An apple bakes slowly in a schnitzer atop a wood stove. Photograph by Lisa Bramen.

While visiting an Irish friend in the Kilkenny countryside a few years back, I admired her mother’s charming wood cookstove. It was nearly the size of a twin bed, was always kept burning, and produced daily loaves of delicious brown bread and amazing apple pies. But, until I moved to New York from California, I had no idea that many people in this country still use wood stoves to heat their homes.

I recently bought an old farmhouse in the Adirondack mountains, and I now have my own wood stove. It is considerably smaller than my friend’s mother’s, and is designed primarily for keeping the house warm and cozy, not cooking. But, as I’ve recently discovered, it does have some culinary uses.

One of the best (and most unusual) housewarming presents I received was a pair of apple schnitzers, which are little cast-iron dishes for baking apples atop the wood stove (they can also be used in a regular oven if you don’t have a wood stove). They are round, covered in speckled blue enamel and have a spike in the center, onto which you place a cored apple, with some cinnamon and sugar, or whatever else you like, sprinkled on top or in the cavity where the core was (the spike is small enough that there is still space). The apple cooks from the inside out.

I hadn’t heard of a schnitzer until a few months ago, when, at my other job as an editor of a regional Adirondack magazine, I was helping to edit a cookbook compiled from recipes that have been in the publication in the past 40 years. This being the northern part of New York, a good portion of the recipes were apple-based, and one of them was for an apple schnitzer. According to the person who contributed the recipe many years ago, schnitzers are an old German invention. The origin of the word is a mystery I have yet to solve; my German-English dictionary defines Schnitzer as meaning “carver.” Through an Internet search and my iffy college German I gleaned that schnitzers no longer appear to be in common use in Germany, at least by that name (I found a forum where a woman was looking for suggestions on how to bake an apple on her wood stove, and the replies including using aluminum foil, a Romertopf clay pot and something called an Apfelbratgerät, or, roughly, apple-baking device, which may in fact be a schnitzer but I couldn’t find a picture). However, it does appear that the Amish still use them. Lehman’s, an Ohio retailer that was established in 1955 to serve the local Amish community, sells schnitzers on its Web site.

I tried my schnitzer for the first time last night, using a Macintosh (I think a thinner-skinned variety might work better), some brown sugar and cinnamon. It smelled delicious while it cooked, and, about an hour later, I had a yummy baked apple.

I would love to see what else I can cook on my wood stove. Suggestions, anyone?

Properly prepared, these tiny brassica plants can be a real treat—and they’re nutritionally noble (low-cal and fat-free, yet just a handful will provide all the vitamin C you need for the day, plus several grams of protein and fiber). They may even help prevent cancer!

Forget about frozen, which in my experience are inevitably mushy. Look for fresh, locally grown sprouts—still on the stalk is best—with tightly closed leaves. Wash and trim them only when you’re ready to cook them. That’s cook…NOT OVERCOOK. Got that?

In fact, less cooking could mean less of that sulfurous stink associated with Brussels sprouts. For these and other cruciferous vegetables with high levels of sulfurous compounds, the book “The Science of Good Food” recommends “quick, high-heat cooking methods,” or blanching the veggies in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds before more extended cooking.

Brussels sprouts, courtesy Flickr user Chiot's Run

Here are a few ways to get acquainted with the little green guys:

1) Sweet and sour: Brussels sprouts pair nicely with citrus and other tangy flavors like lemon and vermouth, cranberry and balsamic vinegar, or ginger and orange.

2) Spicy: Vegan for the People uses Moroccan spices to dress up Brussels sprouts. For non-vegetarians, there’s Eating Well’s bacon-horseradish Brussels sprouts, or this Delicious Days recipe that bakes sprouts with pancetta, bread crumbs, and red chili. And while Momofuku chef David Chang’s spicy sprouts recipe looks a bit too complicated for me, I’m intrigued by the inclusion of Rice Krispies!

3) Maple-y. Is there anything maple can’t do? It tastes good on everything from to squash to snow! Try Food and Wine’s maple-roasted Brussels sprouts with chestnuts, the Zesty Cook’s figged and maple Brussels sprouts, or Mollie Katzen’s braised Brussels sprouts in maple-mustard glaze. I also love these shredded Brussels sprouts with apples and a touch of maple.

4) Creamy. Okay, it’s not very healthy, but I trust food writer Molly Wizenberg’s (a.k.a. Orangette) taste, and she calls this recipe for sprouts braised in heavy cream “the best thing since Brussels sprouts.”  You’ll find more sprouts and cream in her recipe for fettuccine with pine nuts.

