On a trip to Michigan over the July 4 weekend, I decided to finally go visit a place that I’ve known about for over 15 years. For that length of time, I’ve been cooking using recipes in various cookbooks published by The Moosewood Restaurant (or rather, by members of the collective that runs the restaurant).
The restaurant is located in Ithaca, NY, which is just far enough from expressways in the state that it isn’t a convenient stop if one is crossing through. I figured I should finally take the extra time required to go have a meal there, and see just what the place is like.
It’s located in an old building that’s been made into a little mall. This is the building:
And here are exterior and interior entrances to the restaurant:
They have a very large repertoire of recipes, as they’ve put out more than a dozen different books over the years. As a result, they don’t have a set menu – they offer small lunch and dinner menus that change daily.
I had a bean burrito with onions, peppers and hot sauce, served on a bed of brown rice. Also had a bottle of local ginger beer, and a blueberry-apple cobbler for dessert. The food was good, but ultimately no better than I’ve had at other vegetarian restaurants, and somewhat pricier. I’m glad I made the trip once, and I’ll certainly eat there again if I find myself in Ithaca, but I won’t go out of my way to return to the place.
One of the more fun presents I got for Xmas was a package of Giant Pocky. For those not familiar with the Japanese confection known as Pocky, it is crunchy sticks coated in chocolate (or other flavors not shown on the page I linked to – of which there are many). I’m a big fan of Pocky, though don’t eat it all the time because it tends not to be cheap. I’ve tried several flavors, but never the Giant ones, though I believe they were probably reviewed by Ms. Boo (though I can’t find a review in her snack review archives). The Giant version are quite a bit bigger than the normal kind; I photographed them here next to an ice-cream truck for comparison:
As you can see, the scale is well above that of a human vehicle. Giant, indeed.
Regular-sized Pocky has the sticks grouped in bags within the box – at least 4 sticks to a bag. These are individually wrapped:
When unwrapped, they look like the usual chocolate kind, only bigger:
And they taste about the same, except that the biscuity stick taste (kind of like a barely-sweet cracker) dominates the chocolate more, perhaps because the chocolate layer is not as thick in proportion. They’re still tasty, as they use a slightly bitter chocolate on these (as opposed to Men’s Pocky, which is even more bitter). They’re still good, and I’ll definitely eat the whole box (though it will take a while to go through).
I didn’t pay much attention to the sticker when I bought the melon – only enough to type in the PLU# at the self-scan checkout. After I got it home, though, I was surprised to discover a reference to The Outsiders on my honeydew:
Nothing gold can stay, of course, and the melon is no exception – we’ll eat the whole thing within a week.
Yesterday I headed for downtown Noho, looking forward to picking up some bread at our usual bakery (Bakery Normand). I hadn’t gotten any bread there in a few weeks, because I was trying to use up some store-bought stuff that I had bought too much of. I missed the nice, fresh wheat and flaxseed bread they make, and wanted to pick up a couple of loaves.
I got there and discovered a sign on the door indicating that they were closed for vacation, and would be back at the end of the week. Annoying to be sure, but I decided that I could go to a different bread bakery in town (Hungry Ghost Bread Co.), and get some there. It’s pricier, and not quite as good as BN, but still nice bread.
Turns out that they were specially closed as well for the next couple of day – no reason given on the sign. Bah! I ended up getting some okay bread at a small grocery store across the street from HGBC, but I have to wonder if there is a bakers’ conspiracy convention going on.
Although it’s by way of Canada. Last weekend I happened to be in what’s primarily an office supply store in downtown Amherst, but which has a candy section at the front. I noticed they had Coffee Crisp candy bars. “Ah,” I thought, “they import Coffee Crisp here.” You see, Coffee Crisp is one of my favorite candy bars (which is strange, since I don’t like coffee), but has only ever been available in Canada, despite being made by Nestle, a U.S. company.
