How To Cook Like Your Grandmother

Thanksgiving Special: Cranberry Cheesecake

Drew Kime — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 17:34:57 +0000

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving, and always hated pumpkin pie. I think most people don’t really like pumpkin pie all that much. If they did, why would they only eat it once a year?

So every year I like to try a new pie. I’ve done tarte Tatin, sorghum pecan pie, chocolate banana pie with snickerdoodle crust, and frozen chocolate truffle pie.

This year I wanted to incorporate a traditional Thanksgiving food, but in a new way. I knew I wanted to do something with fresh-made cranberry sauce, and first thought of making it just like a cherry pie.

Boring.

Wait, brainstorm … Cheesecake!

Ingredients

Crust

6 graham crackers
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons butter (melted)

Cheesecake

2½ packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese
½ cup sugar
½ cup sour cream
1½ tablespoons flour
1½ teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs

Crumb topping

1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ cup sugar
1 stick butter (cold, in small pieces)
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup roasted almonds, chopped

Cranberry sauce

1 package (12 ounces) fresh or frozen whole cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water

Directions

I usually do the step-by-step photos, but this was just going to be an experiment. It came out too good not to share in time for Thanksgiving.

If you’ve ever had cheesecake with strawberries or cherries on it, this is a similar idea except that the cranberries are prepared according to my cranberry sauce recipe.

Since I wanted the cranberry sauce to gel up on top rather than spreading it on afterwards, it was going to still be hot when I put it on. That meant I was going to need a layer in-between the cheese and the sauce. The crumb topping is adapted from a cranberry crumble recipe that I might make for turkey day.

Crust

For the crust, follow my directions for making a cookie crust. Crush the crackers, melt the butter, mix everything together and press into the bottom of a spring-form pan.

One update I made this time is I used the Ninja to crush the crackers. Way quicker and easier, but not at all necessary.

Crumb topping

Make the crumb topping before you do the cheese. Combine the flour, ginger, salt and sugar in a food processor and mix well. Add the butter and pulse just until it forms into large lumps.

You could also do it with a pastry cutter, like I did when making blueberry coffee cake.

Fold in the oats and almonds.

Set aside in the refrigerator until the cheese is ready.

Cheesecake

Pre-heat the oven to 325° F. Combine the cream cheese, sugar, sour cream, flour and vanilla and mix well. Use an electric mixer … unless you’re multi-tasking and want to get in a workout at the same time.

Once it’s mixed, add the eggs one at a time mixing after each until just blended. Pour into the pan with the crumb crust. It’s very thick, so you’re going to have to spread it out. Pour it in the middle and spread to the outside. If you start from the outside you’ll get streaks of cheese going up the sides of the pan and it won’t separate as cleanly after it’s cooked.

Top with the crumb topping. Cover it well from edge-to-edge, but don’t feel compelled to use all of it if it looks like it’s getting too thick. You don’t want the cranberry to separate and fall off when you cut it. (Foreshadowing? We’ll see, I’m writing this part before the cake has cooled.)

Put the pan in the oven for at least 30 minutes. It’s done when it’s nearly set up in the middle. Check with a knife, it should come out just a little wet. (It will keep baking for another 10-15 minutes after you take it out.)

Cranberry sauce

As soon as you put the cake in the oven, start on the cranberries. Follow the directions for old-fashioned cranberry sauce. Set it aside, still in the pot you cook it in, to cool a bit until the cake is ready. If you time it just right the sauce will be done simmering just when the cake comes out of the oven.

Loosen the spring-form and run a sharp knife around the edge to separate it, but leave the form on.

Set the cake and the cranberry sauce both aside — not in the fridge — to cool for about 15 minutes, then re-tighten the spring-form and pour the cranberry sauce over the cake. Pour everything right in the middle and spread it out from there. Any juice that runs past the edge of the crumb topping will run down the side of the cake. Be prepared to move the pan onto a baking sheet if it starts leaking. (Mine has taken some abuse … it doesn’t fit so tight any more.)

Put the cake pan on a baking sheet to catch any drips, and put the whole thing in the refrigerator overnight.

When it’s time to serve, loosen the spring-form, run a hot knife around the edge to make sure it’s not stuck, and lift it off.

Dig in.

And that’s it.

Share this with your friends, they’ll thank you for it.

PS: No, the cranberry didn’t separate from the cheesecake. I probably could have used all the crumb topping and it would have been okay.