5) Nearly Naked: This is my personal favorite; simply cut the sprouts in half and cook them in a skillet (lid on and low heat at first, to steam them into tenderness; then lid off with higher heat to brown the bottoms) in a bit of olive oil or butter. Add salt and pepper, and perhaps a sprinkle of Parmesan. Yum.

Homemade mozzarella, courtesy of Flickr user RBerteig

I learned something potentially dangerous this weekend: cheese, especially fresh (not aged) cheese, is surprisingly quick and easy to make.

A group of people in my area who are concerned about the environment has been hosting a series of “lost arts” workshops on topics like making sauerkraut and baking bread. This weekend’s cheese-and-yogurt-making workshop was the first I attended. In less than two hours, the women demonstrating the techniques produced a ball of fresh mozzarella, a batch of ricotta, and the first stage of what, after 8 hours of sitting, would turn into yogurt.

Making yogurt is probably the simplest of the three. All it requires is some milk, a covered container, a microwave or stove and an oven with a pilot light or oven light. Oh, yeah, and some yogurt. Like money, it takes yogurt to make yogurt. A teaspoon of plain yogurt, store-bought or homemade, contains enough active cultures to start the process (if you use store-bought, though, make sure the container indicates that it has active cultures).

But first you need to bring the milk just to the boiling point, either in a microwave or on a stove. The woman conducting this portion of the workshop told us that milk of any fat content (including skim) will make yogurt, but the less fat it has the tangier it will be. Once the milk begins to boil, you take it off the heat and allow it to cool to about the temperature you would want a baby’s bottle, approximately 110 degrees. You stir in a teaspoon of yogurt per quart of milk, then place the mixture in a covered container and put it in a cool oven with the light on, so that it is away from drafts and remains at a consistent, slightly warm temperature. In about 7 or 8 hours, you’ll have a batch of plain yogurt. If you save a teaspoonful and repeat the process every day or so, you’ll have a lot fewer little plastic containers to contend with. Of course, you can also buy a yogurt maker but, after seeing how simple it is to make without one, it doesn’t seem necessary.

Nearly as simple, and a lot quicker, is making mozzarella. The whole process, from heating the milk to forming the cheese into a ball, takes about a half an hour. It requires no special equipment and only a couple of ingredients you probably don’t have in the pantry, like citric acid and rennet. In Italy, where mozzarella originated, it is usually made from buffalo milk. Most Americans don’t have access to buffalo milk, though, so cow’s milk can be substituted (however, it must not be ultra-pasteurized, because that process changes the protein and won’t lead to the desired result). The liquid mixture (milk plus 2–3 other ingredients) is heated on the stove, where it separates into custardy curds and liquid whey, or casein and albuminous protein, respectively. The curds are then kneaded together and formed into a ball. The result is like the fresh mozzarella you can buy in a store—it doesn’t melt like the aged mozzarella used on pizzas, but it would be perfect sliced with good tomatoes and basil, drizzled with olive oil.

The whey, a yellowish liquid, can be eaten while sitting on a tuffet, or reserved to make ricotta—the only time-consuming part of which is allowing the cheese to drain in a cheesecloth for several hours. We skipped this step in the workshop, and the result was still delicious, although slightly chewy compared to the creamy texture of store-bought ricotta. I don’t know if this was because of the ingredients we used or some other variable—some experimentation is probably in order, which I just might do if I’m feeling ambitious (and bored) this winter.

The site www.cheesemaking.com has complete instructions, with photos, for making mozzarella, ricotta, yogurt and aged cheeses.

Fresh carrots, courtesy Flickr user brianna.lehman

After a bit of online research, I concluded that, like most of the world’s brilliant ideas, someone else had thought of this first.

The blog White on Rice recently featured a salad of radish, carrot, and/or beet tops with vermouth vinaigrette.

Edible Vancouver has recipes for carrot green and parsley pesto and queso fundido, a spicy melted cheese dip that incorporates carrot greens.

A site called the “Carrot Museum” offers several more recipes, calling carrot tops “edible and highly nutritive, rich in proteins, minerals and vitamins.”

Historically, the first reference I found to edible carrot greens—excluding recommendations to use them as garnish, rabbit or chicken feed—was a 1917 Washington Post article. In a one-paragraph entry titled “Do Not Waste,” the unnamed author exhorts readers to “Cook carrot tops as greens. Use your own ingenuity to convert every bit of food into a healthful, tasty dish.”

