Joan Menefee has never been a picky eater. She and her husband live in Menomonie, Wisconsin, where they tend gardens in two counties and eat plums and grapes in public parks.

Foodstuffs and stuffed foods

My definition of civilization

By Joan Menefee

January 12, 2010

Read my Yule-log adventures from last winter and you’ll know that I like to make food that looks inedible. When my neighbors constructed a wooden play kitchen for their toddler this winter, I learned that I also like to make toys that look like food.

As I sewed grapes, a red pepper, a pea pod, two carrots, a pizza, and a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and stuffed them with quilt scraps, I enjoyed exploring the curious boundary between the edible and the inedible from another side.

In terms of shape and color, these worlds are wonderfully similar. Bright, plump, and symmetrical, yet not entirely regular, foodstuffs and stuffed “foods” beg to be touched.

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Author of The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves and The Joy of Pickling, Linda Ziedrich likes to cook with every sort of food she can grow in Scio, Oregon.

A new use for fennel

Candied vegetables are a medieval treat

By Linda Ziedrich

January 7, 2010

Four consecutive days of below-freezing temperatures recently put an end to the remains of my vegetable garden.

As in many years past, I was late in digging carrots and setting up plastic tents over the greens (which might actually have survived if I’d included an electric heater, set on high). After three days of bitter cold, I dug up the carrot bed, in frozen chunks six inches deep, and set the blocks in the garage to thaw.

I also dug up two enormous bulbs of Florence fennel, the kind sold in stores as anise (which it isn’t) or finocchio (Italian for “fennel”). The bulbs were frozen through.

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Fourth-grader Emma Hirsch is obsessed with baking. She likes the baking part but not cleaning up after, which distresses her parents to no end, but they do like eating what she makes. When Emma is not baking, she likes to read cookbooks and fantasy books, dance, and play with her two adorable dogs.

Afterthoughts on holiday baking

Emma was busy

By Emma Hirsch

January 4, 2010

This holiday season, I baked a lot.

Something I have learned is that who you are baking for matters. For example, you’re having a party. You make three dozen blueberry muffins, and nobody at the party likes blueberries but you. It just doesn’t work.

The holiday season is just like that. People are grumpy and tired and picky about what they are eating. Buying presents and making cards is tiring. You always need a batch of fresh-baked, warm cookies on hand.

The worst thing that I baked this holiday was probably the pumpkin pie that I poured way too much filling into. It wasn’t a disaster, just a little chaotic.

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Cynthia Lair has been a member of the nutrition faculty at Bastyr University since 1994. She also stars in the humorous online cooking show Cookus Interruptus.

Our Buena Onda Brunch

Huevos rancheros for all

By Cynthia Lair

December 29, 2009

Each year during the holiday season, we give our friends a warm feliz navidad with a big huevos rancheros brunch — the Buena Onda Brunch. This year, our sixth annual, we had a record 17 people in our small home. Spirits were high, the food tasty, and the smiles wide. Buena onda, after all, means “good vibes.”

For each diner, we serve two butter-softened tortillas with a fried egg on top of each. The top is covered by a hot salsa, which cooks the top of the egg. That’s the whole authentic dish. To American-ize it a bit, we sprinkle some cheese and avocado slices on top, and give diners a scoop of chipotle black beans on the side. The bright red salsa, green chile peppers, golden egg yolks, and tortillas beam bright holiday colors.

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Joan Menefee has never been a picky eater. She and her husband live in Menomonie, Wisconsin, where they tend gardens in two counties and eat plums and grapes in public parks.

First among bees

In Washington, symbolic honey

By Joan Menefee

November 17, 2009

When I was 14 years old, I traveled to a small town called Tanneron, in the Midi region of France, to babysit for an American-Belgian family. It was a summer of firsts: first overseas journey, first time alone with children overnight, first anchovy, first deep-fried acacia. I remember inspecting a soft, ripened cheese — first time I’d ever seen cheese in a wooden box — garnished with walnuts.

All these experiences made the occasional trials of child care worthwhile. I hardly minded the daily spit-up, though I did change my clothes a lot. Neither did I mind sleeping in the same room with the children, or struggling to pin their diapers, or raising a spoonful of pulverized carrots and cauliflower to their firmly closed mouths only to wipe it from the floor a few minutes later.

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Author of The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves and The Joy of Pickling, Linda Ziedrich likes to cook with every sort of food she can grow in Scio, Oregon.

