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IDENTIFY AND VERIFY!
Do as I tell you, not as I do because if you do and I did,
we’d all waste less food! I tell myself this every time I clean out the
refrigerator freezer in the kitchen. Either it’s unidentifiable (a.k.a. fossil
food) or covered with frost, meaning it’s been in the freezer too long! I had
both this past weekend when I reorganized the contents. It might also help if I
actually kept better track of what’s inside.
I can’t tell you how many cans and boxes of food items I’ve
also discarded because the “best used by” date was months ago or worse yet more
than a year! It may have been a 10 for $10 item but I’m not saving money when
it ends up in the trash bin. Instead, buy what you need when you know you’re
going to use it and not before!
I sometimes go overboard on sale priced fresh
produce. Right now I’m finishing a
bunch of celery but have two more because it was on sale for 87 cents two weeks
in a row. Thank goodness each is wrapped in foil so it lasts longer. Shame on
me for not taking inventory before I did my shopping.
Join me in identifying and dating all saved food and
hopefully, I won’t be writing on this subject again. I’ve also thrown out
refrigerated food that either was shoved back where I couldn’t see it or I
forgot to freeze. Case in point is corned beef that was in my meat compartment
two weeks after St. Patrick’s Day. I almost cried when I threw it away. It was
in a plastic bag and I didn’t notice it until it was too late. It still gripes
me because of my fondness for corned beef on rye sandwiches and being such a
lean cut.
FROM THE COOKBOOK SHELF
The Cookbook Library by Anne Willan with Mark
Cherniavsky and Kyri Claflin began as a collection of cookbooks and culinary
images gathered by Anne and husband Mark. It’s the first thorough comparison of
early cookbooks across Europe and America and brings to life the cooks, writers
and books that chronicle the dishes we eat and dates back to the invention of
printing. It traces the development of a recipe, explaining original
measurements and addressing the emergence of the author’s voice in recipe
writing, including four centuries of historical recipes from the 15th
to the 19th centuries, modernized for the home kitchen. The Cookbook
Library, published by the University of California Press in April, 2012, is
well worth its hefty $50 price for any cook who takes food preparation
seriously as well as professional chefs and culinary historians. Parents will
find it a useful tool when they explain to their children how food they take
for granted originated eons ago!
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Anne Willan is founder of La Varenne Cooking
School in Paris and Burgundy and the author of many cookbooks including the
James Beard Award winner, Country Cooking of France. Mark Cherniavsky has
collected antiquarian cookbooks for more than 50 years. Kyri Clafin is
co-editor of Writing Food History: A Global Perspective
WHAT’S BETTER THAN BUFFALO WINGS?:
Drumsticks because they’re bigger! Since I first tasted
Buffalo Wing Dip, I’ve made other foods with a Buffalo wing taste including a
soup and main dish salad. Slow cooker recipes suit my lifestyle so it should
come as no surprise that I printed Spicy Hot Chicken Legs from the
allrecipes.com site earlier this year. But it took until yesterday to try the
recipe and sure enough it lived up to my expectations. If you’re a fan of
Buffalo wings you’ll find the recipe appealing and better yet it takes only 3
hours for legs to be ready to serve.
SPICY HOT CHICKEN LEGS
- 1/3 cup sliced almonds
- 12 chicken drumsticks
- (1) 5-oz. bottle hot
red pepper sauce (I used 5-oz. bottle Tabasco® Buffalo Style Hot Sauce)
- ½ stick butter, cubed
- ½ teaspoon garlic
powder
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
- Salt and pepper to
taste (I used ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper)
- 1-1/2 cups Marzetti®
light blue cheese dressing (refrigerated kind in the produce department)
Place drumsticks in a 5 to 6-quart
slow cooker and sprinkle evenly with pieces of butter. Pour hot sauce over
chicken. Mix together garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper and sprinkle
evenly over top. Cover and cook on high 3 hours or until drumsticks are tender.
Serve with blue cheese dressing on the side. Recipe makes 6 servings. Note: Reduce calories per serving by
stripping as much skin as possible before slow cooking
Source: Adapted from recipe at www.allrecipes.com. br>
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