Why write about food?
With a few exceptions, everyone finds food interesting. Some of us find it fascinating. Hence this blog. I came to grad school to get into a better paying and fulfilling career, and I have found that exciting food is everywhere, distracting me from that goal. I love food. I love thinking about it, talking and learning about it, planning it, making it, and then watching people eat it. So this blog is completely self-indulgent. It’s a way for me to chronicle my tests and triumphs and fun experiences, all of which I am doing when I really should be in front of a computer doing something for someone somewhere….
1.
Lynn Lekander | August 10, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I agree with you – i just began a food blog. so many events, thoughts, ‘happenings’ occur around the food experience. thanks – LYNN
2.
Cathy B | September 24, 2008 at 11:53 pm
So …. helloooooooo … Rhiannon … we miss you. Us blogger stalkers (well, me) are breathlessly (again, me) waiting for another post. When are you starting your new “season”? C.
3.
Mary Conner | December 24, 2008 at 9:17 am
I don’t know if you’ve recieved satisfactory comments vis a vis meringue pies, but I recently embarked on a multi-pie baking spree in order to teach myself how to make meringue/cream pies, and here is what I learned:
1) Double boilers are your friend. However, make sure the water in the boily part is truly simmering and not actually boiling. 2) Beat the hell out of the filling with a whisk as it’s cooking in the DB. An electric handheld mixer would work too, I guess, but the whisk allows you to constantly assess the thickness of your filling. 3) Cornstarch is also your friend. Sometimes a recipe will call for 3 TB of flour instead of a similar amount of cornstarch, and they are pretty much interchangeable. 4) You cannot hurry a custard pie filling. It will take you between 15-30 minutes, beating the hell out it all the while, for the proper thickness to ensue. Otherwise the proteins in your eggs will curdle, or the milk (if it’s in there) will scorch, or something else bad will happen. 5) You filling is done when the whisk leaves tracks in it, it will coat the back of a metal spoon without sliding off, and if when you take the spoon and try to make little piles of it in the DB the piles stay piled. I think the visual equivalent would be just before the “soft peak” stage of meringue. You know, when the eggs are just barely satiny versus foamy, but they won’t actually form any true peaks yet. Just piles. I guess you have to see it to know what I’m talking about. 6) Take it off the heat immediately and take the DB top off the DB bottom or else. Or else it will keep cooking, disaster, etc. 7) Most good recipes call for some ingredients to be added after the cooking stage, eg butter, vanilla, extraneous things like bananas. Trust your recipe book. 8) You cannot hurry a custard pie. It really will take you an hour, start to finish. Oh well. But the end result is worth it!
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cook33 | December 24, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Wow! Thanks for the highly detailed comment. This is a lot of good information….I wish I could take a taste of one of your pies!