Edible Antics - Having Fun With Food

Chef's Challenge: Cook The Same Meal For 4 People Who Like Different Foods

Picture this: 4 people (call them A,B,C, and D) sit down at a table.

A and B like spicy food; C and D like bland.

B and D like fatty meats, such as ribs and brisket, A prefers lean meats like chicken, C does not like meat.

A loves vegetables, B will eat most vegetables, D will eat some vegetables, and C gags on vegetables.

C savors starch such as pasta, rice, and potatoes, B and D eat them moderately, A equates eating them with lobbing lead into the stomach.

The chef's challenge: cook the same, healthy meal for all 4 people. The meal must be enjoyed such that everyone eats, and no one complains or sneaks handfuls to the dog.

If you can cook one meal for these 4 people, (and you probably do if you are a parent of young children) you can join Cristie's Cooks Club where our motto is: Can we cook it? YES WE CAN!

So, have club members found a perfect food that pleases all palettes, or a particular combo of tastes that pacifies the picky? Or perhaps there are ways to disguise questionable foods and slip them incognito on to the plate? Maybe, but I haven't found them yet.

I win by fudging the rules of the chef's challenge. I stretch the requirement of the "same meal". To please a spouse who insists the kids should "eat what we eat" and "not be made different dinners," I broadly interpret the boundaries of "sameness".

For example, last night our "same meal" was a "spaghetti dinner". Now, the creative cook realizes that spaghetti appears in multiple forms. Obviously, spaghetti is that long, starchy pasta. But it also is a football-sized, yellow squash - the spaghetti squash, found in most supermarkets. I'm not kidding - its sticker even says "spaghetti squash" and tells you how to cook it.

The crafty cook also knows that spaghetti is still spaghetti regardless if it is covered by a tomato-based veggie sauce, a meat sauce, a pesto sauce, a creamy Alfredo sauce, or even just butter seasoned with salt, basil and garlic. All variations qualify.

Armed with this breadth of possibilities, Super Chef whips up the winning spaghetti dinner in what could have been a half hour, but because of interference from the sidelines, takes 45 minutes. Click on "continue reading...: for the play-by-play recipe.

Capital K'9s Demo at the Duck Pond - Wisconsinites Bring Their Dogs To Watch The Madison Mallards Play Baseball

Yesterday afternoon two kinds of hot dogs were in abundance at the Madison Mallards baseball game. Wisconsin baseball fans brought their dogs to Madison's Warner Park to watch a different species of mallard. The dogs got a warm welcome with free bleacher seat tickets, plus free bandannas, biscuits, ice drinks, and water pools provided by local pet and veterinary organizations.

"Bring your dog to the duck pond!" day was part of a fund-raiser for Capital K9's, a non-profit organization which buys and trains dogs for the Madison Police Department. On the field between innings, Capital K'9 trainers demonstrated how their five police dogs could sniff out illegal drugs and apprehend fleeing criminals. The news reports of the dog's policing exploits are evidence of the dogs' positive community service. These highly trained dogs help find lost people, protect police officers in dangerous situations, and improve police efficiency in locating contraband.

To support this all-volunteer organization, Mallards fans participated in a silent auction held during the baseball game. Meanwhile, their own pooches aided park clean-up services by consuming dropped popcorn, hot dog bits, and fallen ice cream treats. When not on food patrol, the dogs watched the fans rather than the mallards, although most labs kept their eyes on the baseball. Of course, at any sporting event there are those who come to socialize rather than cheer - and their dogs do the same.

Chocolate Volcano Cake with Dinosaurs: How to Make a Fun, Easy, Inexpensive, and Edible Centerpiece for a Kids Birthday Party!

Outsourcing your kid's birthday party to a party center is fun and easy, until you get the bill. So you're looking for an inexpensive alternative, but your kid keeps talking about gigantic inflatables, build-a-bear extravaganzas, and water parks. "What ever happened to musical chairs and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey?" you ask. Your child looks up at you blankly. OK! You are determined to take a day-trip to the past. You'll teach your child about real fun! You'll throw that birthday party at home! But still, that nagging, "don't want to disappoint my child" worry repeats in your head.  The solution? - Make the food fun!

Make the birthday cake an edible centerpiece - and even let it be an interactive toy!

