Edible Antics - Having Fun With Food

Rick "Kringle" Delivers Holiday Cheer!

What does Santa Claus eat for breakfast?    KRINGLE!, of course!

What do Santa Claus and kringle have in common?    Both are sweet, packed with goodness, and bring joy to the holidays.

What flavor of kringle do Santa's elves like best?    PUMPKIN! (See post of 11/16)

Who delivers fresh, yummy kringle to hard-working and cheerful Wisconsinmade.com employees?     Rick  "KRINGLE"  Remeschatis

Rick loves kringle - always has, always will.  So when its time to bring holiday treats into the office, we can count on Rick for kringle. 

When I first spoke to Rick regarding his passion for kringle, he lifted his eyes upward and said, "Kringle - pastry of the gods...(sigh)."  His favorite is pecan.  But he readily enjoys cherry-cheesecake, almond, and raspberry.  Rick added, "How can you have a bad kringle?"  I don't know, but I was sure I wouldn't make one after hearing Rick describe the 3-day process required to make the flaky dough.  (I found a kringle recipe on the web.  It's not to be attempted by a novice baker.)

But Rick claims its EASY! (once you've purchased the kringle).  "Nothing simpler!  Just warm and serve!  Or you can buy it ahead of time, freeze it, then pop it frozen in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.  Voila!  You're ready to treat your friends.  And if you only eat half of it, just freeze it again.  Once we found a tiny foil package of leftover kringle way in the back of the freezer, who knows how ancient it was, - and it was still good!  Of course, in a large family, there won't be any left-over kringle."

Deer Hunting Season!

Deer hunting season is here!  Wisconsin badgers transform into packs of carnivores stalking Wisconsin's nearly 2 million Bambi's which over-run our forests.  Without a hunter's quick bullet, many of these gentle creatures would otherwise die slowly this winter of starvation or chronic wasting disease.  As a biologist, I recognize the ecological importance of humans temporarily acting as deer's primary predators. As an animal lover however, I couldn't take up the hunting sport myself.

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So here I defer to one of Wisconsin's veteran hunters, Jacob Mills (Nina's husband, see last week's post).  We find Jacob on site with gun loaded in the woods and valleys beyond Mount Horeb.  Double click on the play button to hear Jacob's tips for turning deer into dinner.

The closest I've ever come to preparing game in the kitchen was one Saturday a few years ago.  The dog and I had returned from our dawn walk.  And as I stepped out of the shower, I heard my husband on the phone with his parents.  At seven in the morning, he said, "I don't know what we're having for dinner."  (His parents are passionate about good food and his mom's a great cook.)  John continued, "Wait a minute, Cristie's got the Joy of Cooking open on the counter.  Let me see...here, 'squirrel, opossum, raccoon'...hmmm, looks like Sam caught something and Cristie's going to cook it up."  I envisioned the horror on their faces a thousand miles away.

WISCONSIN - The PUMPKIN STATE - A Call for Year-Round Pumpkin Feasting

At this time of year, bright, orange pumpkin patches dot Wisconsin roadsides.  Everybody knows somebody sporting garden-grown pumpkins.  Pumpkins are like zucchini - so easy to plant and so plentiful to harvest.  Every autumn meal features pumpkin goodness: pumpkin breads and pumpkin muffins for breakfast, pumpkin soup with pumpkin bagels smeared with pumpkin cream cheese for lunch, snacks of nutritious pumpkin seeds and pumpkin ale, dinners with baked pumpkin and apple casseroles, and we top it all off with all-American pumpkin pie.  Pumpkin - Wisconsin's fall manna from heaven.

We grow so many pumpkins in Wisconsin, that we've created amusing games to play with the ones left-over.  Most of the fun involves smashing pumpkins - they make such a wonderful 'crack' and 'smush' sound.

I even suggest that we Wisconsinites love our pumpkins as much as we love our cows, maybe more.  Pumpkins don't get farmers up in the morning or poop in their fields, yet pumpkins make terrific fertilizer.  Milk and cheese aren't seasonal; why should pumpkins be?  True, we can't raise pumpkins all year round like we do cows.  But we NEVER grow bananas is Wisconsin, and I can buy bananas every day at Kwik Trip.  Zucchini, the 'other squash', knows no season and regularly frequents the Wisconsin table.  Pumpkins are even more nutritious than zucchini.  Pumpkins are rich in vitamin A, vitamin C, potassium, and B vitamins.  Their vibrant orange color shows that they are loaded with carotenoids.  Carotenoids are those phytochemicals that keep flamingos pink.  When colorful birds don't eat enough carotenoids, they turn white.  Are YOU looking pale?  Good nutrition should not be seasonal!

Yet come December, pumpkin products on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus will be replaced with...with...oh, who knows what 'seasonal' fare.  Who cares?  The point is, pumpkin pleasure will become just a pleasant autumn memory.

Spicy Turkey Stuffing and Broken Meat Thermometers

Back in 1990, I was teaching English-as-a-Second Language and most of my adult students were Hmong or Mexican.  The one thing we all had in common was we ALL liked spicy food.  The week before Thanksgiving we shared recipes for cooking holiday foods.  Now, people in Laos don't celebrate Thanksgiving, nor do they typically eat turkey.  But that day Sitong Inthavong gave me a wonderful stuffing recipe that can transform the traditionally hearty, heavy Thanksgiving turkey into something deliciously light and spicy.

This stuffing is not gloppy, fat-infused bread like I'm used to.  Rather, it is a coarsely-textured, fragrant mixture of chiles and herbs into which forkfuls of turkey are dipped.  The stuffing was extremely easy to make, and my husband and I instantly liked it.  What happened the first time we tried it however, was a bit unexpected.  As I recall, we were not drinking alcohol at the time, so we can't blame the experience on booze.  And in truth, what we felt was nearly opposite to the soporific inebriation one normally gets when imbibing liquor.  About fifteen minutes after beginning the meal, we noticed the flames of the candles dancing, and the glassware sparkled more than its quality warranted.  In fact, all of the kitchen lights looked brighter, and the colors around us were richly vibrant.  We both started to giggle.  We were feeling really good.  My husband questioned what I'd put in the stuffing.  I told him, and we both shrugged and giggled some more.  After eating, we hung out in the living room animatedly telling stories and having a terrific time.  The fun lasted about 45 minutes.  There were no unpleasant side effects. The next day, I described our meal to a Hmong friend of mine.  She chuckled and said, "Yeh, we have a lot of recipes like that."  I wondered, though.  She probably just thought I was a bland American who was new to spicy food, and maybe I was.  We've enjoyed this dish numerous times over the years, and we've found that the more stuffing eaten, the happier the meal.