We use the word “nut” in cooking to denote any of a wide variety of seeds or fruits with seeds. Botanically speaking, walnuts, pecans, cashews or peanuts are not really nuts whereas acorns, chestnuts and hazel nuts are true nuts. The peanut is actually the seed of a legume and thus related to alfalfa, beans ...
History The origins of cheese predate the earliest historical records. It is speculated that the first cheese was made in the Middle East or Central Asia by accident when milk was stored in a container made from an animals stomach. As the making of cheese spread to cooler climates, less salt was required for preservation ...
What makes a Mushroom? Mushrooms are defined as the spore-bearing fruiting bodies of of a fungus. They usually appear above ground or below ground where they can be picked by hand. Sometimes they can be found growing directly on their own food source. Our photo shows the common white mushroom which is easily cultivated and ...
Classic Omelet Although the females of many species produce eggs, this week we will be talking about the chicken egg. Many types of dishes are made with eggs. They can be prepared in several ways including pickled, boiled, scrambled and fried. Egg whites are easily separated from the yolks and are used in low cholesterol ...
Mythology The “power” of garlic has always been associated with both good and evil. Strings of garlic are always seen in traditional vampire movies, as folklore considers garlic a powerful ward against vampires, demons and werewolves. By contrast – modern vampires consider garlic to be merely in bad taste! From the pages of our namesake ...
History Contrary to pervasive myths of Italian food, Marco Polo did not introduce pasta to Europe. What he did find in China were rice or millet noodles similar to semolina noodles (with which he was already familiar). Horace wrote of thin sheets of dough which were fried in the first century BC, but the cooking ...
Carrots & Tarragon This week we are featuring carrots – a root vegetable which is usually orange but can also be purple, white or yellow in color. Today’s dish is baby carrots in tarragon butter. The wild ancestors of carrots are thought to have come from Afghanistan. Over the years carrots have been bred to ...
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