"Right," you smirk. But no, it's not as hard as it looks - and it's a whole lot cheaper!

For example, I have a 5-year-old who loves dinosaurs. Last year his birthday party had a dinosaur theme. This year it may again. But unlike last year, this year I'm prepared because yesterday I figured out how to make a chocolate volcano cake with erupting pudding lava into which plastic dinosaurs either fall or flee.

Here's the picture. Click on 'Continue reading...' for the easy instructions.   

Perfect Peach Pie Pleases Picky People Plus Precious Pet

Fresh Peach Lattice Pie - an unassuming name for the BEST pie ever baked! Hardly a pie to die for, - it's a pie to LIVE FOR! I now know that the complete life must include a piece of this perfect peach pie. If someone's life is unfulfilled, or a loved one is on the brink of departure, MAKE THIS PEACH PIE AND SHARE IT! It IS ambrosia - food of the gods baked in a mortal's kitchen.

Unaware I was courting the divine, I pick out this recipe from Marge Snyder and Suzanne Breckenridge's Wisconsin Country Gourmet because peaches are in season and it was 'P' day in our house. (Some bright person thought up a game for teaching the alphabet to a preschooler by using food. Beware of such people.)

I'll post the recipe below, but let me first say that I was not the only one in the household whom this pie struck dumb. My children - those adorable, picky people whose culinary finickiness would drive Julia Child to drink - LOVED the pie. "It's the best pie you ever made, Mom," they raved in amazed tones. Eight-year-old Lauren added that she had thought the pie would just be peaches in a pie crust which sounded "Yucky," but "This was GOOD!" Yes, I cook to a tough crowd. We all enjoyed it so much that I allowed each of us to take another piece. Admittedly, Lauren and I felt a bit sick following our gluttony, bu it was worth it. Five-year-old Dave couldn't finish his second piece.

About to pitch his left-overs, I glanced at my precious pet - my old dog, Sam. Sam is no gourmand - he eats roadkill and worse. But he also is no picky eater. Sam ENJOYS food. There he lay in the kitchen, next to me, next to the trash, looking up at me. Enquiring eyes asking, "Would you really discard the Perfect Peach Pie?" I looked at the pie then back at him, - his telepathic pleading continued. "Haven't I been a faithful friend? - Guarding your house? Leading you out of the woods when you got lost, time and time again? Haven't I been good to your children - letting them pull my tail and dress me in doll clothes?" I couldn't stand it any more! Nuts to his prescription diet! Into his dish went the remains of Dave's piece of perfect peach pie. Sam reveled in sweet peaches. Yes, the old dog's life was now complete. I had done a good deed.

So if you owe someone a good deed - or if someone in your life needs a sign of your appreciation - and especially if that someone happens to be you, then it's time to bake Terese Allen's fresh peach lattice pie. Click on "Continue reading..." for the recipe.

Cake Decorating, Raising Animals, and Carnival Rides - Ways We Teach Children Life Skills

I think we trick our kids. We lure them with sweet flavors, bright colors, and creamy, soft textures to make them learn the hard skills life requires. At least, that was my impression after seeing the fun, elaborately-creative cake decorations on display at the Dane County Fair in Madison, WI. Children in 4-H clubs throughout the county competed for prize ribbons in cake decorating by artistically coating pieces of Styrofoam with colored frosting. The designs they painted on their simulated cakes, cookies, and cupcakes celebrate our life-changing moments and major holidays, -birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, harvest time, Christmas, and even April Fool's Day -that day we play tricks on each other and laugh.

Recalling my own efforts to make King Lingonberry and a spiced nose cake made me appreciate the skills these children exercised in creating their masterpieces. First, the children had to choose the occasion they wished to celebrate and then look inward to tap their unique creativity. They needed to imagine, in fine detail, each colorful image they wished to paint. Then they had to plan exactly how to re-produce that image in frosting. Construction of the imagined final product had to be translated backward into a step-by-step series of actions. The tools needed to be gathered, - the workplace organized.