How To Make Slow-Roasted Chicken

Drew Kime — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:00:48 +0000

Have I mentioned lately how much I love our Dutch oven? (Even though Le Creuset insists on calling it a French oven.) You can throw just about any big hunk of meat in there and a few hours later you’ve got an amazing dinner.

The funny thing is, the more we use it the more we go in two opposite directions: More seasoning (potted chicken with tomatoes and Italian herbs), and less seasoning. And both directions are great. I’m starting to think the secret may be a well-cooked piece of meat. Who would have guessed?

(Oh, and PS: It takes about five minutes hands-on time to prepare it.)

Ingredients

1 whole frying chicken (~3-5 pounds)
olive oil
butter (oops, forgot to put it in the picture)
kosher salt & fresh-ground black pepper

Directions

Rinse the chicken inside and out and pat dry.

Heat just enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the Dutch oven on the stovetop and add the chicken.

Season with salt and pepper while the bottom browns a little.

Turn it over and season the other side.

Turn once or twice, make sure the skin gets a little color.

Good enough. No need to play around with it too much. Give it another shot of olive oil and a pat of butter.

Cover and put in the oven at 350° F. After about two hours, check with an instant-read thermometer than the breast is up to 160° F. This one wasn’t — it was still nearly frozen inside when we started, so it took a total of two-and-a-half hours.

Ever heard the expression “fall-off-the-bone tender”? Look what happened when I tried to lift it out of the pot by the breast.

As I lifted the rest of the pieces out, every bone I grabbed pulled out clean.

Speaking of a side dish — okay, so I wasn’t speaking of a side dish, work with me here — we kept with the spirit of super-simple and made a pot of plain rice. Then stirred in about a half-cup of the drippings from the chicken.

Good lord that stuff was good.

And so is the chicken.

And that’s it.

How To Make Polvorones de Canele (Cinnamon Cookies)

Drew Kime — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:15:29 +0000

The more home-made food we eat, the more we think modern recipes are way too sweet. Everything you buy at the grocery store is loaded with corn syrup — even the kielbasi. (I’m not kidding, check the ingredients.)

That’s why our perfect brownie recipe is more chocolaty and less sweet. It’s why we love the cocanes. (Great cookie, odd name.) And now the Mexican-style Polvorones de Canele — Cinnamon Cookies.

Ingredients

Dough

1 cup butter
½ cup confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar)
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ cups bread flour (see below)

Coating

1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

[A note for regular readers: No step-by-step photos this time. We weren't expecting to like these so much. They were for our daughter to take to school for a Cinqo de Mayo celebration. But they were so good -- and so easy -- that we wanted to share.]

Pre-heat the oven to 350° F.

Cream together the butter and the first measure of confectioners’ sugar. (Click that link for more details on what “cream together” means. If you’ve never thought about it much, there’s more to know than you might expect.) Stir in the vanilla.

In a separate bowl combine the first measure of cinnamon with the salt and bread flour. Jenn loves bread flour. It makes everything lighter and fluffier. Which I guess is bad if you want dense and chewy, but for these, light and crispy was perfect.

What’s that? You want to know why bread flour makes everything lighter? Okay, here’s a quick explanation of the difference between all-purpose flour, bread flour, and cake flour.

Stir the dry ingredients in with the butter/sugar mixture until it forms a stiff dough.

In a third bowl (sorry, I hate cleaning extra bowls, too) combine the second measures of confectioners’ sugar and cinnamon. Scoop one-inch balls of dough and drop them in the sugar/cinnamon mix. Roll them around then place on an ungreased baking sheet. Don’t crowd them, but they don’t spread very much.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until a light golden brown. Remove to cool on wire racks.

And that’s it.

The Difference Between Bread Flour, Cake Flour, and All-Purpose Flour

Drew Kime — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:00:41 +0000

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I used to think recipes calling for bread flour were being pretentious, like the recipes that specify Kosher salt, or fresh-ground black pepper. Then I started using Kosher salt and fresh-ground black pepper and realized, “Hey, you know what? Some of this stuff makes a difference.”

So I read up on what makes the different flours different, and it sounded pretty important. I finally tried it when I made rye bread for St. Paddy’s Day. I was really impressed, but I hadn’t made rye before so I didn’t know just how impressed I should be.

