Edible Antics - Having Fun With Food

Cranberry Salad

Mixing up a big helping of cranberry salad provides a much needed break from indulgent foods and cheese and sausage we eat here in Wisconsin, but like cheese and sausage, cranberries are a food of the Badger State- and a healthy food too! Cranberries and spinach provide antioxidants, vitamin C, and fiber just to name a few of the health benefits. Walnuts contain omega-three fatty acids, and blue cheese- well, it's still cheese- but since the blue stuff is so strong in flavor you can use less of it compared to more mild cheese. So believe it or not, you can eat Wisconsin and still eat healthy! Click "continue reading" to see the recipe.

Cranberry Dessert Recipes

Cranberry dessert recipes are my favorite dessert recipes. Well, I like chocolate too. But serve me a cranberry dessert and I'm happy. And in autumn, folks tend to cook more with cranberries and give cranberry desserts and breads as fall harvest gifts. This is a good thing!

I wasn't always this fanatical about cranberry desserts, cranberry breads, cranberry rice dishes, cranberry sauce, cranberry chutney, cranberry everything. I think my zeal has something to do with moving to Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is the leader in cranberry production and I can easily get awesome cranberries. Don't be fooled into thinking a cranberry is a cranberry. Different climates grow different tasting cranberries and different processing companies dry and sweeten them with different methods and recipes. I like my cranberries tart, flavorful, and not sickly sweet.

I'm conscious of the health benefits of cranberries, and so as a parent, I'm always looking for ways to feed them to my children. My family would naturally tire of cranberries if my cranberry recipe repertoire was limited. But it isn't. Keep reading for my newest find: Champion Cranberry Bars, and links to my other favorite great cranberry dessert recipes.

Earth Day Activities: Plant Wisconsin Wild Foods And Weed Invasive Species

We've been spreading our Earth Day activities over an Earth-Day Week. On Monday, bare root hazelnut bushes arrived from The Arbor Foundation and demanded immediate planting. My neighbor and I divided them up to plant them.

Hazelnut bushes grow 8' - 10' high; they create excellent screens, and best of all give wild food that feeds the wild woodland animals roaming our Wisconsin backyards.

But to make room to plant the hazelnut bushes, we had to rip out European buckthorn. It's an invasive species in Wisconsin that was introduced centuries ago because when young, the trees are good screens and spread rapidly. But the spreading is exactly the problem. This invasive species is so prolific that it soon dominates a landscape. Wisconsin's native plants don't have a chance. Buckthorn does give food, if you can call it that. Early Wisconsin residents used the berries as a diuretic.

Weeding European buckthorn is easy when the tress are tiny. Kids can help. So my neighbor and I hired our own children to pull buckthorn.   When the younger children wearied, we set them upon Wisconsin's other invasive species, garlic mustard. The pretty white flowers on top of a garlic mustard stalk look innocent, but within a few years, garlic mustard plants will be wherever the buckthorn isn't. This invasive species combo can kill a small, Wisconsin forest in 10 years.

So we were taking action against them. Perhaps four hazelnut bushes are not many, but they're a start. And The Arbor Foundation practically gives them away.

If you're interested in planting Wisconsin wild foods and cooking with them, then a must-have cookbook is Wisconsin Wild Foods: 100 Recipes For Badger State Bounties, by John Motoviloff. Keep reading for John's hickory nut pancake recipe.

Gender-Differences In Wisconsin Gardening Before A Killing Frost? Plus A Relish Recipe To Use Up Green Tomatoes

Something peculiar occurred in my part of the world this weekend. I wonder if it's a statistical fluke or if there really is a gender difference in the way in which people respond to the forecast of impending winter. A common conversation-starter around here was, "I hear (heard) we're going to have a killing frost this weekend." And when I used this opener, my women friends all responded something like this:  "Yeah, I heard that too."

"But I'm such a slacker; I didn't bring my patio plants in."

"Me neither. I've been so busy these past few weeks that at this point, I just don't care about the plants any more. I'd planned to over-winter 'em, but I'm just lettin' 'em die."

"Yeah, me too. Instead of picking all my green tomatoes before the freeze I mended my daughter's shirt while we watched kid-TV together. She came home Friday afternoon saying she had to dress like an insect for the school dance at 6:00 so I had to mend her yellow shirt. I hadn't planned on slacking on the garden, but my child had to metamorphose."

"Oh, I know how that goes. Last week I bought sale-perennials and haven't even gotten 'em planted yet. But at least (fill in the blank name of husband) went out and picked the last of the peppers and the tomatoes. (Disappointed sigh.) Now I just have to freeze those."

