eccentric musings on food, drink, fun and life
From the category archives:
I’ve been putting off writing about the “toad skin” melon since we got back from Brazil a few weeks ago as I’ve been trying to figure out what we’d call it in the U.S. No such luck. According to the Cambridge history of the world of food, there are hundreds and hundreds of [...]
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I love roadside snacks almost anywhere. In the American Southwest I chomp on Cornuts. In Virginia or at the movies, nothing is better than cherry Twizzlers. When I took a three week tour of China about fifteen years ago, the other members of our little tour group started calling me “snack man” [...]
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I love unusual fruit. Atemóia has to be one of the strangest. It looks like a greenish pinecone or perhaps similar to Deep Roy’s character’s profile in the 2009 Star Trek movie. Sort of bumpy and ridged and not at all inviting. That’s got to be part of its charm.
Wikipedia says [...]
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Guava is a very popular fruit in Brazil, particularly in my home state of Minas Gerais, where it’s grown all over. As a kid I remember climbing guava trees in the woods behind my house and gorging myself on those delicious, flavorful fruits. Mmmmm!
Guava can be pinkish-red or white. They have a “tropical [...]
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One of the things that I most enjoy while visiting Brazil is sampling tropical fruit. Naturally, they’ve got a huge variety to choose from and unlike here, it’s usually at its freshest, ripest and tastiest. I’m a huge fan of papaya, guava, starfruit and even cashew fruit. If I weren’t allergic, I’m [...]
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Winter is the time for citrus fruits. Just look at this stunning blood orange that we got at the Alemany Farmers’ Market the other day. It tastes better than it looks, if you can even believe it! Yum!
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For ages I’ve been relying on a recipe for cranberry quick bread that I got on the back of a bag of fresh cranberries from Ocean Spray about twenty years ago. It calls for a lot of orange juice, which I find too intense. Since I don’t make the bread that often as [...]
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We’ve a delightful neighbor who lives just next door to us. Though we hardly know A, we often see her walking her beautiful full sized French poodle, Sophie. Occasionally A dog-sits for a tiny Chihuahua. It’s so cute seeing the huge, well behaved fluffy dog with the almost microscopic hyperactive one! [...]
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I’ve been making this holiday cookie recipe off and on since I left my parents’ home for college. My mother gave it to me. She got it from her great aunt on the Italian side (I think). I do remember being very young and going to this ancient relative’s home around Christmas. [...]
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A friend’s mother, Linda Dunn, an accomplished painter living and working on the Central Coast of California, emailed me the other day asking for a dessert recipe for a potluck Brazilian-themed party she was going to attend. I immediately thought of manjar, a simple and easy to make dessert I used to eat when a [...]
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