The pie dilemma

One of my pet peeves with the food industry is that too often you are forced to buy two different items that don't match up.  For instance, hot dogs come eight to a package; hot dog buns come ten to a bag.

The same is true with thanksgiving pies.

They've done a pretty good job of getting a can of pumpkin to fill a standard pie plate, but a damn lousy job with mincemeat.

Yes, I'm a lover of mincemeat, even though conventional wisdom holds that nobody likes the stuff any more.  (I also love fruitcake, despite its identical reputation.)  But mincemeat has to be procured commercially, either in a big jar or in a tiny little package that you reconstitute with some boiling water.  I haven't seen one of those little packages in a decade, so now I buy the big jar.

The only problem: it only fills somewhere between a half and two-thirds of a pie plate.  My usual remedy is to cut up a couple of apples and put them in the bottom of the pie.  Not only does it eke out the innards to better fill the crust, it cuts the richness of the mincemeat a bit.

This Thanksgiving I did the usual routine: piecrust on the bottom, a layer of apples, then the jar of mincemeat.  And it was still looking pretty skimpy.  In fact, the piecrust extended a good two inches beyond the filling.  If I added the top crust as you always do, I'd either have a huge empty cavity inside the pie, or a crimped edge of crust two inches wide, or a boatload of leftover crust cut off to make everything fit right.

I made a radical decision -- no top crust!  I folded the extra crust over the edges of the mincemeat and stuck it in the oven.  To my delight, the filling didn't bubble up and escape over the top of the crust, but stayed where it belonged.  And there was plenty of crust per filling.

Next time, I may do this again.  Or I'll put in four apples instead of two.

Breakfast after Thanksgiving

So which makes the better breakfast?

In dish A, leftover stuffing and gravy.

In dish B, leftover mashed potatoes and gravy.

You will note the common ingredient, which makes anything taste better.  That's why we make gravy by the gallon when a turkey is anywhere in the vicinity.

I have a hard time choosing between the two, and plan to alternate breakfasts until I run out of something.

I'm so thankful...

... that I can pick up some dinner right there at the gun store!  So convenient!

Supersize me

Never saw such big grapes -- note the quarter in the photo!

This menu needs an editor

I've always wrestled with the moral dilemma -- is it OK to order food that's misspelled on the menu?

Tonight I just wondered about this item: does it mean that they serve cod on Friday or that it's cooked by Robinson Crusoe's assistant?

We debated for a while and decided to eat the ribs, which are delicious every night, not just Friday's.

In memory of Lisa

One of the nicest things about participating in blogs -- as either an author or a follower -- is the opportunity to make friendships with people far away.  One of these people was Lisa Quintana, aka Michigoose, who had a couple of blogs that I read regularly (here and here), and who read my blogs regularly.  Both of us were avid commenters, developing dialogs as we read and responded to each other's posts.  Although I only met her once in person, I counted her as a real friend.

When Lisa died last month from breast cancer, there was an outpouring of love and fond memories on some email lists that she had also participated in, and some people from her local quilt guild organized a project in which friends would each make a 3x5 artist trading card to give to Lisa's husband and daughter.

I decided to focus on food, because Lisa was one of my earliest followers after I started this blog, and she frequently chimed in with anecdotes and ideas about the foods I wrote about.  She agreed with me that strawberry shortcake is best on a biscuit (not cake), that people shouldn't strip the husks off corn in the grocery store, that sauerkraut and potatoes are natural born partners, that Havarti cheese is good melted over all kinds of other food.  We agreed that our mothers were geniuses at making frugal food and tricking us into thinking it was a delicacy, that the food industry is too casual about mad cow disease, and that a box of dates from California is a wonderful present.

We agreed that great northern beans are great in every sense of the world (we were both born in Michigan, great northern bean capital of the world) and we both loved chicken salad, apples, fruitcake and mincemeat pie (but not all together).

I have been making daily collages all this year using 3x5 library card catalog cards, so it seemed natural to make one for Lisa's family.

Rest in peace, good friend.  I understand the food is really good in heaven.

Reading the fine print

We all know that junk food is bad for the body, but sometimes it's exactly perfect for the soul.  And while I have a pretty high resistance to most forms of junk food, there are a few on my short list.  One of which is Pringles, although I'm contemplating removing it after what I discovered at the grocery store last week.

Since Pringles introduced "reduced fat" versions several years ago I have always bought them, rationalizing that it wasn't quite so junky as regular.  And sure enough, a casual glance at the package would lead you to believe that you're saving 25% of the calories compared to the regular.  Or something like that -- since fat is an essential ingredient in junk food, you would expect that reducing it by 25% would make a big difference.

But when you flip the can and read the back, you discover that you're only saving 7% of the calories, the difference between 150 and 140 for a serving.

So what's happening?  Yes, we've saved 20 calories worth of fat, along with 4 calories worth of sugar, but they've compensated by increasing the carbohydrates (adding 8 calories) and apparently some other rejiggering that you can't decode from the nutritional label.

I don't know why I was drawn to read the label before putting the can in my shopping cart, but after I did I put the can back on the shelf.  I don't like to feel like a dupe.  And by the way, reducing the fat from 9 grams to 7 isn't 25%, it's 22%.

Whatever happened to truth in advertising?