It's that last line about the husband which is so curious. Of my friends it was the men in their lives who did the last minute harvesting. For example, my friend and I were driving home Saturday when her husband called to ask if I wanted a stalk of their garden Brussels sprouts. He'd busied himself picking squash and digging onions while we'd blown the whole garden bit off to take an autumn walk with another woman friend who likewise was blowing off her garden. And I have more friends than these; my other women friends were similarly un-engaged with they're gardens. What was going on? Click on "continue reading..."for my hypothesis.

Making Tomato Sauce Is One Way To Use Up Tomatoes; Now How To Use Up The Sauce?

All 39 tomato plants in my garden are doing well. My care of them as seedlings must be paying off because now, despite my current neglect, they are producing a bumper crop of tomatoes. Pictured is one day's harvest. In my search for ways to use up tomatoes, I found Anne Tedeschi's recipe for Basic Blender Italian Tomato Sauce, and every day or so I make it. I modify it a bit by adding grated zucchini to the sauce because I'm trying to use up the zucchini in my garden also. Then I freeze the sauce in plastic bags for winter-time use. 

But I've been enjoying the sauce right out of the pot too. It's great over pasta. And the other day I tried Dela Ends of Scotch Hill Farm's recipe for Easy Eggplant Cheese Casserole. Click on "Continue reading..." for the recipe.

Buy-local Movement Rooted In Wisconsin State Pride And Celebrated At The Bounty Of Green County Feast

In the few places I've lived, Illinois, Colorado, New England, and Wisconsin, each place had a special feel of its own. A region's particular impression may be vague in my mind, but it's there none the less. For example, my impression of Illinois is that it's a backdrop for Chicago. All of the many Chicagoans I know "LOVE Chicago!" City corruption and inefficiencies?, - they just shrug at those, after all, nothing special about those, every cities got them. During my 5-year stay in Colorado I never met so many people who originated from somewhere else. The descendants of Colorado pioneers were a fiercely independent lot and a few were pretty vocal about wishing the rest of us would go home. I lived in New England during college and at that time I was pretty clueless about everything, including about the states I inhabited. Yet, folks in Vermont and New Hampshire impressed me as being pretty low-key, never showy or boastful. Each had his or her own way of doing things. They called it "the Yankee way", and openly admitted that to them it meant "the right way". But it was in Wisconsin where I first encountered an overwhelmingly strong exuberance of state pride.

I've lived in Wisconsin for 18 years now, but my status as a "Wisconsinite" is still pending. Most of the people I know here are 3rd and 4th generation Wisconsinites. They are rooted in the hard-working, family-committed, pioneer ethos of their farming ancestors. In pioneer times, settlers were typically generous with each other because to forge a life in such a harsh climate meant never knowing when you'd have to call on your neighbor for aid. This friendliness persists today. Beyond the neighborhood and into the workplace, farmers, producers, manufacturers, and consumers seem particularly aware of their inter-reliance. They economically support each other by preferentially buying from each other. No, this economic mutualism does not originate from snobby or exclusive sentiments. It's grounded in a sincere value for the quality of goods made in Wisconsin. Folks here know their neighbors; they see how they make their products and run their businesses. They like what they see, and they tell their friends about it. If ever there was a grass-roots, buy-local movement, it's vibrantly alive here in Wisconsin.

Wisconsinites' state pride was on display Saturday night at the Bounty of Green County Feast. On the picturesque hilltop of the New Glarus Brewing Company, overlooking the hills, fields, and town of New Glarus, about 100 people gathered to share a 5-course dinner showcasing the gourmet meats, cheeses, and produce grown, raised, processed, and cooked in Green County. We dined on lean sausages of elk and emu, emmentaler and butter kase cheeses, beer-braised, pasteurized pork with Wisconsin-grown apples, roast tenderloin served with Wisconsin potatoes mashed with Roth Kase gruyere cheese. The green beans and salad were grown in local gardens. The apples on the apple tart grew in a Green County orchard; the Green County fudges and toffees were made with Wisconsin milk. And accompanying each course was a New Glarus, micro-brewed beer especially selected to bring out the flavors of the gourmet foods. I never knew beer could taste so unbelievably delicious with braised pork and roast tenderloin. The New Glarus Golden Ale served with the final cheese course was a genius pairing and made me re-think drinking wine with cheese.

Unusual Dessert Zucchini Recipe: Wisconsin Farmers and Gardeners Bake Zucchini Pie

This time of August a Wisconsin gardener typically has as many zucchinis as a mule has flies. Zucchini has been steamed, boiled, grilled, baked into breads and casseroles, and still, free-for-the-taking zucchinis languish on office break-room tables. Even some food pantry workers sigh when they see more zucchini arrive. What to do with all that zucchini?

