Don’t Ask Me How I Know This

When you are chewing a lemon Starburst and take a sip of coconut-flavored iced coffee, the resulting flavor combination may remind you of Thai food.

Winter Squash Risotto

Winter squash (or pumpkin) and sage is a classic Italian flavor combination that’s showcased in this creamy, rice dish. Risotto is Italian comfort food at its finest.

Squash Rolls

These tender, sweet dinner rolls turn up at all my family’s holiday meals. The butternut squash tints the dough a warm, golden color.

Winter Squash Potage

This savory winter squash soup recipe is based on a recipe for potage, a puréed vegetable soup from France. There are as many different recipes for potage as there are cooks, so you should feel free to substitute like quantities of similar vegetables. Part of the fun for the eater is guessing which vegetables the cook as chosen for the soup.

I Am the Elephant in the Room

For days now I’ve been trying to string together a cogent response to Michael Pollan’s fat-baiting New York Times op-ed piece. You know, the one where he writes:

One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care.

The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care.

I’ve started about eight letters in response, but have been too furious to finish them. That’s furious as in “wake up in the middle of the night and sit at the computer in an angry fog trying to come up with a statement that encapsulates my rage and disappointment.”

The Roots of Flavor

If there’s a smell more homey that that of onions slowly softening in butter or olive oil, I’ve certainly never smelled it. I don’t know if I’d go so far to bottle the scent and dab it behind my ears, but it certainly draws me into the kitchen. Fortunately, it’s one of the more common scents in my house. From stocks to stews, curries to quiche, many of my favorite recipes start with the cutting and sautéing of an onion.

Dear Obesity-Industrial Complex (the first in what will, no doubt, become a series)

Dear Obesity-Industrial Complex:

It’s not that I don’t appreciate your efforts to save me from myself, but it occurs to me that all your proposed fat taxes might not be as wildly successful as you’d hoped.

I drink maybe two or three sodas a year — usually something exotic like the pink grapefruit-flavored Schweppe’s Agrume I can only get in Paris or the lurid, green tarragon soda they sell at the Armenian grocery stores in Watertown. So I can’t imagine that taxing soda will have that much of an impact on my lifestyle.

And, as for fast food, once you’ve counted the organic pork burritos at Chipotle or the whole-grain egg white flatbread sandwiches I buy at Dunkin’ Donuts or my yearly Lenten fish fillet sandwich at Wendy’s, it’s hard for me foresee fast food taxes causing more than a slight downward blip in my bottom line.

Fusilli with Tuna and Herbed Bread Crumbs

I slept most of the day away today (woke up at 8:00 a.m. and then went back to sleep until noon), and and the cold and sleet kept me from grocery shopping, so I had to fashion a dinner out of the contents of my fridge and pantry.

What I came up with wasn’t half bad. I did a variation on toasted, herbed bread crumbs that I often use as a topping for cauliflower — a sort of Italianized  (or is that Italicized) version of Chou-Fleur à la Polonaise.

This is one of those dishes that should be tinkered with depending on your likes and dislikes, not to mention what’s sitting on your shelves, so consider this recipe a template.

This May Be the Ultimate Food

What could be better than chocolate or bacon? How about chocolate AND bacon?

Vosges Chocolate has introduced Mo’s Bacon Bar — deep milk chocolate with applewood-smoked bacon and alder-smoked salt. They’d already sold me on the glories of chocolate, salt and smoke with their Barcelona Bar (deep milk chocolate, sea salt, hickory-smoked almonds), so there’s no question that I’ll have to try the new addition to their line.

A local gourmet shop sells Vosges products, so guess where I’m going after work tomorrow.

Talking Turkey about Thanksgiving Rituals

On Salon.com yesterday, Adam Roberts interviewed chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill restaurant in New York City. I appreciated his more laid-back attitude to sustainability, but was a little more skeptical about some of his comments about Thanksgiving and tradition.