Then I made pizza dough. I was amazed at the difference. But someone left a comment telling me that using bread flour was a “crutch”. I got a little ticked off.

Rather than go through that again, I figured I should go ahead and explain the difference. It’s all about the gluten.

Gluten

Gluten is a protein in flour. It forms long, twisted chains. These chains tangle up with each other and trap bubbles of gas released by the yeast. That’s why we put yeast in bread.

But for that to work, you need to knead the dough. Think of a bag of rubber bands. If you dump them out on the counter, you can grab one and it will just come out. But add a little something sticky — like a few drops of syrup — then roll the rubber bands back and forth under your hands. Now they’re all tangled up and ready to capture bubbles of yeast gas.

Knead too much, though, and the rubber bands will get all tangled up into a tough ball of eww. Same thing happens if you knead bread dough too much.

Bread flour

Good bread is light and fluffy. Which means you want lots of big bubbles. Bread flour comes from strains of wheat that have lots of gluten. It’s perfect for bread, pizza dough, pretty much anything made with yeast.

Cake flour

Cake is supposed to have a very tight, crumbly texture. You don’t want chewy, you want it to fall apart with a light touch. You don’t use yeast for the rise, you use baking powder or baking soda. They act much faster, and rise while the batter is baking, so you don’t need the structure of gluten to keep the gases from escaping. So cake flour is made from wheat with much less gluten.

NOTE: Some pizza makers swear by low gluten flour for their crust. Please don’t ask me to get into that discussion. Pizza people are almost as crazy as chili people.

All-purpose flour

You don’t know what you’re going to make next: bread, cake, pizza, biscuits. You can get something that’s not great for bread, but it will work; not great for cake, but it will work.

Obviously bread will be better made with bread flour, and cake will be better with cake flour. But you can make all-purpose flour better for bread by adding some vital wheat gluten. That’s right, if you want high gluten flour but you’ve got all-purpose, you can get a box of just gluten and add a few teaspoons.

For cake … you’re going to need cake flour.

Whole wheat flour

White flour has the bran, the papery outer layer, stripped off before it is ground. Whole wheat flour is made from the whole wheat berry. So by volume there is more insoluble fiber and less gluten than the white version of the same strain of wheat.

Also, the bran has sharp edges that tend to cut into the strands of gluten. This prevents the gluten from capturing as much yeast gas, which means not as much rising. This is why whole wheat breads tend to be heavier and denser, and many recipes call for part whole wheat, part bread flour.

How To Make Sautéed Cabbage

Drew Kime — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:00:28 +0000

When I was making Colcannon for St. Paddy’s Day, I very nearly stopped with the sautéed cabbage. It was that good. It took me a couple of weeks to get back to it but I finally did, and it was just as good on its own as I thought it would be.

Ingredients

½ head cabbage
½ red onion
2 cloves garlic
2-3 tablespoons bacon fat
salt and pepper

Directions

You can refer back to the colcannon recipe for the step-by-step photos.

UPDATE: Barb suggests down in the comments finishing with a little brown sugar and some cider vinegar.

How To Make Colcannon

Drew Kime — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:00:22 +0000

If you’re looking for authentic Irish food for St. Patrick’s Day, don’t go with corned beef and cabbage. That’s the American version of Irish food. A bit more authentic is colcannon, which is really more of an idea than a strict recipe.

Short version: Cook and mash some root vegetables, sauté some cruciform vegetable (cabbage, leek, broccoli, cauliflower) and mix it all together.

Long version …

Ingredients

3 lbs. potatoes (see below)
3 cloves fresh garlic (see below)
4 T Irish Butter
4 cups Kale or green Cabbage, shredded
4 scallions, diced fine with green tops
¼ – ½ cup warm Milk, Cream or Half & Half (see below … again)
Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions

I have to start off by saying I got this recipe from Jan, and that I didn’t do it exactly according to the recipe. The biggest change was that instead of potatoes I used mashed cauliflower. I eat low-carb during the week, and I wanted to see if I could come up with a new side dish without carbs. Here’s a quick lesson on how to use roasted cauliflower as a low-carb alternative to mashed potatoes.

Otherwise, peel and dice the potatoes, boil until fork tender, then drain and mash them with some cream, milk or butter. We had about a gallon of buttermilk left after making the soda bread, so we used that.