In 1924, they get another mention in the same publication, but this time the motivation is waist management rather than waste management: “Turnip tops, carrot tops, tender leaves of lettuce, radish leaves, the leaves of Swiss chard and even watercress may be prepared in a similar way” to boiled spinach, which “folks like” because “it is good for them, helps to fill ‘em up, and yet is very low in caloric value,” writes the author of an article titled “Control Your Weight Via the Kitchen.”

This 1974 article from Backpacker magazine notes that wild carrots and their greens—the plant more familiarly known as Queen Anne’s Lace—are also edible, although the nicest adjective the author can muster about them is “rough.”

I’m not a scientist, so I don’t know for sure what to make of the claim that carrot tops may contain toxic compounds (although Harold McGee, who writes about the science of food, says he’s not worried). This notion may be rooted in the fact that carrots are in the same family (Apiaceae, also called Umbelliferae) as poison hemlock, but so are innocuous herbs and vegetables like celery, coriander, fennel, dill, parsley, and parsnips. However, I would caution against eating greens from non-organic carrots—since most farmers don’t expect people to eat the tops of carrots, they may apply pesticides there.

I used my bunch of carrots, greens and all (sans stems) to make this hearty Carrot Top and Quinoa Soup, substituting shallots for onion, vegetable for beef bouillon, and adding some chopped rainbow chard. It was delicious, and I’m still feeling fine!

Slice of Cream Pie with Cherry (or ‘Piece of Boston Cream Pie’), 1964; Woodcut, Artist’s Proof; image: 8-3/8 x 8-3/4 in. (21.3 x 22.2 cm); sheet: 13-5/8 x 11 in. (34.6 x 27.9 cm); Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. Paul Beckman, P.1967.08.1; © Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena has a small exhibition of works on paper by an artist I like, Wayne Thiebaud, which I visited during my trip to Southern California. (The show ends today.)

I first encountered Thiebaud’s work as an art student in San Francisco in the late 1980s. He is best known for his oil paintings of cakes, pies and other sweets, which share a sugary pastel palette and luscious brush strokes that resemble frosting. On a purely visual level, they are appealing for the same reasons their subject matter is: they look delicious.

But, as the black-and-white prints in the show reveal, there’s more to Thiebaud’s work than eye candy. Look at the woodcut print to the right, ”Slice of Cream Pie with Cherry (or ‘Piece of Boston Cream Pie’),” from 1964. With a few spare shapes, he conveys an instantly recognizable image. And it still looks delicious, because your mind fills in the information it already knows: the silky texture of the cream, the contrasting flavor of the cherry on top. As the exhibition curators wrote, “We cannot separate it from the general notion of the cream pie; looking at the pie, we know exactly what it would taste like, even though we have not sampled the unique slice that sits before us.”

Similarly to the other Pop artists of his time (such as Andy Warhol with his soup cans), with whom he’s often grouped, Thiebaud was exploring iconic cultural (and particularly American) images, as well as “the tension between uniformity and individuality.” The idea of the production line is echoed in his use of printmaking, in which many copies of the same image can be reproduced. Many of his pieces, both paintings and prints, show rows of pastries—sometimes a variety of cakes, sometimes near-identical slices side by side. As the artist said of his work, in 1968, “Why must pie always be cut so precisely? Why not just scoop out a helping with a spoon? … And you can see a pie in Pasadena, or Madison Avenue, in New York, or Madison, Wisconsin, and it’s the same damn pie.”

Thiebaud was born in 1920 and grew up mostly in Southern California. As a young man he worked in a cafe, whose rows of pie slices in the display case he has cited as an influence on his choice of subject matter. In his early career he worked as a cartoonist and designer, and served as an artist in the United States Army during World War II. Although he had his first solo exhibition in Sacramento in 1951, he gained national critical attention with a 1962 show at the Alan Stone Gallery in New York City. In 2001, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of Thiebaud’s work, prompting Michael Kimmelman to write in the New York Times, “If the world were a perfect place, the Wayne Thiebaud retrospective that has just opened at the Whitney Museum would be nailed to the walls for good and we would be free to stop by whenever we needed to remind ourselves what happiness feels like.”

Courtesy Flickr user PumpkinWayne

Unless you leave your house (or turn off all the lights and hide, as at least one person I know does) this Saturday evening, chances are good that you’ll be faced with at least a few sweet-toothed, half-pint monsters on your doorstep.

It’s a funny custom, isn’t it? Dressing cute children up like ghouls and goblins, and sending them door-to-door to beg for fistfuls of usually forbidden treats… whose idea was that?