I have only 4 zucchini plants, which although I'm a firm believer in 'waste not - want not, are producing about 50% more zucchini than I want. For two weeks, I've brought zucchini to the table in a variety of recipe forms. Fortunately, zucchini is one vegetable that my kids eat without complaining, but at this point I'm using up my zucchini capital. I needed an unusual zucchini recipe to re-spark our taste for this prolific, green squash.

Searching through cookbooks, I noticed that my cookbooks written by Wisconsin farm women  had more zucchini recipes than the others. I wasn't surprised. But I was intrigued by the re-occurrence of one unusual recipe: a recipe for zucchini pie. I guess it makes sense. Wisconsin farm women typically have large gardens. They grow a lot of food and are not about to waste it. If they grow it, by gosh, their family is going to eat it and be thankful. But even these stoic women run out of patience with zucchini. Desperate to find one more way to transfer zucchini from the crisper into their children's stomachs, they invented zucchini pie. Oh, it's not much of an invention really, more of a modification. To make zucchini pie, all you do is bake an apple pie, but substitute zucchini for the apples.

"Yuk!" you exclaim? No, not really. My family liked it. Admittedly, it wasn't as good as apple pie, but it was a bit more nutritious, and far easier to make. Plus, the recipe calls for "one LARGE zucchini". So if you just found one of those monster zucchinis that's been growing hidden under a leaf for far too long in your garden, this recipe for zucchini pie is the one you need. Click on "Continue reading..." for the recipe for zucchini pie and pictures of our cow tea party at which we ate a zucchini cheese pie for dinner and our zucchini pie for dessert.

Healthy Eating With Garden Vegetables In A Grilled Summer Vegetable Pasta Salad From the Madison, WI CSAC

The backyard garden is over-flowing with fresh vegetables! Now what to do with all the squash?  Best to ask the folks who garden for a living: The Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (CSAC). For a healthy recipe that uses zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, and red pepper, I consulted the Madison Area's CSAC cookbook, From Asparagus to Zucchini: A guide to cooking farm-fresh seasonal produce. The cookbook is organized alphabetically by vegetable and additionally by season. For any vegetable that could possibly be growing in a Wisconsin garden, the CSAC has a recipe for it. CSAC supporters and CSAC farmers contributed their recipes to this cookbook, and they also tell how to preserve vegetables for winter consumption. These folks understand the impossibility of eating a whole garden's worth of vegetables in late summer.

These CSAC gardeners are also dedicated to healthy eating. After a year and a half of cooking with this cookbook, I have yet to find a recipe that causes heart disease. That's one of the reasons I chose this recipe for grilled summer vegetable pasta salad for my contribution to Saturday night's potluck dinner at the Sugar Maple Traditional Music Festival at Madison, WI's State Farm Park. I was attending the festival with some doctors and nurses. On duty at Madison hospitals they routinely advise people about healthy eating. And I know they practice what they preach. So to this potluck I figured I best not show up with my Wisconsin-potluck favorites, deviled eggs and bacon-wrapped wieners stuffed with cheese. Click on "Continue reading..." for the recipe and more of the story.

Retro Foods: Upper Midwest Regional Favorites of Cheese, Crackers And Summer Sausage Are Still Happy Hour Snacks

In the 1960's and '70's, my family vacationed at friends' summer cottage on a small, Wisconsin lake surrounded by corn and soy bean fields and dairy farms.  After a day of water-skiing, fishing, canoeing, and swimming, the adults would announce Happy Hour, - as if we hadn't been happy earlier.  But Happy Hour was grand for kids because at this hour out would come our favorite snacks of cheese, crackers and summer sausage. True we ate cheese and crackers back in Illinois, but the cheese and summer sausage were better at the cottage. Naturally, the cottage was in Wisconsin. Our happy-hour cheese was super-fresh, made with real cream from cows down the road, and the savory sausage was made by real Germans in the town next over.

Wisconsin Celebrates the Dairy Industry With Cows at the Capital

Saturday Madison, WI saluted the dairy industry by inviting cows, dairy farmers, agricultural students, veterinarians, and cheese masters to the streets around Wisconsin's state capital building. Children pet the cows as "Moo experts" from the dairy industry answered questions about raising cows, milking, WI's artisanal cheeses, and WI's reliance on the dairy industry for our state's economic vitality.

Along with the information came a whole lot of fun on the capital concourse. Bands played music as kids played games. Families ate ice cream and grilled cheese sandwiches grilled right in the street. One of the more comical highlights was the ice cream eating contest. Two children, two dads, one dairy farmer, and the dairy queen of Belleville, Wisconsin competed to see who could eat a plate of ice cream the fastest (no hands; no utensils). Click on "Continue reading..." to see a video of the ice cream eating contest and more pictures of Wisconsinites playing with their food.