!

Yes, delivery is quicker (maybe) and requires less effort, but making it myself is not only far less expensive but also more satisfying on a number of levels, including taste and nutritional value.

Non-toxic non-stick?

While I love my fabulous stainless steel pots and pans, as well as the much used cast iron skillet which is older than I am, every once in a while I just don't want to worry about my food sticking to the pan, so despite my aversion to continued Teflon ingestion, I hide a small non-stick frying pan in the drawer under my stove.

Today I encountered Hydrolon.

I am suspicious that it may be one of those things which is too good to be true, but I am going to experiment anyway with this pan.

Further bulletins as events warrant.