The custom of trick-or-treating may have Celtic origins, related to the pagan celebration of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest and the threshold of a new season. According to this paper by anthropologist Bettina Arnold:

The association between Halloween and ghosts and spirits today comes from the Celtic belief that it was at this time of transition between the old year and the new that the barrier between this world and the Otherworld where the dead and supernatural beings lived became permeable….Trick-or-treating is a modern day holdover of the practice of propitiating, or bribing, the spirits and their human counterparts roaming the world of the living on that night. Pumpkins carved as jack-o-lanterns would not have been part of traditional Halloween festivals in Celtic Europe, since pumpkins are New World plants, but large turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces and placed in windows to ward off evil spirits.

Others argue that Halloween is a Christian, not a pagan holiday, pointing to the early Catholic church’s celebrations of All Hallows (Saints) Day, and the night before it, All Hallows E’en (Evening), when Christians were instructed to pray for the souls of the departed. I can see how that would lead to a certain fascination with ghosts, but the candy? Well, back in medieval Europe, kids and beggars would go “souling” on All Hallows Eve…which sounds like a macabre version of door-to-door Christmas caroling: Instead of a merry song, the visitors offered prayers for dead loved ones, in exchange for “soul cakes.” (These, too, may have had pagan roots.)

Some chap named Charles Dickens mentions this tradition in an 1887 issue of his literary journal, “All the Year Round” (actually, I think it must have been Charles Dickens, Jr., who took over the journal after his dad died in 1870):

“…it was a custom to bake on All Hallow E’en, a cake for every soul in the house, which cakes were eaten on All Souls’ Day. The poor people used to go round begging for some cakes or anything to make merry with on this night. Their petition consisted in singing a doggerel sort of rhyme: A soul cake, A soul cake; Have mercy on all Christian souls; For a soul cake; A soul cake. In Cheshire on this night they once had a custom called ‘Hob Nob,’ which consisted of a man carrying a dead horse’s head covered with a sheet to frighten people.”

Eep! That’s quite a trick, alright. In America these days, not too many people take the “trick” part of trick-or-treating seriously anymore; it’s more like: “Hi, gimme candy.” But according to this New York Times article, Halloween night trickery is a problem in the United Kingdom, where “egg-and-flour-throwing, attacks on fences and doors, menacing gatherings of disaffected drunken youths and the theft of garden ornaments” are enough to make some people—gasp!—”hate Halloween.”

A double-double cheesburger, fries, and soda from In-N-Out Burger. Courtesy of Flickr user Klara Kim

I recently finished the book In-N-Out Burger, by business writer Stacy Perman, about the wildly popular West Coast burger chain. Although I’ve never actually had a Double-Double, as their most iconic menu item is known, I’ve always been puzzled by the mystique surrounding what is, essentially, plain old fast food—just burgers, fries and shakes.

But, no, the devoted fans (among which are Michelin-starred chefs, celebrities and my brother) would argue, there’s nothing plain about In-N-Out. They use quality beef, real potatoes and ice cream, and make every burger to order. You can even order off the secret menu (now posted on the Web site, under the heading “Not-So-Secret Menu”), which includes Animal-style (the mustard is cooked into the patty and the onions are grilled), Protein-style (wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun), or, what I always get, Grilled Cheese (OK, so it’s really just a burger with no meat, but it’s actually pretty good).

My interest in the company also has to do with it being one of the client accounts I worked on as a young advertising art director, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was a boring account; the company was so set in its way of doing things that there was no room for creativity.

And who could argue with their track record? As Perman recounts, the little burger shack opened by Harry and Esther Snyder in 1948, in the working-class Los Angeles suburb of Baldwin Park, has grown steadily ever since. Investors have salivated over the family-owned business, which has steadfastly refused to franchise or go public, and eager fans cause traffic jams whenever a new location opens (which, in contrast to most fast-food chains, happens somewhat infrequently). Vanity Fair hires one of the company’s catering trucks for its annual post-Oscar bash. Ex-Californians and savvy out-of-towners head to In-N-Out straight from LAX to feed their burger joneses. Famous chefs, including Daniel Boulud, Ruth Reichl and Thomas Keller (who enjoys his cheeseburger with a glass of Zinfandel), have professed their love of In-N-Out in the national press.

Yet the company’s success has been counterintuitive, and opposite from how most successful chains operate. It never expands its menu, never cuts corners to save money, pays its employees better than the going fast-food wage (and treats them better than most), and does quirky things—like print Bible citations on its cups and burger wrappers—that risk offending some customers. If any of these things have hurt business, though, it’s hard to see how.