Then, for most, the hard work began. Any ease in seeing something gave way to the challenge of making it. Eyes, brain, muscles, hands, -the whole body had to coordinate its movements to precisely layer the frosting. Mistakes inevitably happened. Frustrated emotions were curbed and problem-solving practiced. How could the mistake be fixed? If it couldn't, then how could the design be changed to turn the blemish into an asset? Distractions occurred and had to be ignored, -attention continually redirected to the task, hour after hour. Each child gave a day of his or her life to creating the Styrofoam cakes on display at the fair.

Elsewhere in the Exhibition Center and outside in the fairground barns, children were practicing other life skills. They were grooming and showing the animals they had spent months raising. Some children showed their pet cats, rabbits, and guinea pigs. Others showed commercial livestock, -their beef and dairy cattle, pigs, sheep, lamas, goats, and poultry. The children were tested not only on the physical condition of their animals, but on their own skills in showmanship.

I watched the nervous intensity that the children focused on their animals,-readying them in the stalls, and showing them in the ring. This was serious business. Months of daily labor would be judged over the course of a few minutes.

Food, Fun and Business at Wisconsin's Lodi Fair

Remember in the children's book, Charlotte's Web, how the farm animals convinced Templeton the rat to accompany Wilbur to the fair? They painted a picture of fair grounds littered with food, -pieces of cakes, pies, corn dogs, caramel corn, and candy strewn across the field, trash cans brimming with half-full cups of root beer and lemonade. The hungry rat was irresistibly drawn to the fair by the food! But 'most everyone else was drawn by the fun.

And fun was everywhere at the Lodi Agricultural Fair this past weekend in Lodi, Wisconsin. Yes, the traditional Wisconsin-fair treats of funnel cakes, elephant ears, home-baked pies, ice cream, fresh cheese curds, and grilled meats were abundant. Diners relaxed at picnic tables under a tent and listened to live music. The variety of entertainment, from rock-n-roll bands to polkas played on an accordion, offered something for everyone.

The easy, relaxed atmosphere of the Lodi Fair was punctuated by happy children thrilled on carnival rides, and hearkened back to earlier days in our American past. As in Wilbur and Charlotte's day, the fair was free to enter and spread out over the large grassy field, between the baseball diamond and the old town hall.  Free rides on the wooden, hay wagon pulled by draft horses, Dick, Doris, and Doc, corralled the festival fun. 

As in olden days, the Lodi Fair serves an economic as well as a social function. Farmers and livestock buyers gather to exchange money for cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry. While waiting for auction, the animals are housed in shaded stalls and their owners sit in canvas, fold-up chairs next to them. The people set up camp, with coolers and card games, in the open-air barns, next to their prize animals which they raised from infancy. Ribbons won for size and shape are proudly tacked to the rafters and hang above the deserving animals. Outside, new models of farm equipment such as tractors, combines, and mowers stand on display. 

Yes, the purpose of today's Lodi Fair is the same as the first Lodi Fair 146 years ago. The agricultural fair is the original form of our modern, professional conference. The fair is a central meeting ground for people in the agricultural business to exchange ideas, learn about new business practices and technologies, and form cooperative ventures. As in commercial trade shows, related-product vendors attend the fair to sell their wares.

Dirt Cake and Edible Flowers - Dessert for a Garden Party or Children's Nature Lesson

Hosting a garden party? Need to bring a dessert to the garden club meeting? Show your creativity knows no bounds, - in the kitchen AND the garden, you create beauty! And your beautiful creations taste good! Bring a delectable dirt cake decorated with flowers.

Or, perhaps you are teaching children about nature. Kids love to eat sweets. Pique their interest with dirt cake. This is what my mother-in-law, Connie, did last week with my children, Lauren (8) and Dave(5).

Connie re-created the dirt cake she had brought to her Rhode Island garden club's spring meeting. Served from a clay garden pot and decorated with cut flowers, Connie's dessert looked more like a centerpiece than a cake. When two elderly club members responded with nervous looks to her offer of dirt cake, Connie had to reassure them it was edible. They accepted her trowel-full with apprehensive politeness, but later smiled when they tasted it.

So here's Connie's recipe for dirt cake, along with pictures of the pot and flowers.

• 1 8-oz pkg cream cheese
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 3-oz pkgs instant chocolate pudding
• 3 cups milk
• 1 8-oz container of Cool Whip
• 1 large pkg Oreo Cookies
• 1 chocolate cake, crumbled (optional)

Beat together the cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla. Combine the pudding with the milk, then mix into the cream cheese mixture. Fold in the Cool Whip. Crush the Oreo cookies, and for added texture, mix the cookie crumbs with the crumbled chocolate cake.