Before anyone gets all, “That’s not how my grandmother made it,” historically this is totally within the spirit of how to make colcannon.¹ Uh huh… Yes it is… Is so… Is so… (But of course feel free to make it with potatoes.)

Dice your greens, which this time was scallions (green onions) with the green part, and a quarter-head of white cabbage.

Melt the butter in a large skillet and add the greens.

Season with salt, pepper, and the garlic, minced.

I didn’t have any fresh garlic, so I was about to use some garlic powder. Then, when I was getting the butter out of the fridge, I found the jar of roasted garlic my father-in-law gave me a while back. Well hey, let’s use that!

Toss the greens over high heat until wilted but not browned.

You could actually stop right here and serve it like this.

In fact, I’ve got another cabbage in the fridge that I’ll be doing this way later this week.

But for the colcannon, add the sautéed greens to the mashed potatoes (or cauliflower).

If you want it to look nice when you serve it, transfer to another bowl or just scrape down the sides.

Slice the soda bread and place in a nice dish.

Wait … soda bread? Well, yeah. You’re making this for St. Patrick’s Day, aren’t you? Of course you’ve got soda bread.

And you’ve also got corned beef, which goes just great with this.

And that’s it.

1) I was asked a few times when I said I was making it what “Colcannon” means. I didn’t know, so I looked it up. Here’s what I found:

Irish Gaelic cál reflects an ancient Indo-European word for cabbage, literally vegetable on a stalk (IE * kaul ‘stalk’). Related forms are: Old English cal (giving colewort ‘cabbage plant,’ an older name for one loose-leaved variety), Old Scandinavian kal (giving English kale and modern Norwegian kaal), German Kohl (giving Kohlrabi), Latin caulis (think of cauliflower, a plant in the same botanical family as cabbage; think too of various words for cabbage, derivatives of caulis in the Romance languages, for example Spanish col and French chou), Greek kaulos, Medieval Dutch kool (in MD cabbage salad was kool sla, giving modern English coleslaw). Finally, showing the true spread of this cabbage word, a cognate appears in ancient Persian as kelum.

So cole slaw, cauliflower, kohlrabi, colcannon, and kale all come from the same root word, and are all in the same family. Cool. Or is that caul?

Either way, what that means is “colcannon” is mashed root vegetables with sautéed cruciform greens. So I just mashed one cruciform green and mixed in a sautéed different cruciform green.

Roasted Cauliflower in Place of Mashed Potatoes

Drew Kime — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 03:34:11 +0000

If you want mashed potatoes but you’re eating low carb (which I am, during the week) or if you just don’t have any potatoes handy, you can use cauliflower instead and get a very similar side dish. It’s also great in recipes that include mashed potatoes as an ingredient — like Colcannon or Shepherd’s Pie.

Start by cutting out the leafy part of the stem. Don’t worry too much about getting the whole thing, you’ll have a chance to get the rest later, but this will make it easier.

Place the entire head in a steamer basket or, like I did here, in the pasta strainer in a large pot.

Don’t add water. We’re not steaming it, we’re roasting. I’ve done this via steaming before, and the result is thinner and runnier than mashed potatoes.

Put the lid on and place in a 350° oven for about an hour-and-a-half, until a sharp knife goes all the way into the center without much resistance.

Turn out into a heavy bowl and cut out the rest of the stem. It will be much easier now because it’s nice and soft.

Process with an immersion blender. Add enough cream, milk, or butter to get everything moving around.

You can do this in an upright blender, but you’ll have to add much more milk and thin it out. With the immersion blender you can get a much thicker consistency, more like mashed potatoes.

Serve with butter or … Oh, I almost forgot! This is going to need salt. Add it before blending.

Where was I? Oh right, serve with butter or gravy, or add to your shepherd’s pie, colcannon or other recipe.

And that’s it.

St. Patrick’s Day Recipe Roundup

Drew Kime — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:30:51 +0000

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In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I’ve put together this collection of traditional Irish dishes. And if anyone points out that these are all American traditions and not Irish, I will send that leprechaun up above over to puke on your head.

So on with the recipes!

Corned Beef and Cabbage

The basic Irish dinner.

Brussels Sprouts

For a variation on the cabbage, try this.

Potatoes au Gratin

Not really Irish, except that it’s made with potatoes. Yeah, I went there.

Braised Corned Beef

I tried this as an experiment. Look below in the reader submissions for tips on making it even better than what I did.