There was something odd, though. The price was 35 cents per bar, or 3 for a dollar. “That’s really cheap, since it’s imported!” I either thought or said out loud. I picked one (or maybe three) up, and noticed that the package was different. In Canada all packages have to be marked in English and French. These bars were labeled in English and Spanish. Then I noticed, in smaller print, the URL nestleusa.com. “Could it be true?”
A check of the web later confirmed it – Nestle is now selling Coffee Crisp in the U.S. An online petition effort helped make this happen, apparently. It hasn’t got very wide distribution yet, but fans can lobby stores to carry it.
All I can say is, “Yum.”
Oh, if you’re wondering about the Swiss link, it’s that Nestle’s parent company is based in Switzerland.
The fruit you can’t pick up. Also not very filling.
I don’t normally write restaurant reviews, but then, this isn’t really a normal review. That is to say, I have nothing to say about the food at Marge’s Kitchen, because I haven’t actually had any.
Here is the story: Marge’s Kitchen is a small breakfast restaurant in Northampton, MA. It’s a short walk from where we live now, and, as we often like going out for brunch, we decided to try it today. The menu is not very extensive, but has most of the breakfast staples, and has very reasonable prices. There are a few unusual items as well, such as the choice of sweet potato home fries in addition to regular potato ones. The place also seems to have a slogan: “The customer is never right.” I found this amusing at first, but apparently it isn’t a joke. More on that later. Click Here to Read More »
I check the sale fliers from our local grocery stores every week, looking for good deals.
This week, one of them was printed with a sort of wraparound cover. Here’s the front cover, i.e. the part to the right of the fold:
I didn’t notice the wraparound nature at first. So you can imagine my reaction when I saw this item in the corner:
Once I realized what was going on, I opened it to see the real item:
Much more appetizing!
Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about pizza made with pumpkin. It’s actually very good. I had first made it a few years back, based on a recipe we got from someone, but recently I wanted to do so again and couldn’t find the recipe.
So I made some up. I modified an existing crust recipe to make it a wheat crust, and arranged toppings that I thought would be tasty (and they were).
Pumpkin pizzas
Crust for 1 pizza (modified version of a recipe from Carolyn Yackel):
1.75 tablespoons yeast
1 cup warm water
1.5 cups white flour
1 cup wheat flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
extra flour or corn meal for pan and for handling dough
Toppings:
0.5 lb gouda cheese, shredded (per pizza)
1 small to medium pie pumpkin
1 or 2 portabella mushroom caps, sliced
1 to 1.5 cups chopped fresh spinach
dried sage leaf to taste
cinnamon to taste
First, cook the pumpkin. Do this by slicing the pumpkin in half vertically, scooping out the guts, and placing the halves cut side down in a baking pan. Fill the pan with a half-inch of water, and place in the oven at 400 degrees (Fahrenheit). Cooking time should be 45 minutes or less, depending on the size of pumpkin. Test for doneness by sticking a fork through the skin into the pumpkin. It should easily pass through.
When done, drain the water and allow pumpkin halves to cool with cut side up. Then remove skin and slice flesh (quarter-inch thick slices work well).
To make the crust, put yeast in a medium to latge mixing bowl, and pour water over it. Wait a minute or two, then add other crust ingredients. Stir together until a ball of dough is formed. With floured hands, knead dough a little in bowl, then set aside for 5 to 10 minutes.
Grease a 16-inch diameter pizza pan or 10×15 inch cookie sheet, then coat the pan with corn meal or flour.
Flouring your hands to prevent sticking, flatten the dough ball in the middle of the pan and spread the dough to the edges. Add more flour as needed, and repair any tears by pressing dough back together. Make sure to have dough thicker around the edge.
2 possible topping combinations (these are the ones I tried):
- Layer spinach on crust, covering the whole surface. Put cheese on top of spinach. Put slices of pumpkin on top of that (you’ll use one third to one half of the pumpkin), and sprinkle sage around the pizza as desired.
- Put cheese on crust. Layer several slices of pumpkin and portabella around pizza, mostly covering cheese. Sprinkle with cinnamon as desired.
Once pizza is assembled, bake at 450 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. It should be done when crust is hard and cheese has browned in spots.
Enjoy!