Technical Difficulties

Hello one and all,

This started out as a fun adventure, and it is so exciting to see that lots of you are reading, and hopefully going out and trying some of these foods I would have passed over once before! I have really enjoyed the feedback so far, and please feel free to comment on the post your ideas for foods i should try in the future. I have adjusted the settings and you do not need a google email account to comment now, so bring 'em on!

However, I am in between places at the moment, flooded out, without a stove and with plenty of woes, so there will not be any new food blogs until after the New Year.

In the event of this unlikely delay, I am going to leave a list of seasonal items you should ALL try to taste, and instead of avoid at the buffet tables this holiday season:

1) Marzipan. Unless you are allergic to almonds, then I promise you will really really like this. Marzipan desserts are not ancient like the shaped fruits your grandmothers used to eat. It's made of a sweetened almond paste, and has a nice smooth finish to it. Try rolling marzipan balls in chocolate and gifting them as truffles. I personally like to use it rolled out in a black forest cake, the almond compliments the kirsch beautifully. It's about as festive a food as you can try.

2) Try adding Brandy to mulled wine. It tastes even better, and gets you even drunker, there is no discussion here!

3) Antipasto. It looks like old Italian salsa, but really it is everything delicious about the cheese and olive plate all in one convenient scoop. If you are really lucky like myself you will have some homemade available to you it's extra MMM!!!

4) the outside of the brie: now some people just don't like this by nature, however if you are at an open house, the very good quality bries have an incredible tasting rind, much more complex and flavorful than any other cheese you will find

Those are my four legitimate seasonal enjoyments, I hope you try one of them yourself, and have a wonderful holiday season!

Stephanie

Kiwano Horned Melon

Well this was an interesting one folks..

I tried a horned melon, related to both the cucumber and melons, I thought this can't be too bad!

If you are curious as to how this little orange weapon looks on the inside...

 I'm sure you weren't expecting it to be green slime! As I was cutting the melon in half it started gushing liquid and I thought, oh no, here we go..

 The fruit itself was nothing to write home about, it tasted like a very very watered down kiwi fruit, and was sort of slimy but pleasant textured. It would make sense that this is a traditional staple food in really hot climates, because it was incredibly juicy, and easy to eat.

   

However, after my adventures with the delicious surprise that was the jackfruit and kumquats, I wouldn't put this at the top of my list of recommendations for new and exciting foods. 

However, if you are interested in tasting a cucumber kiwi melon hybrid, the horned melon is the way for you to go!

  

Cotton Candy Really Does Grow on Trees...

Today I tried jackfruit! The largest tree-bourne fruit in the world!

it has an incredible sweet taste without being sugary, and a crazy texture, but let me start from the beginning..

I bought it at the market in a small chunk, because a whole jackfruit is massive, and incredibly expensive per pound. it's got giant nobby bumps on it.

The fruit is not hard although it appears that way, even the rind under the skin is sort of soft and stringy.

When unripe, it can be cooked in desserts or curried dishes, but when ripe it's delicious alone. There are also lobes in this fruit, with a soft stringy rind in between them.

Jackfruit was delicious! it tasted like a very ripe banana without the pasty dairy-ish banana aftertaste i dislike, with a dash of cotton candy in the mix! Sort of juicy, but still a pretty solid fruit.

It was really sweet, and my dishes and hands smell so good! Mmmm, I want to go somewhere hot on a beach and eat this all day long :) Hurray for successful food adventures!

Kumquats

What is sweet on the outside and sour on the inside? ....No, not me, but that is a good guess...

Let's try again: What's sweet on the outside, sour on the inside, is a fruit, and rhymes with bum squats?

KUMQUATS!

This fine evening I finally got around to trying these crazy little guys! This food is for my cousin Becca, who found it to be the most amusing sounding food name to suggest to me. (It is a fun word to say over and over again fast, just try it!)

So here we go, "I ate a kumquat!"

Okay well these kumquats look like little oranges

Some varieties are sweet on the inside and sour on the outside, and others are the other way around.

I think I had one of the sour on the inside varieties. Regardless, they started out with a sharp lemony taste, but shockingly ended without any bitter aftertaste. They were yummy enough, but not something I would want to go chomping on over and over again. To boot, they had lots of seeds in them.

Thinking they would be really tasty with some other chopped fruit I added them to some mango. This was great, but what was even better was mango kumquat salsa! Be sure to cut the kumquats into quarters, and scrape all of the little seeds out. You can even add just the peels and scrape the filling out instead, the outside is the tasty part.

How much more delicious could this be!? (I promise, not much more delicious)


For those of you who were wondering what the heck is in here:
1 cubed haden mango
1/4 lb of kumquats,
juice from a large half of a VERY very ripe and juicy lime (you should use a whole one) 
about a cup of cubed cucumber
about 2 tablespoons of diced red onion
and lots of cilantro. 