Rye Bread

Made without caraway seeds … because I hate caraway seeds.

Irish Soda Bread

The writeup calls for white flour, but Jenn did it this year with bread flour. Oh. Mah. Gawd. This stuff is sooooooo good.

Reuben

A Reuben normally has sauerkraut. But if you’ve got leftover corned beef, and leftover cabbage, and fresh-baked rye bread … I think you see where I’m going with this. (I didn’t call it a Reuben in that writeup, and I used brown mustard. For a more traditional Reuben you should really use thousand island dressing.)

Corned Beef Pizza

I made this again the following year. See this update for some tips to make it even better.

Corned Beef Hash

Still got leftovers the next day? Turn them into a killer breakfast.

French Toast

Nope, not even vaguely Irish. But if you’ve got any soda bread left, this is another amazing breakfast. (Jenn makes extra soda bread every year to make sure we have enough left over to make this. It’s that good.)

How To Core a Cabbage

Not a recipe, just a tip to make the corned beef and cabbage a little quicker.

Reader recipes

I asked readers of my newsletter for their recipes. Here’s some of what I got.

Irish Colcannon, from Jan

Irish Colcannon is a staple at my St. Paddy’s party; it is basically plain mashed potatoes with simple ingredients mixed in, Irish comfort food “glammed” up:

3 lbs. potatoes
3 cloves fresh garlic
4 T Irish Butter
4 cups Kale or green Cabbage, shredded
4 scallions, diced fine with green tops
¼ – ½ cup warm Milk, Cream or Half & Half
Salt & Pepper to taste

Serves 6-8 as side dish

Boil peeled potatoes covered in cold water until fork tender. While potatoes cook, in an iron skillet braise over medium low heat: fresh garlic and butter until wilting, add shredded kale or cabbage and scallions, wilt but do not brown.

Drain and mash tender potatoes: preferably by hand with a vintage hand masher or rice them into a warm bowl or casserole, stir in wilted vegetable-butter mixture, add enough warm milk to desired consistency [fluffy but not soupy]. Keep warm until served. Note: Add more butter, Milk or greens or garlic – as preferred. I serve with Brisket or beef stew cooked in Guinness stock.

Irish lyrics about Colcannon from Mary Black

Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?
Chorus:
Yes you did, so you did, so did he and so did I.
And the more I think about it sure the nearer I’m to cry.
Oh, wasn’t it the happy days when troubles we had not,
And our mothers made Colcannon in the little skillet pot.

Debbie’s braised corned beef tips

I read the comments above fairly thoroughly, and thought I should offer a couple of tips.

Corned beef in foil is SO GOOD. I can’t stand eating it boiled anymore. I’ve been braising mine in foil for about 30 years now, and people FLOCK to our house when they know we’re doing corned beef.

Even though the tip or point cuts (shaped like a triangle) are cheaper, buy a flat cut (shaped like a rectangle). This will ensure even cooking throughout.

Before you wrap the meat in foil, RINSE it thoroughly in COLD water. Then pat it dry with paper towels. Discard the liquid that’s inside the package: Your meat has already been corned, and that salty goo inside the package does your end result NO favors!

Place your meat FAT SIDE UP on the heavy duty aluminum foil you’ll be wrapping it in. I like using the little packet of spices on top of the meat or, preferably, a sprinkling of corning spices from Penzey’s.

Double wrap in heavy duty aluminum foil, as others have said. Put it in a roaster or other pan in the middle of your oven. Do not cover. Bake at 250 for at least five hours.

After the five hours are up, let your meat packet (still sealed up) sit for about fifteen minutes. Then unwrap carefully (it’s HOT!) and re-wrap in a couple of layers of plastic wrap. Put in the fridge until it’s cold throughout; overnight works great!

Take out your meat and slice it deli-thin with an electric slicer, using a SMOOTH blade rather than one that’s serrated.

Trust me. This is the most wonderful, non-salty, flavorful corned beef this side of Katz’s deli. Totally moist and yummy!

PYI-GYI NGA KAZUN YWET*

1 ts Dried red hot chili flakes
1 tb Fresh lemon juice
2 ts Soy sauce
1 ts Brown sugar
2 ts Corn OR peanut oil
1 Clove garlic, chopped fine
1 lb Fresh squids, dressed, cut into ½-inch round slices
¼ lb Dandelion greens, green leaves only, halved

Watercress and Swiss chard are good substitutes for dandelion since they all have a slightly bitter but appealing taste.

