July 26th, 2012 | D.I.Y., Traditional, bacon, baking, berry pie, D.I.Y., fruit pie, lard in pastry, making pastry, offal, pastry, rendering, slow food
Suffice to say that I have a greater understanding of the scent of a medieval household after my first experience rendering suet.
I’ve been reading The Great Mortality by John Kelly, a riveting account of the black plague and how it wound its way through Europe in the 14th century. Needless to say a key ingredient in its spread was the incredible filth of households in this period. People bathed rarely and garbage (think dead animals, toilet offerings, rotten food) was strewn about the streets. They also used lard or tallow in making candles. According to Kelly, lard wasn’t a preferred source of fuel because of the smell.
So let me get this straight. People who were surrounded by rotting flesh and human excrement complained about the smell of burning lard. How could this be?
July 4th, 2012
I never used to like hot sauce. That changed during my first camping trip. I was 19-years-old. Traveling to the site with a fellow newbie girlfriend, en route we picked up a lot of beer, a 12-pack of hot dogs and a sack of buns. That was it. We had no tent, no sleeping bags, no nothing. Just ...
June 17th, 2012
This is my last semester of classes before I finish my Masters degree. While I still have a practicum to finish and thesis to write I am beginning to feel like I am close to the end. In honor of this ending, I wanted to really celebrate the student life this summer, by this I mean not working full t ...
June 9th, 2012
The real offal experiment continues... with a sheep tongue. My attempt with the brain was fascinating but not incredibly tasty. Will the tongue taste better? If looks are any indication then the answer is a resounding no! Good god a tongue is an ugly piece of meat. None of the silkiness of a pr ...
May 31st, 2012
Seedstock Seedbomb! from agorabora on Vimeo. Seedstock, is a community currency for Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. We believe that community currencies can improve the connectedness of communities, support local, independent businesses, encourage a more vibrant and diverse local economy while ge ...
May 20th, 2012
For my first recipe out of Odd Bits, I decided to bust it open, literally. The author, Jennifer Mclagan, mentioned that a sheep's head was quite fiercesome looking. When my butcher brought it out from the back, held right about head level, I'll admit that it looked quite hideous. The eyeballs b ...
May 12th, 2012
I first heard about guanciale on Chopped. It was a secret ingredient and for some reason I decided to look it up. Oh my goodness! Luscious pig jowl washed with wine and scented with black pepper and thyme. This was something I had to try. The word guanciale comes from 'guancia', which mea ...
January 17th, 2009
FOODDECLARATION.ORG You know that passionate feeling that wells up inside you? The sort of feeling of pride and hope and love and excitement and connection all melted and molten together? This is the feeling that has often been used by dictators by calling it patriotism and is a feeling I a ...