Tastes great with a little sea salt, but be sure to eat within a day after adding the salt, because it draws the juices out and it gets watery!

Unidentified Food Objects

It's been a few days. It is term paper time!! And I feel like my head is exploding! And I am in the library all day and can't bring myself to browse, peruse, search or seek anything new to eat with my spare time!

*this is an illustration of the author's mental capacity at this very moment*

 So as a pittance for my negligence in tasting new and exciting foods, and since I have no gourmet cakes to share with you while I write on economic market transformation, I offer a guessing game for my lovely readers!

Since I am mainly living off of wilted wraps from the bottom of my backpack, Tuesday night's leftover casserole, and library cafe food...

Guess which of these things you want to eat after 18 cups of coffee, 23 journal articles, and CANNOT BE FOUND ANYWHERE AFTER 6 PM ON A STUDENT CAMPUS:

*jeopardy music*

Option A - fairtrade organic $4.00 latte 

Option B - anything with lots of flax in it... muffins, rolls, cookies...

Option C a gloriously unhealthy cheeseburger, or pizza

Option D a vegetarian sandwich, WITH organic mixed greens to boot

Option E a pretentious bagel with dill cream cheese and smoked salmon lox

Well folks, if you thought, "cafes at universities wouldn't be so silly as to have smoked lox and organic sandwiches, but no pizza, burgers, or constipating white flour?! "




Welcome to the University of Over-Awareness!

99% of the time I am proud to join in the pretention

I drink my level-ground traded locally roasted extra dark drip from my stainless steel mug, while I nibble on a locally baked berry blast bran muffin, while I walk around in my Co-op Raincoat, while I discuss the post modern neo-neo synthesis of political theory with my other self-satisfied friends..

However, when cooped up like the very chickens my peers refuse to eat, I am going stir crazy for something that actually satisfies the rumblings of too many double americanos in the dark depths of my gut.

So be warned: if you see me, step aside before I start chewing on the sleeve of your supple leather jacket (yes veggies heads thats made of cows)

I'm starving for a good McDonalds. Or Megabite. Or Chowmein. My taste for cuisine seems to be deteriorating with my cognitive skills...

I'll try again tomorrow kids, have a good weekend!

A Wedding Cake sidebar for the day...

So some of you might know that I am employed in the bakery industry. I have been decorating cakes and pastries to pay for school. I have a blast doing it, meeting lots of great people, Red Seal bakers, talented decorators, and all-round crazy people who also start work at 5 am..

So when my cousin's good friend had a last minute time crunch for her wedding, I was asked to make the cake. EXCITEMENT!

The theme was Malaysian ( if i recall correctly...) for the groom's heritage.

There was a unity symbol on the side, and a cherry blossom branch on the finished cake.



I made the cherry blossoms by cutting gum paste with a flower shaped cookie cutter.

I then used a wilton gumpaste tool and a flower shaping sponge, and pressed the flower into a 3D shape.

 The centres were made by putting a dab of royal icing in the middle, and sprinkling yellow edible glitter in them.

When dried the flowers looked like this

The cake itself was a 2 tier, 4 layer chocolate cake with chocolate raspberry butter cream icing as the filling.

This was a first for me using chocolate cake, and the recipe was not as dense as I had expected when baked, which isn't ideal for a fondant cake.. Unfortunately, this made the fondant not my smoothest, but it still looked pretty good after a 20 minute drive in my passenger seat. At least - from what I was told - the cake itself was delicious, and I guess that's the important part. Who doesn't hate going to a wedding and getting tiny pieces of dry crumby cake with thick starchy fondant on tip..

I am going to call this one a success!

The Devil's Fruit..

They don't call it snake fruit for no reason..

Also called "Salek", this is an Indonesian fruit with an odd scaly skin that lends it's name.

 Now, this is supposed to be a 'citrusy' fruit with three lobes, each containing a pit. Thank you wikisearch, but let me tell you how it is....

You will begin by peeling back the scaly skin of the snake fruit. Then you will inhale, and notice the pungent aroma of feet wafting towards your eager epicurious nose.... But it can't be! (you will exclaim) This is a Balinese delicacy! (you will wash fruit in case shipping has disrupted it somehow)

The truth was, this fruit smelled like my running shoes, and possibly tasted worse. Really, it was like an overripe and sour pineapple. I can't say that I didn't try, but I got about halfway through before it hit the bin. Maybe i honestly bought an 'off' fruit, or it was just picked too early in order to be shipped...

Another dud, another day.

Thankfully my taste buds will persevere to be tortured again soon..

Yellow Fingers, Fresh Tumeric

I found fresh tumeric root at the market. You might be familiar with this spice, it usually appears in the form of a yellow powder that is often used in curry.  However, fresh and on it's own. it looks like skinny orange ginger, with a centre in it like a carrot.