Perman’s book gives some insight into why the Snyders have done things as they have. She describes the original owners, Harry and Ethel, as hard workers with uncompromising values. They weren’t interested in a quick buck, but merely wanted to grow a solid family business that their sons, Rich and Guy, could carry on. Although, in many ways, things didn’t work out as the couple had hoped—Rich, who took over the business after Harry died in 1976 (and was behind the biblical citations), himself died in a plane accident in 1993, and Guy, who succeeded his brother, succumbed in 1999 to a drug addiction he had developed after a car-racing accident—their vision for the business itself persisted. Part of this, Perman writes, had to do with Ethel’s continued presence, if not active involvement, in the company. But Ethel died in 2006, leaving her 24-year-old granddaughter, Lynsi Martinez, as sole adult heir to the family business.

So far, nothing noticeable has changed at the chain. And, if fans like L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzik have their way, nothing ever will.

Cider donuts at Shelburne Orchards, VT, courtesy Flickr user Organic Nation

Nope. I meant donuts made with apple cider, and my condolences if you’ve never met one!

I don’t eat donuts in general, but I make an exception for these babies whenever I visit an orchard that makes them. Basically, they’re buttermilk donuts with apple cider added to the batter—lending more moisture, and a subtle sweetness—and often spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. I like them best fresh from the fryer; they don’t taste as good even a few hours later, which puts a fortunate curb on my impulse to take home a few dozen. (Although I suspect that dunking a less-than-fresh cider donut in hot mulled cider would still taste pretty darn good.)

If you’re not near an orchard, and dare to delve into a vat of Crisco for deep-frying at home, Smitten Kitchen has a gorgeous recipe for apple cider donuts. This recipe from A Bowl of Mush is similar.

I don’t know exactly when cider donuts were invented, but they seem to have made their commercial debut in the United States in the 1950s. Using ProQuest, I found the following in a New York Times article from August 19, 1951:

A new type of product, the Sweet Cider Doughnut will be introduced by the Doughnut Corporation of America in its twenty-third annual campaign this fall to increase doughnut sales. The new item is a spicy round cake that is expected to have a natural fall appeal.

According to the 2008 book “Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut,” by Paul R. Mullins, the Doughnut Corporation of America (DCA) was founded in the 1920s by a Russian immigrant named Adolph Levitt who was quite the entrepreneur. He launched a chain of doughnut shops, developed a doughnut-making machine and a standardized a mix of ingredients to sell to other bakeries, and came up with National Donut Month and a host of other marketing gimmicks.

By the way, Levitt’s DCA no longer exists (it was bought out by Lyons in the 1970s), but its name does: In what Saveur magazine calls “a stroke of pure genius,” the brothers behind a small Seattle business called Top Pot Doughnuts bought the DCA trademark. Make that a “formerly small” business; Top Pot now sells its donuts in many Starbucks nationwide. Sadly—or perhaps happily for my arteries—their product line doesn’t include cider donuts.

Between this and the 500-pound kibbeh (a snack made of minced meat and bulgur wheat) which earned Lebanon a world record earlier this year, you could be forgiven for calling the country obsessed with setting records. But this is no mere hobby; it’s a culinary campaign—specifically against Israel, the previous hummus record holder—to establish national ownership of these foods and the economic potential they represent. The name of the recent event says it all: The “Hummus and Tabbouleh are 100 percent Lebanese” festival. Neal Ungerleider has a good post on this topic at True/Slant.

Last year, the head of the Lebanese Industrialists Association told the media that his group planned to sue Israel for “stealing” hummus and other dishes (though as far as I can tell, no lawsuit has materialized), citing the precedent of feta cheese, a food name that the European Union has ruled belongs exclusively to Greece. And then, of course, there’s France’s champagne and Rocquefort cheese, Italy’s Parma ham and Parmesan cheese, and hundreds of other food products with “protected designations of origin” under European Union rules. (India’s Darjeeling tea could be next.)

What do you think, should a country or region be allowed to lay exclusive claim to particular foods or food products?

Aviation cocktail, courtesy Flickr user jen_maiser

On my latest trip, last week, I went in search of a liqueur called Crème de Violette that was recently reintroduced in the United States after decades off the market. I had read about it on the blog Rowley’s Whiskey Forge, where Matthew Rowley reported that floral, especially violet, scented cocktails were all the rage at the latest Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans. Austrian distiller Rothman & Winter makes a Crème de Violette from Alpine violets that is imported by Haus Alpenz. Now, Robert Cooper of  Philadelphia-based Charles Jacquin et Cie has resurrected his family’s recipe for Crème Yvette, another violet-scented liqueur that was discontinued in 1969. The company already had a hit with its elderflower-flavored liqueur, St. Germain, introduced in 2007.

