Sourcing a pie

I asked my friend where the rest of the ingredients came from:

"I love when my food is largely locally sourced but other than the fruit that pie sadly wasn't.  The berries were from the UP.  Flour was organic King Arthur. Sugar and butter were from the grocery store as was the lemon juice."

In the U.S., the state of Michigan ranks second in agricultural diversity only to the state of California. It’s possible that the sugar came from beets, and beets are a substantial crop here in Michigan. It’s possible the butter could have come from Michigan as well. The salt-might have come from Detroit—an ocean once covered the state and though few people know it, salt mining remains an active industry in Detroit. And while I don’t know where King Arthur flour comes from (perhaps Kansas?), Michigan also grows varieties of wheat suitable for pastries and cakes.

Aside from the lemon (which likely comes from the state of Florida), Michigan has the ability to provide most of what we need for a pie made from rather local ingredients. Though there are people passionate about getting good food that supports their local communities, it’s a challenge even for us to know where it all comes from.

Salt could have come from Detroit:

http://detroitsalt.com/

http://www.mortonsalt.com/our-company/our-locations

http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2001184,00.html

Flour--maybe from Kansas? King Arthur Flour

...

I wound up adapting (and finishing!) this to introduce myself as a strategist for ISMOTION's educational programs--go read it there!!! http://ismotion.co/introducing-ian-with-ingredients-for-adventure/

EDIT: Had to change the link as the company website changed and we lost all the embedded links and many of the images too. :-( On the bright side, I remember one link: if sound could uniformly represent taste for everyone, I'm pretty sure it the pie would sound like the song embedded.

"Wasabi is not hot, if..."

I just tried a piece of chili cherry dark chocolate, and a Japanese co-worker who didn't like hot flavors, and thus the chocolate because it had hot chilies in it said:

"Wasabi is not hot."

 We were surprised, as he certainly had wasabi before.  We asked him to clarify.


"if chili is defined as hot, wasabi is a different sensation."

I asked if it's because of the way wasabi attacks the senses, and he affirmed the distinction.  I've then concluded this:

Wasabi is not hot, it's malicious.

Sweet summer pies & a snippet of scientific inquiry!

This summer's been filled with memorable and very heartening pies indeed!

First: A generous gesture of kindness 
Blueberry Pie at a technical conference
Kindness in the form of an Amish blueberry pie gifted to me by a duo of Kansas professors.  We shared a dorm at Alfred State College in upstate New York for a technical conference on sustainability in higher education.  As I've written elsewhere, most people I know of suit up to power network, I treat it like a sport.  But the people there savored the good conversations that arose from the event and over meals sourced from the campus and nearby farms.  It must have been the most humane sustainability conference I've ever attended (I even titled a new viola tune of mine and wrote an essay called "emotive mechanics" thanks to the experience).

While the pie was way too sugary, diabetes by the first bite, the story and trip made it worthwhile: they bought the pie from a stand on the side of a country road run by two Amish girls, had a slice during the conference (no one had utensils available) and gave it to me before they departed for the airport.  For me, the pie reaffirms the value of a personable story.

Second: Wondrous pie
Huckleberry Pie--the finest pie I've had yet & a taste of curiosity

If sound could represent taste, I'm pretty sure it would be akin to the joys heard in this song (if you're a synasthesiac--where you taste sounds, let me know if it's a good approximation).

Just the right sweetness from the berries and sensible use of sugar, with a crispy salted crust and topped with delectable crumbles made a wonderful counterpoint in texture and taste.  Best of all, made by a friend to enjoy at the end of an excellent meal with her family!

Huckleberries are new to me--I thought they'd be a fruit of the South thanks to Samuel Clemens' (AKA Mark Twain's) book Huckleberry Finn, and the accent of Huckleberry Hound, the cartoon.  My friend picked these fresh from a farm in the Upper Peninsula (before freezing them for safe keeping).  Even her father was curious about their origin and distinguishing features.  We speculated that blueberries were a commercialized agricultural cultivar of the huckleberry.  Our reasoning:

1) blueberries tend to be larger,
and
2) huckleberries tend to be sweeter.

To substantiate that line of thought, the best fruit I've ever had was from foraging a wild strawberry native to Michigan before a storm in May at the University of Michigan-Dearborn's Environmental Interpretive Center (even captured the moment in shaky video!).  If you've seen them (or watched the video) commercial strawberries are huge, and frequently nearly flavorless.