Spoon the cookie mixture into the bottom of a flower pot (preferably new and washed) so it makes approximately a 2" bottom layer. Then spoon in some of the cream cheese mixture followed by a layer of the cookie mixture. Continue alternating layers of cream cheese and cookies, ending with a cookie layer on top.

Decorate with colorful gummy worms and cut flowers. For an added touch of authenticity, decorate with edible flowers, such as roses, nasturtiums, lilacs, and pansies. Serve with a garden trowel (preferably new and washed).

This no-bake cake may be frozen. Thaw 1 hour before serving. For another delicious dessert, try Connie's recipe for carrot cake.

For more dirt cake pics, click on 'continue reading'.

Give What You Need! - A Spice Cake Recipe To Humor the Nose

What follows is a winding explanation of why I made a spice cake in the shape of a nose. If you're anxious for a recipe for a delicious, fragrant, scrumptious, and unusual spice cake, click on Wisconsinmade.com's recipe for Slimm and Nunne Mustard Spice Cake. If you want to know how to form the cake into the shape of a nose, keep reading. 

This nose cake resulted from a perfect storm of disconnected ideas. The strongest idea was this: Give What You Need.

Yes, it's true, the surest way to get what you need is to give it. I thought I got this idea from my friend, Jean. But Jean swears she got it from me. She also swears it works. Once the son of a neighbor badly needed $200 and asked Jean for it. Jean's family was financially strapped at the time. She hesitated, but remembered, "Give what you need", so she said, "here goes," and gave him the money. Two weeks later Jean received an unexpected win-fall of nearly $1000. She's a believer now.

Yesterday, I asked myself, "What could I write in a blog post that a potential reader might actually need?" Of course, the real question is "What might a reader need that I have the means to give?" Clueless, I fell back on the question, "What do I need?" My instant answer? "I need a laugh!" Yes, troubles were weighing me down. Time to pull out the humor from somewhere - ANYWHERE! And I didn't have to look far - just to the end of my nose.

After brief deliberation, I concluded that the nose is the most humorous part of the human body. Noses make people laugh - especially when they're looked at UP-CLOSE. Study people's noses and you'll recognize how many humorous shapes, colors, and sizes noses come in. Being the first part of the body to arrive anywhere, noses are the parts that get caught up in things, - such as in mechanical appliances and flying pies. And this can be very funny. When the Three Stooges pull each other's noses, people laugh.

Yes, I must write a post featuring 'The Nose'. The nose is a critical topic of a reputable food blog. Aroma always precedes taste! Therefore, the nose is the great chef's indispensable aid. And what better way to celebrate 'the nose' than with an aromatic spice cake! In fact, two weeks ago I happened upon a spice cake recipe at work which I filed in the back of my mind to try. Why not try it now! 

The plan was cinched when I realized that 'nose' begins with 'n' and 'o'. These letters should have been celebrated two weeks ago in our should-be-once-a-week alphabet party designed to ready my preschooler for kindergarten. So I asked 5-year-old Dave, "Do you know what 'N-O' spell?" He shook his head and said, "No."

"That's right!" I cheered. "'N-O' spells 'NO'!" So tickled that his reply had made a joke, Dave had to tell me the joke over and over again to make sure I got it. Yes, we wrung the humor out of that one. Then I told him that it was time for our 'N' & 'O' party and since 'n-o' are the first letters in 'nose' we would make a 'nose cake'. Seemed logical to him. 5-year-olds are wonderful.

Why Fireworks on the 4th of July?

(To see the patriotic parfait, skip the politics and scroll to the end.)

Over 70 fireworks displays will fire Wisconsin skies between now and July 6th. The celebrating started last Saturday with Madison's huge Rhythm & Booms music and fireworks festival. Yes, we're lucky here in Wisconsin. Our flooded fields turned Wisconsin's fire-danger pointer to low.  Stars & Stripes Sugar Cookies

Not so in some parts of the U.S. where dry conditions, especially in California, have caused communities to cancel 4th of July fireworks. Other communities canceled the show because of fireworks' high and rising costs. I know that the explosion of 20 fireworks warehouses in the Chinese port of Sanshui earlier this year was terrible, but still, it would have been cool to watch from the other side of the bay.