The idea of violet liqueur intrigued me. I occasionally like to buy those old-fashioned violet pastilles in a tin, and, despite my earlier rice pudding disaster, I find rose water similarly appealing. Some flavors can transport you to another place; the light perfume of violets somehow evokes another era of dainty gloves and nosegays. The fact that the Rothman & Winters Crème de Violette comes in a sleek art deco bottle made it all the more attractive to me. I am a sucker for good package design—even if you don’t end up liking the contents, the bottle will look good on your bar.

But I wondered: Why the sudden revival of floral flavors now? Robert Hess, co-founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail, told me he thought the resurgence was ”tied up with the overall renewed interest in the old pre-Prohibition classics.”

Even the venerable, though soon-to-be-defunct, Gourmet magazine had an article about violet liqueurs in its October issue. Pulitzer-winning food writer Jonathan Gold (whose column in L.A. Weekly I always read when I lived in California) wrote, “Violet-scented cocktails, once fairly common, almost disappeared 50 years ago, dismissed as auntly and old-fashioned, unable to compete with the more immediate pleasures of Mai Tais or Rusty Nails.”

He wrote about a drink made with Crème Yvette, called an Eagle’s Dream, that he was served at a speakeasy-type establishment behind the legendary Cole’s sandwich shop in downtown L.A. (Cole’s purports to be the inventor of the french dip sandwich, a claim disputed by rival Philippe’s “The Original” a few miles away). So, when it turned out that my fiancé and I would be meeting up with a friend who lives a block away from Cole’s, I seized my opportunity to try a violet cocktail.

The speakeasy wasn’t open yet, but the regular Cole’s bar—which, according to a sign outside the building, is the oldest “public house” in the city, established in 1908—had Crème de Violette in stock. The dapper bartender mixed me up a classic cocktail, the Aviation. It was made with—in addition to the violet liqueur—gin, lemon juice, Luxardo maraschino liqueur and simple syrup (a deviation from the original recipe), and finished with a gorgeous, deep-red, imported maraschino cherry (which bears no resemblance to the candied pink version you usually find in domestic bars). The cocktail was a beautiful cloudy violet color, and tasted even better than I had imagined—slightly sweet and somewhat sour, with the faintest hint of violet perfume. My fiancé said it tasted like a purple Sweet Tart, which he meant as a compliment.

Now that I’m home, I’m kind of wishing I had picked up a bottle to grace the wet bar in my house. There are some other classic violet cocktails, such as the Blue Moon, I’d like to try.  I guess I’ll have to wait until my next L.A. trip.

Winter squash, courtesy Flickr user randomduck

There are hundreds of ways to eat winter squash, but these are five of my favorites. Tell me yours…

1) Baked maple squash. This is best with smaller varieties like acorn or delicata. Cut in half, scoop out the seeds and pulp from both halves, and place cut-side up in a baking dish with just enough water to cover the bottom. Mist with olive oil and sprinkle lightly with salt. Drizzle a tablespoon of maple syrup in the middle of each half, and bake for an hour at 400 degrees. Simply Recipes shows you how good it will look.

2) Curried coconut squash soup. The hardest part of this endeavor is simply cutting a sizable squash in half (we used a 3 pound Blue Hubbard) without breaking your best kitchen knife. (Try chiseling, rather than sawing, to crack the rind.)  Prepare and bake as above, minus the maple, for about 1 1/2 hours or until very tender. While the squash cools down enough to handle, sautee some diced scallions and/or onions with a few pats of butter in the bottom of a large stockpot for 5 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of dry white wine, 2 tablespoons fresh grated ginger and 1 tablespoon curry powder (or garam masala, chili paste, whatever you like), and cook until wine is nearly evaporated. Use a metal spoon to scoop out the flesh of the squash into the pot, along with 4 cups of water, 1 cup of coconut milk, and a sprig of fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried). Simmer for 15 minutes, then puree with a hand blender until smooth. Add more water or coconut milk to adjust texture; sprinkle in some salt and play around with other spices until it tastes perfect! There’s a more precise recipe on Food52.

3) Squashed squash. You can substitute squash for potatoes in a mashed potato recipe, or combine the two vegetables, as in this Bon Appetit recipe. For a sweet version, follow the baked maple squash recipe and simply scoop it out of its shell at the end. Smooth out the lumps using an electric mixer, hand blender, or even just a fork. Eating Well has a recipe for Mashed Maple Squash.

4) Squash risotto. I love this Moosewood Cookbook recipe, which mixes kale and chunks of winter squash into a basic white-wine risotto. It’s easier than I expected—although you do have to be vigilant about stirring!—and it’s a very healthy dish, yet the creamy arborio rice makes it taste decadent.