After consultation with whatever scientific consensus I could find through an un-scholarly and brief google search, I learned that our joint hypothesis was incorrect.  Huckleberries are a different species altogether, and their ranges differ too (I'm guessing we ate the fruits of Vaccinium membranaceum).

In any case, the findings have no bearing on how much I enjoyed sharing the pie and evening with everyone at a table in Traverse City.

Hotel Cuisine: Ironed toast? Hardboiled egg.

In the Windy City's downtown, everything's expensive. That's why I got groceries as soon as I arrived to make my own meals.  Chicago's notorious for charging steep prices.  So too are their hotels.  On my first day at the AWMA conference, I decided to partake in the breakfast buffet at the Hyatt.  During a luxurious meal, I thought to myself "how wonderful that this conference includes breakfast!"  And then I was approached by a waiter with a $26 bill.

So, the plan for the week: get groceries, cook my own food--in the hotel!

Edit (commentary from the video):
I've accomplished hardboiled and poached eggs.

Eggs were microwaved for about 4 minutes. The orange had no effect on the flavor. I had concerns about sparking, so I added orange peels to the mix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrY0aC...
The concerns about sparks came from rusty memory having read this: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/...

I didn't have time to do the toast the next day. I don't adapt to professional conference schedules as quickly as I hope sometimes...

Local sweetness

I'll dare say pure maple syrup can work better than honey in a tea/herbal brew.  Something about the woody notes of the syrup mingling with a good minty warm brew makes it a success.

I've thought about maple syrup (less so birch syrup, but that too) as a regional source of sugar instead of having cane sugar, honey, or corn syrup.  I wondered: why don't we take pride in having Michigan maple syrup in our drinks/baking/cooking?

I suspect it's really challenging to obtain since you need about 40 gallons of maple sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.  How do I know? Partake in making maple syrup at UM-Dearborn during the late winter/early spring!


Edit: In the interest of sustainability and food systems, I wound up posting a question on Quora about what source of sugar takes the least energy to create.  You can check it out here: http://www.quora.com/Sustainable-Agriculture/Which-are-least-energy-intensive-for-producing-sugar-sugar-cane-beets-corn-maple-birch-or-honey

The biggest problem I can see with asking that kind of question the way I did is that people are likely going to look at it as a matter of industrial optimization--how can we get the most sugar with the least amount of energy/water.  While that's not the intent, I figured it would be useful for others to know what goes into the production/procurement process of our sugars.  For anyone curious, there's a relatively standardized technique called "life cycle analysis".  In concepts of environmentalism, we had to perform embodied/embedded energy assessments.  In essence, ask the question: what went into making, processing, and transporting whatever product you're using?  How much energy did it take to make? To process? To transport? etc. and then sum it all up.  Similar idea.

If you've got answers, or just want to research with me, I'd be really interested in seeing them!

Humm...us.... that was satisfying!

I made hand-mashed hummus, and it was rather satisfactory.

Not sure what I did with the photos, but it was good.  Here's a less flattering photo of my attempt at a friend's house:

Not quite done with the mashing, you can use a heavy
spoon or ladle instead of a potato masher if that suits you.

If you mash it, use less olive oil, and leave some coarseness from the beans so that it's less smooth it becomes a good, hearty paste.

Hummus:

1 can of garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
1/4 - 1/2 cup of olive oil
lemon
cayenne pepper
caribbean jerk seasoning
drops/drizzle of liquid mesquite smoke

If you're really wild, you can add a drizzle of maple syrup as well!

Wonton folding technique

I didn't realize there were region-specific styles for folding wonton wrappers.  It's almost on par with endeavors in origami, except with food.  After much googling, I found what might be the best video so far:

If you even think you hear the phrase "will generate much happiness" (I don't think she ever said it in this video, but somehow I recall hearing it) and "secret ingredient", it's almost definitely the real deal.

Side note about the video:  her chopping/knife wielding technique would benefit from a few things: 

1) modify the grip so that the index finger wraps onto part of the side of the blade surface 

(yields better grip/leverage, interestingly, this is similar to the grip I use to hold the bow of violins and violas too)
2) use a forward/backward rocking motion with the chef's knife as you slice/chop rather than chopping straight up and down
3) angle the green onions so that slices are diagonal (which should release more flavor--see the great diagonal cut/microbiology argument I posed in a previous year)

Someday I'll figure out how to make a variation for vegetarian and vegan friends...