Another rising concern about fireworks, although I'm not sure it has caused any display cancellations, is the significant amount of greenhouse gases they emit. I was not the first to Ask Pablo how much carbon dioxide 4th of July fireworks spray into the atmosphere. Pablo calculated that the carbon emitted from fireworks in 2006 was 60,340 tons, which he describes as "more than 12,000 cars emit in a year, or the emissions from 115,000 light bulbs left burning for a year!" He went on to describe the additional pollution caused by the dangerous gases, heavy metals and toxins which also explode in the fireworks. "Bummer, man." is all I can say.

But whenever I'm faced with bad news, I give it a spin and see if I can look at it another way. So here goes. Let's consider WHY we're so busy lighting fire in the sky. Why? - because we ourselves are bursting with energy. We're HAPPY and we're CELEBRATING!

And why are we so happy? - because we are not blowing each other up. But we could be. The gunpowder used in fireworks, explained Pablo, is exactly the same as is used in fire-arms, - you know, handguns, missiles, and the like. Fox News reported that no fireworks will explode over Iraqi skies this summer. Instead, the explosions come from the IED's on the roadsides. The U.S. military has issued over 200 purple hearts since the war's start. How many more purple hearts have actually been earned? in 2003, Human Rights Watch reported:

Extensive research at five hospitals and morgues in Kirkuk and Mosul suggests that the high civilian tolls can be attributed to general lawlessness after the collapse of local authorities; the ready availability of weapons and ammunition; and the vast stores of ammunition and ammunition components left behind by the Iraqi military, including landmines, rocket-propelled grenades, and other explosives. 

Many of the victims have been children who play with explosives or pick up unexploded ordnance (UXO) as toys and sustain serious injuries as a result.

Yes, children are injured by guns here in the U.S. too, - but not nearly in the same proportion as in Iraq.

Tea - Jane Austen, Social Order and the American Revolution!

"Jane Austen (1775-1817) loved tea. She mentions tea so often in her novels and in her letters that I began to suspect that she was a true tea enthusiast...At the center of almost every social situation in her novels one finds - tea." wrote Kim Wilson in her book, Tea with Jane Austen. Wilson's book describes the central role of tea in the lives of Jane Austen's characters and the social order of Jane Austen's early 19th-century England. The book is liberally peppered with excerpts from Austen's novels and letters, plus the poetry and writings of Austen's contemporaries. All reveal how the drinking of tea, the particular foods eaten with it, and the special pots and dishes for serving them provided a daily, focal ritual which ordered the social interactions of the middle and upper classes of Austen's time. The title 'civilized' was earned by the way one drank tea.

How 'un-civilized' then were the American colonists who dumped the English tea into the Boston Harbor in 1773. The Boston tea party was a literal and figurative over-throwing of the social order, - a rebellion, one giant spark in the igniting of a revolution. The tea-party revolutionaries understood the symbolism of their dramatic act. And they emphasized the point by dressing as Native Americans, whom they viewed as savages.

Ironically, the revolutionaries' vision of a social order that would replace Europe's monarchal ethos was inspired by these Native American 'savages'. In his book, Forgotten Founders, Bruce Johansen wrote:

Contact with Indians and their ways of ordering life left a definite imprint on Franklin and others who were seeking, during the prerevolutionary period, alternatives to a European order against which revolution would be made. To Jefferson, as well as Franklin, the Indians had what the colonists wanted: societies free of oppression and class stratification. The Iroquois and other Indian nations fired the imaginations of the revolution's architects.

Johansen quotes H.L. Morgan, "father of American anthropology", who in 1851 compared the colonists' federalism to the Iroquois system of government:

"Their whole civil policy was averse to the concentration of power in the hands of any single individual, but inclined to the opposite principle of division among a number of equals...The People of the Longhouse commended to our forefathers a union of colonies similar to their own as early as 1755...They [the Iroquois] saw in the common interests and common speech of the colonies the elements for a confederation."

Johansen agreed with Morgan that "the Iroquois confederacy contained 'the germ of modern parliament, congress, and legislature'."