5) Stuffed squash. I like chopped apples and cinnamon-spiced couscous inside baked squash, and this inventive recipe for “quinoa stuffed sweet dumpling squash” looks so good that I’m already counting it among my favorites. (Carnivores might prefer Alton Brown’s stuffed squash with pork and rice or Rachael Ray’s stuffed acorn squash with beef and couscous.)

A silver Italian teapot, circa 1840. Photograph courtesy of Fowler Museum, UCLA

So, during a recent visit to my hometown Los Angeles, I was interested to catch an exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum called “Steeped in History: The Art of Tea“. Aside from seeing some beautiful artifacts, including teapots, tea caddies and Japanese netsuke, I absorbed enough historical tidbits to ace a tea category if I ever make it onto Jeopardy.

For starters, I learned that steeping didn’t become the preferred method of preparing tea until the Ming Dynasty in China, which began in the 14th century. The ancient Chinese compressed tea into cakes, then shaved off portions to boil in water. By the 10th century, during the Song Dynasty, powdered tea, which was whipped with hot water using a bamboo whisk, became popular.

According to Chinese legend, an emperor named Shen Nong discovered tea nearly 5,000 years ago, when the wind blew some leaves into his kettle of boiling water.

During the Ming era, Xü Cishu wrote a tea manual called Chashu, which listed appropriate times to drink tea. These included “When bored with poetry,” “After tipsy guests have left,” “When skies are overcast,” and “In perfect weather.” In other words, anytime.

Tea was introduced to Japan during the early Heian period (794–1185) by monks who returned after studying Zen Buddhism in China. The traditional Japanese tea ceremony was formalized in the 1500s, and was believed to offer a path to enlightenment through everyday gestures performed “in mindful awareness of the present moment.” At first performed solely by men, the role eventually became associated with women.

An alternative, less formal ceremony called Senchado emerged later. It was based on the wu wei principle of “yielding to the stream of life rather than working against it.”

Europeans didn’t start drinking tea until the 17th century. It caught on first with the Dutch, who were the only traders allowed to enter Japan after it enacted a closed-door policy in 1639, and even they were only allowed as far as an island in Nagasaki harbor.

No place today is more associated with tea drinking than the United Kingdom, and the exhibition devotes some space to both English tea culture and to the political ramifications of the kingdom’s former imperial practices in India, where most of its tea was grown, and in the American colonies—where, of course, tea-related taxes and restrictions eventually helped spark a revolution.

Steeped in Tradition: The Art of Tea continues at the Fowler through November 29.

Vegemite on toast, courtesy Flickr user StephenMitchell

The Australian snack spread Vegemite, a yeasty brown goop, is one of those taste sensations—like cilantro—that inspires either fierce loyalty or disgust.

I know it has a lot of nutritional value, but personally, I can’t think of anything less appetizing than “a food paste made from yeast extract.” (Well, maybe aspic; I’m with Colin Flynn there.)

So I was bemused to read recent news articles about the “storm of complaints” that erupted from the Australian public when Vegemite’s maker, Kraft Foods Australia, announced plans to make a new “cheesy” version of this odd food product. It wasn’t necessarily the new product itself that bothered people (although my first reaction was amazement: There IS something less appetizing than yeast paste! Yeast paste mixed with cream cheese!), it was the new product’s name: Kraft proposed naming it iSnack 2.0. (Wow, something even less appetizing: Yeast paste mixed with cream cheese and named after an inedible electronic device!)

After polling some 30,000 consumers, Kraft has since settled on a new name: Vegemite Cheesybite, which beat out Smooth, Snackmate, Vegemate, Vegemild and Creamymate. (The company apparently did not consider a few of the more creative names suggested by some online commenters: “Veg-I-Mite-Not,” anyone? How about “Vegemort, the snack which cannot be named?”)

“We have been overwhelmed by the response from the public; it clearly demonstrated your passion for this brand,” Kraft writes on the Vegemite web site. (It almost sounds like they were surprised to realize people liked it, too!)

I know, I know…I really should try the stuff before I knock it. But there’s a very similar product called Marmite in England, where I studied abroad in college, and if it didn’t have a label I would have sworn it was some sort of industrial glue or solvent.

Have you tried Vegemite (or Marmite)? Did you like it?

Oh, and just for fun:

Splash of milk, courtesy of Flickr user Tamabako the Jaguar

I’ve never been a milk drinker. From the very moment I had any control over my diet, I stopped drinking it, unless a hearty squeeze of Hershey’s syrup was involved. Now, I use it merely for the occasional bowl of cereal.