It smelled like a garden fresh gingery carrot... what an interesting correlation to it's appearance!

I remembered after i minced it unto tiny little pieces, that this smelly spice also turns everything you add it to a bright yellow: including my left hand for the next two days..

It made for delicious and hearty pumpkin soup with organic mushroom broth and garlic!

Gooseberries..

So I have had scarce run ins with gooseberries. I was truly convinced that they are sour and taste funny.

On a whim I tried some that were local and freshly in season. Let me tell you, I was pleasantly surprised!


They have lots of little seeds inside, but the sharp taste of these gooseberries was pleasant to me.

I cooked them with some pears and maple syrup, and baked them in a chunk of Camembert with dried cranberries the way my aunt used to...

I actually preferred the gooseberry version even more than I thought, because they had so much flavour and weren't too sweet..

I will be buying more next time I see them at the produce market!

(Unfortunately, there are no photos of the baked cheese: it was consumed with a bottle of wine and a girlfriend or two... actually two bottles of wine and one girlfriend. Still delicious, and more for me!)

Mangosteeeen!

So there is this crazy looking little fruit. It looks like something from Dora the Explorer, right? All round and purple and with cute round leaves? ... I digress..

There are "cloves" inside the mangosteen that come out individually.  You cut around the thick firm shell and inside is the fruit. The number of petals on the bottom of the fruit corresponds with the number of cloves on the inside, magical!

Each clove has a large flat seed in it. They reminded me of a persimmon seed, and had sort of a clear jelly substance around them...

The fruit itself was a light and foamy texture, with a mild almost citrusy taste. A google search would tell me that this is a superfruit, but i would prefer to eat a summer peach any day of the week.


Tasty and fun!

Coming Soon: Pickled Herring...

It is in my fridge, and I have fled landmasses in fear of this evil little fish wrapped around a pickle and finished with a toothpick. It is tormenting me from a plastic deli container on the top shelf.

I foresee finding a replacement food to try before I get brave enough..

Will be back posting soon.

Steph

you had me at "Product of Colombia"...

As many of you know, I have an affinity for the heritage of my dear friend Sara.

Her family has taught me how to make guacamole, toast arrepas (traditional flatbreads) and how to drink straight aguardiente (this is a traditional Colombian liquor that is hybrid of sambuca and tequila, it is not sold on Canada, and roughly translates to "firewater" in English) at an age I perhaps best not reveal...

So while perusing the grocery isles this evening as I picked up some lunch meat, i saw this little guy and thought, SOLD!

So the Sweet Grenadilla is a relative of the passion fruit (which I HAVE tried). It is larger, orange, and can be identified by it's hollow sound and bright orange color.

Tropical, Colombian, and includes the adjective "Sweet" in the title.
So far so good...

 

When you manage to tear this guy open (the knife wasn't much use) it is essentially a large passionfruit inside with bigger, flat seeds. You need to go easy, because it takes some serious patience to get the slimy fruit off the seeds. The best part was the juice, and I must say this fruit is not for anybody in a rush.

Overall, not something I would buy unless I was making something fancy, and was going to squeeze the juice out with a cheesecloth for a nice sauce. Tastes great, smells amazing, and looks even better.

...From the outside anyways...

on the menu are also some apple turnovers, and a loaf of homemade bread for yours truly. Soon I'm going to need some stretchier pants..

Welcome!

Hello one and all,

You might have noticed that I have decided to try - despite my limited student budget - a new food every day. This is easier than it sounds. For someone who grew up in a house where my mother could whip up Indian as fast as she could Greek or Japanese food, it is a fun and exciting adventure with myself in the grocery store to discover lots of things which I would have thought were icky before.

The criteria are merely as follows:

1. I have never tried it before, or I do not recall ever trying it before
2. IT IS NOT GOING TO POISON ME, so no blowfish or unidentified mushrooms for the time being, thanks anyways
3. I can afford to eat it

That's all there is to it!

So far I have played it safe. Tropical fruits is the theme of the week. I have tried my first (miniature) guava (yum!) and red cactus pear (tastes like eating chlorophyll or leaves..), both a safe palate and moderate .75 cents each.

New on the menu is perhaps something slightly more odd but not vomit inducing. I am searching out jackfruit, kumquats, and whatever else has been evilly imported from the Southern Hemisphere, that I can get my greedy paws on in during a Pacific Northwestern Autumn.

I encourage you all to send me your thoughts, ideas, and recommendations!

Next week I am invading the Asian food isles of Fairway Market to eat some dried and jarred foods (most which still have their eyeballs)

Here is to hoping that i sort out all the formatting problems, I don't know how to make a paragraph break yet, but I'm learning!

Until then my stomach and I bid you adieu!