A good weed

Another sorrel lover makes soup

By Linda Ziedrich

November 10, 2009

A few days ago, while tearing up the sorrel that had invaded my rhubarb bed, I took care to separate the leaves from the creeping roots. The roots I left on the ground to rot; the leaves I took into the house for soup.

In past years I have grown French sorrel, Rumex scutatus, which has relatively large, shield-shaped leaves, but this Eurasian perennial has never survived our wet winters. I might one day try garden sorrel R. acetosa, which has big leaves shaped like arrowheads and grows well in England. But for now I may as well enjoy my field sorrel, or sheep sorrel, R. acetosella, with its small, arrowhead-shaped leaves.

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Fourth-grader Emma Hirsch is obsessed with baking. She likes the baking part but not cleaning up after, which distresses her parents to no end, but they do like eating what she makes. When Emma is not baking, she likes to read cookbooks and fantasy books, dance, and play with her two adorable dogs.

Emma’s bread

Some good, some not-so-good

By Emma Hirsch

November 3, 2009

I have just finished making a New Mexican pueblo bread loaf from Williams-Sonoma. It turned out absolutely disgusting. It looked very rustic and was hard to cut. It tasted like I added way too much butter. It was very dense and heavy. It was fun to make, but hard to eat.

When I made this bread, I forgot to put in the yeast. But then later I added it (a little bit before I put it in the oven). The bread was sitting in a Ziploc bag for about a week. I had made two loaves so when we thew it away it was quite a waste.

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Author of The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves and The Joy of Pickling, Linda Ziedrich likes to cook with every sort of food she can grow in Scio, Oregon.

A tribute to winter squashes

Ideas for your bounty

By Linda Ziedrich

October 26, 2009

When sunlight streams through the red and yellow grape leaves as if they’re made of greased paper, when the walnut spreads a gold carpet of leaves across the driveway and pelts the roof with its black-husked nuts, when the new grass shimmers as green as in April and everything looks brighter in the clean air, it’s time to bring in the pumpkins and other winter squashes.

They should be hard-shelled and full-colored now, dark green as the cedars, yellow and orange and red as the leaves dropping all around. The thick stems of the maximas should have turned woody, ready to separate from the dying vines. You need strong clippers for the bigger pepos; cut the stems to just an inch or two. Be careful not to break off a stem, or rot will set in early at the wound site.

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Joan Menefee has never been a picky eater. She and her husband live in Menomonie, Wisconsin, where they tend gardens in two counties and eat plums and grapes in public parks.

Freeze, froze, frozen

The principles of preservation

By Joan Menefee

October 15, 2009

One of my favorite things about having spent five years writing a doctoral dissertation is that odd stuff floats up when I am doing something repetitious — chopping and cooking carrots for freezing, for example.

I am sure everyone knows how this goes: an image pops into your head and you say to yourself, “Why did I think of that?” Before you know it, you are feeling your way along a silken rope of associations, blessedly far from your humdrum point of origin.

At the beginning of this week, with pounds of freshly harvested produce menacing me, I stacked the basement floor with the contents of my 10-cubic-foot chest freezer in an attempt to understand what exactly was there — a dispiriting task indeed.

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Fourth-grader Emma Hirsch is obsessed with baking. She likes the baking part but not cleaning up after, which distresses her parents to no end, but they do like eating what she makes. When Emma is not baking, she likes to read cookbooks and fantasy books, dance, and play with her two adorable dogs.

One 9-year-old baker’s story

Meet Emma

By Emma Hirsch

September 24, 2009

People often say anyone can cook and bake. That has some truth.

I am nine (almost 10), and I love to bake. Making savory dishes are not my kind of thing. The reason I am so into baking is because it is something to do when you have so much on your mind you just need a break.

When I bake, I usually don’t eat it. I don’t like nuts, lemon, dried fruit, or oatmeal. I bring things over to neighbors, friends’ houses, my brother, or my teachers.

Every Sunday I get together with my two friends, Samantha and Kellie, and we have a bake sale. We plan it all week; we call each other and decide what to bake and when. We have made cookies, breads, cakes, and pies. It is pretty impressive; we make lots of money. One day we made $28! All three of us live right across the street from each other. We do the sale on the curb right next to my house. Samantha and Kellie are great bakers, and someday maybe we could open a bakery.

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