When I decided to forego milk as a child, good old cow’s milk was really the only option. But that was then, and this is now. Consumers have more choices than ever about which type of milk to drink. The list now includes cow, goat, soy, almond, rice, hemp and even camel.

I have tried soy milk, but so far, that’s my only foray into the non-bovine milk world. Each alternative has pros and cons. My younger brother single-handedly drinks one gallon of 2% cow’s milk a week. He’s 20; he can handle all the calories (1,920) and fat (72 grams) included with that. I had a roommate who swore by soy milk until her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. (She had heard that the high levels of estrogen in soy can increase the risk of breast cancer. Recent studies, however, suggest that soy can actually prevent breast cancer.)

The LA Times recently investigated the different choices of milk out there. The story included a nifty graphic to help you compare the milk choices side by side. I’m especially intrigued by the concept of almond and hemp milks.

According to the article, almond milk has no cholesterol, saturated fats or lactose. It has less calories and total fat than health food favorite soy milk. But, it has significantly less protein than cow, goat and soy milk: a mere 1 gram compared to 7-8.7 grams. The calcium in almond milk depends on the brand. Some provide 20% of your daily value (10% less than cow, goat and soy), but others provide no calcium at all. Looks like the benefit of almond milk is the lack of fat and cholesterol:

“With almond milk, it’s more about what you don’t get” than what you do, says Sam Cunningham, an independent food scientist and consultant specializing in nuts, who helped develop almond milk for Sacramento-based Blue Diamond Growers as an employee of the almond processor in the 1990s.

Hemp milk contains just as many calories as soy milk but has 50 percent more fat. Don’t toss it aside yet, though. The fats in hemp milk are mostly omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids, which promote nervous system function and healthy skin and hair. And, because most hemp milks are fortified, they can provide more calcium than traditional cow’s milk.

I don’t think I’ll become a milk drinker, even almond or hemp, but I might pick up some almond milk at the store, just to try it out.

– Written by Smithsonian intern Abby Callard

On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report about what it calls “gaps in enforcement and collaboration” in the current system for ensuring the safety of imported food. You can read the entire 78-page document online, or just a summary.

That same day, I attended a “global food safety policy forum” at the Senate, convened by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Waters Corporation. Lisa Shames, director of the GAO’s food safety division, was among the speakers, and she discussed the highlights of the report.

I learned that three separate agencies are involved in the food import inspections system, which might be part of the problem in itself. Get ready for the acronyms: There’s the Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division of Homeland Security.

The CBP’s role seems the most clear-cut: It’s their computer system that importers use to report incoming shipments to all the agencies involved. But that’s not as simple as it sounds. As Shames noted, the CBP’s computer system isn’t set up to share information about when a shipment actually arrives. In other words, the FDA might plan to inspect a boatload of Asian seafood from a certain importer, but by the time it finds out that the boat has physically arrived in port, that seafood may already have cleared a CBP inspection (which has more to do with documentation than food safety) and be on its way to your plate. Not reassuring, is it?

This lack of information sharing is one of the problems highlighted in the GAO report. Another problem is also technological: The same importer might have dozens of different identification numbers within the CBP’s computer system, making it nearly impossible to notice when they have a pattern of violations.

Also, the FDA’s rules for importers lack teeth. The GAO report includes this unsettling tidbit:

“Equally problematic is FDA’s lack of authority to assess civil penalties to deter importers from bringing violative goods into the country….liquidated damages that importers incur are often so small that they, in effect, encourage future illegal distribution of imported shipments.”

And finally, there’s the reality that it’s not possible—in terms of financial and human resources—for the FDA and FSIS to inspect all, or even most, of the imported food we eat. The FDA’s role includes inspecting overseas food production facilities to make sure they’re in keeping with U.S. food safety standards, but it inspected only 153 of  a total 189,000 foreign facilities last year. The GAO report estimates that if the FDA were to inspect each of these facilities just once in a year, it would cost nearly $3.2 billion—the agency’s entire budget.

Things may improve if the various agencies can start coordinating and sharing their resources better, both in terms of imports and domestic food inspection, but I can see why some people are calling for a single food safety agency to be established.

One of those single-agency advocates, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who chairs the House Appropriations Agriculture-FDA Subcommittee, was among the forum’s speakers. She discussed legislative efforts to raise standards for food imports, especially Chinese poultry, and said evaluating other countries’ food safety systems should be a precursor, not an afterthought, to establishing trade with them.

“We flirt with disaster when we remain lax,” she said, and “we cannot allow trade issues to trump public well-being.”