1. Mix the chili flakes, lemon juice, soy sauce, and sugar together. Let stand for 15 minutes.

2. Heat the oil in a wok or skillet and over moderate heat fry the garlic for 1 minute. Add the squid slices and stir fry for 2 minutes. Add the chili/lemon mixture and continue to fry.

3. Add the dandelion greens and cook for 2 minutes more. Do not overcook since it toughens the squid.

[* NOTE: I asked people, "What do you traditionally make for St. Paddy's Day. This is what someone sent.]

Home-cured Corned Beef from Nourished Kitchen

It’s a little late to do this one for St. paddy’s day this year, but there’s no reason you can’t have corned beef any time. Go check out how easy it is.

PS: If you’re offended by the leprechaun picture up top, know that I was thinking about using this one instead.

What’s the worst meal you’ve ever paid for?

Drew Kime — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:17:16 +0000

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I really should apologize for what I’m trying to do here. I want people to learn how easy it is to make great food at home. That’s good, right? Until you go out to your favorite restaurant, and realize … damn, this ain’t so special.

My bad, sorry about that.

This is most likely to happen if your favorite restaurant is one of the “casual dining” chain places, like T.G.I.Friday’s or Applebee’s. You’ll order the chicken parmesan, and about halfway through it you’ll realize, “This is a frozen pre-cooked patty, reheated and covered in canned sauce. This sucks.”

Congratulations, you’re now a good cook. Did I forget to mention that once you can cook you’re not going to be as impressed by restaurant fare any more?

The last two restaurants I’ve gone to were Italian places. One came highly recommended, the other was a place we had gotten pizza from years ago, but never dined in. And we’re not going back to either. The garlic bread was overcooked and had almost no garlic, the chicken was obviously frozen, and the sauce was bland. Bleaugh.

What’s your worst dining-out experience?

Was the food just plain bad? Did it not live up to the hype? Or was it the service that ruined it?

Leave a comment telling me about the worst meal you’ve ever paid for.

Oh dear me, I’m getting the vapours

Drew Kime — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:00:10 +0000

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I have, without harsh intent, offended the delicate sensibilities of one of my readers — or rather, one of my now-former readers — and the shame and horror of it has me on the verge of swooning.

I included in my last newsletter a pointer to an online poll to determine the best sandwich in the world. This poll included photos of attractive young ladies in modern swimwear enjoying the sandwiches. A reader wrote me to say:

Where is the cooking advice? This newsletter was a joke! Seriously, women in bikini’s eating pork. Your a pig!
What did your wife say about it? Maybe you should run the newsletters by her first….

I can not tell you how upset this makes me. I immediately rushed to my wife to ask her forgiveness, and secure her promise to restrain my baser impulses in the future. She read the newsletter — no, I hadn’t showed it to her in advance, how stupid of me — then read the comments from my ex-reader.

Here’s what she had to say.

What?! By this summer I’m going to be the one in the bikini eating a pulled pork sandwich. Would she rather people think the only way for girls to look good is to eat carrots?

There’s a reason I love this woman.

UPDATE:

IN addition to the comments below, I’ve gotten quite a few emails in response to this.

Are you serious? Your reader had a valid point, and your wife’s reaction (which she is of course entitled to) is completely beside that point. Count me in as a reader that does not find cheesecake photos of women as delightful as you apparently do. I read a cooking blog for the recipes – not to see women objectified. And particularly not to see a faithful reader mocked. This was an ugly post.
– Nancy
I think I like your wife, Frank! [NOTE: It's Drew, not Frank.]
Life is serious enough already without making everything a big thing!
– Jo
I love your newsletter, so take that! to the old former reader prude.
I want to look good in a bikini even though I eat pork sandwiches too!
Love the couch, what a fabulous find. Your wife sounds like a fun person to know.
– Becky

No now, Becky, we don’t need any name calling here.

Sometimes it gets a bit much when we can’t even read a recipe without having it made into a sex ad.. that was her point I think.. maybe if you had hot men instead it would help.
– J
but where are the recipes?
sincerely,
– Ann.

And finally …

Haha! Yeah, I guess I over reacted a little. My husband thinks this newsletter is the funniest thing he ever read. No hard feelings!
Sincerely,
Your not so former reader…

And I guess that’s all I’ve got to say about that.