The Snack Report: Stacy’s Pretzel Thins
Pretzels are an awesome snack. We even made a pizza out of them! Part of the reason for pretzels’ high rank in snackdom is just because they taste good. But another part is because there are so many pretzel options. They can be hard and crunchy, or soft and chewy. They can be salty or sweet (or both at the same time!). They can be big or small. Even just within hard pretzels there are numerous shapes and sizes. Today we’ll be focusing on the flat pretzel thins.
Recipe Time! Monkey Bread
Monkey bread is a wonderful food, with a strange name. No one really seems to know for certain how it got its name, but rest assured – no monkeys are harmed in the making of this delicious treat. And it’s not some weird code disguising something gross, like how “sweetbreads” are actually the thymus and pancreas of cows. Monkey bread is made of biscuit dough cut into small pieces and covered in cinnamon, sugar, and held together with a kind of caramel. Monkey bread made its first appearance in women’s magazines in the 1950s and fits very much with the vogue of using canned or frozen ingredients and spiffing them up in interesting (and occasionally horrifying) ways. The 1950s ideology was all about making the modern housewife’s life easier with push buttons and quickly prepared foodstuffs. I have fond memories of sitting in my grandma’s kitchen and eating monkey bread that she made, which makes sense since she was a young housewife in the 1950s.
I could go on about this stuff forever, since it is part of what I’m studying in school, but I digress. Monkey bread is indeed an easy to make dish that can serve as breakfast, dessert, or just a little snack.
Spices 101: What is Turmeric?
I’m really interested in spices and seasonings. Afterall 90% of the time they’re responsible for making a dish taste like what it does. If variety is the spice of life, then spices are the spice of food. Or something. That’s why I’ve started this column to introduce exotic and interesting spices to readers unfamiliar with them. I can’t help but remember the first time I saw a bottle of cumin and asked my mother “Mom, what’s ‘cummin’?” Many years later I’d like to think I have a pretty impressive knowledge of all the different spices out there, so now it’s time to share that knowledge.
Turmeric
Origin: India
Appearance: Fine yellow powder
Scent: Earthy, woody
Taste: Mild, mustard–like
Foods: Indian cuisine, Asian cuisine, curries
Rareness: Average
Recipe Time! Strawberry Peanut Butter Toast
Okay, so this isn’t so much a recipe as it is me just sharing this idea with you, but I’ll write it out in recipe form anyway.
As Erik mentioned in his last post, breakfast is an often skipped meal, which is a shame since it’s an important way to get your day started and also has lots of yummy foods. Even faster than French toast is regular toast, which can be kind of boring to eat every day, but luckily there are lots of ways to easily fancy it up.
Since powdered toast isn’t a thing, you’re going to have to make your toast the old fashioned way.
Food 101: How To Make French Toast
Breakfast is probably the least sacred of meals during the day, often getting skipped due to time constraints and laziness. Which is unfortunate since breakfast is incredibly important from a biological and diet standpoint, and also because there’s some delightful treats that you don’t really see in any other meals the rest of the day. The ‘Big Three’, as I like to call them, which include pancakes, waffles, and french toast, are the three best and most important breakfast meals you can have at your disposal. They’re foundations that can be eaten many different ways and are really friggin’ delicious. Sadly, pancakes take a bit of preparation even with box mixes, and waffles require borderline commercial-grade machinery in order to be made. As such, those two are a bit of a stretch for everyone with a busy lifestyle. That’s why Meg and I save those for the weekends. However, french toast meanwhile is quick and easy enough for you to prepare any day of the week before going to work. And don’t be lazy, freezer french toast isn’t gonna save you that much time in the long run. If you have about 10 minutes, you can make french toast.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
You must be logged in to post a comment.