By John Lehndorff
(reposted from John Lehndorff’s blog, johnlehndorff.wordpress.com)
(December 5, 2014) – U.S. consumers eat pizza away from home about 60 times a year and 40 percent of those pizzas will be topped with pepperoni, according to Datassential. … The Sterling-Rice Group’s top ten culinary trends across the U.S. in 2015 include Filipino food, Matcha green tea, hops-free beer, Asian super-hot burning charcoal, local grains and flours, coconut sugar, farm-to-table Kosher cuisine and dining concept incubators, and cannabis cuisine: “Edible marijuana moves far beyond cliched pot brownies. In states where it’s legal, look for new, sophisticated options from gluten-free baked goods and confections to bottled cold-brewed coffee and flavored syrups.” … The McCormick Flavor Forecast 2015 predicts that salt and sour combinations, smoked spices, umami-rich vegetables, and global spice blends from Japan and the Middle East will be hot.
Cookies as therapy
The December 4 edition of Radio Nibbles found John Lehndorff and Sam Fuqua talking about how to set up a cookie exchanges without stressing out. Here’s an unusually named cookie to get you started (and keep you calm). “These are from my aunt, Rilla Bergman, who for decades has been baking (and mailing them to us) these delicious not-too-sweet cookies,” Sam says
Sam’s Aunt’s “Aggression” Cookies
3 cups brown sugar
3 cups margarine or butter
6 cups uncooked oatmeal
1 tablespoons baking powder
3 cups flour
A little sugar and butter for dipping
Note: I use margarine because the cookies hold together better. They can get a bit crumbly if you use butter but they’re still yummy.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put all ingredients in a big bowl. Mash, knead and squeeze everything together. (This is why Aunt Rilla calls these “Aggression Cookies”—you can work out some of your aggression during the hands-on mixing process.)
Place walnut size balls of dough evenly spaced on a cookie sheet. Butter the bottom of drinking glass or small jar, dip it in sugar and press the bottom of the glass on the ball of dough. You don’t have to flatten it completely. Dip the glass in sugar and repeat with each dough ball.
Bake 10-12 minutes.
(John Lehndorff hosts Radio Nibbles 8:25 a.m. Thursday on KGNU (88.5 FM, 1390 AM, kgnu.org). The Radio Nibbles audio archive is sweet, savory and available 24/7 at news.kgnu.org.)
Pie as Economic Indicator
“When the sale of pies runs below zero, [you know that] hard, pinching poverty is abroad in the land and that want takes the best seat at the poor man’s table.” – From the (Boulder CO) Daily Camera, May 11, 1892
