Moving..BEEP..BEEP...BEEP

The time has come for a little change, my friends. Quips, Travails, and Braised Oxtails is packing up nose-to-tail and moving to ChicagoNow.

I hope you'll all enjoy the new format, and follow me here:

Quips, Travails and Braised Oxtails

or www.chicagonow.com/quips-travails-braised-oxtails

Thank you all for supporting me - make sure you check out all the features and reset your RSS feeds and readers for the new location!

Policy Point Wednesday - School Lunch: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?

This Friday, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack sent a letter to Congress outlining new changes to the National School Lunch Program.  As you may have read, the new lunches have come under fire primarily for reductions in meats, meat alternates and grains.  Vilsack reports that while the original Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was carefully developed to best meet the needs of the students it serves, the USDA has decided on some changes.

The blog Obama Foodorama linked a copy of Vilsack's letter, which states:

• "This flexibility is being provided to allow more time for the development of products that fit within the new standards while granting schools additional weekly menu planning options to help ensure that children receive a wholesome, nutritious meal every day of the week."

In addition to complaints about hungry kids and kids who won't eat vegetables, the USDA has been made aware that school lunchrooms aren't able to find products that allow them to keep grains and proteins within both the minimum and maximum calorie requirements for the program.  Essentially, Vilsack has decided to waive the calorie cap on these products for the time being - how that will translate to students' plates remains to be seen.

Vilsack does note that the new guidelines still offer twice as many fruits and vegetables and more whole grains than prior school lunches.

 "As directed by Congress under the HHFKA, USDA relied on the recommendations of experts like the Institute of Medicine- a gold standard for scientific analysis- as the basis for our standards. The result was updated, science-based standards, in which the portions of school meals are "right-sized" to reflect the age and dietary needs of the students served and the appropriate balance  between food groups.They are designed to ensure that children have the energy they need to learn in class and be physically active, while reducing their risk for serious chronic diseases."

He also notes that lunches are not intended to provide the full day's calories for any child, so children who are especially active may need to purchase extra food a la carte, or bring food from home, and school booster clubs and PTAs may need to step in to support more active kids.  The Healthier School Day FNS website has more information on how and why school lunch has changed, and how the guidelines were created to support children during the school day.

The Food Desert Project: Pumpkin Beggar's Purses

Sometimes in this project, I'm stymied by really silly things - take Beggar's Purses.  We've done crepes before, they aren't that hard, and a Beggar's Purse is just a filled crepe...but it's usually tied with either a chive leaf or a strip of orange or lemon zest.  I kept trying to think of ideas on how to tie up these puppies...cooked spaghetti (blech)? String (also blech)?  Fruit roll-ups (blech..and melty)?

Of course, the more I thought about it the more confused I got - until I realized I was waaay over-thinking.  In the end, I simply cut one of the crepes into ribbons and used those.  Word to the wise - crepes do NOT want to be tied in a knot.  Bend one side gently under the other and BACK AWAY SLOWLY.  Don't try to pull the knot tight, because they will just break and then you'll have to eat the bits.  I gained five pounds just in crepe-bits-eating alone while making this recipe.

So, first of all, you need about 10 crepes.  I have an excellent recipe here, so I'm not going to repeat it.  If you are wise, you'll make extra crepes and freeze them so you can do things like this in a hurry.  You can actually fill these with anything not too watery, but I chose a kind of breakfasty pumpkin filling.

Ingredients

1 can of plain pumpkin
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
2 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs vanilla sugar (or just plain sugar and a bit of vanilla extract)
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Whisk all the ingredients together until completely blended and smooth.  Spray a cookie sheet thoroughly with cooking spray and preheat your oven to 350.

First, take your ugliest crepe (there's always at least one) and roll it up like a cigar.  Cut the end off so you have a series of strips to wrap around your "purse."



Second, put a crepe flat on your work surface and spoon about 2-4 tablespoons of the filling in the middle.


Pick up the outside edge of the crepe, and begin to gather it into pleats going all the way around the filling, until you have it bunched in your hand.


Gently wrap a crepe strip around the bunch nearest to the filling - do NOT stretch or pull the strip as it will break.  Equally gently, flip one end under the other loosely.




Set the beggar's purse gently on the cookie sheet and spray the outside with cooking spray.  Repeat until all your crepes are ready to bake.

Bake the Beggar's Purses for 15 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown and a bit crispy and your house smells like pumpkin pie.  You can eat these straight-up or drizzle them with some maple syrup.  Enjoy!

Sundays With Sparky: Cheez Fish? Gold-Its?

When you bring a group of boys into your house, the chances that you'll find a cooking project to satisfy everyone is...well, slim at best.  It needs to be a project easily set aside for multiple rounds of mayhem, to have an element of danger to it, and, most importantly - a tasty end result.  By tasty, for most boys, I mean predictable: while they love adventure on the virtual battlefield, adventurous palates are not really the hallmark of the free-range schoolboy.

Therefore, I had to do some serious research.  I knew there were two camps of cheese-cracker kids: the kids who eat the fishy ones, and the kids who eat the square ones.  After googling a recipe or two, I knew I was on the right track (special thanks to Do It And How for the DIY goldfish cutter!)  Then I realized I really ought to look up the ingredients of the actual crackers...and it turns out, there IS a difference!  Goldfish are seasoned with garlic powder, and Cheez Its are seasoned with paprika, but other than that they are basically the same.

Note: while it's a lot of fun to make these crackers yourself, they really aren't better for you than the packaged kind.  While the ingredients lists look scary, they are all basically made with flour, cheese, fat (though theirs is palm oil and ours is butter) and annatto color; most of the scary-sounding ingredients are actually vitamins, some of which are in your flour, too.  Basically, once there's enough fat in something not even giant food conglomerates need to manipulate it much for a long shelf-life.

I decided we'd mimic the two store brand's recipes and then make a wild-card version like the Rachel Cooks recipe, flavored with mustard.

First, Dr. Lasergonapus and Sparky drank some root beer.  As you can see, only the finest for my boys!  While this looks like just another opportunity for them to mug for the camera, the soda will become important later in the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 tsp annatto seeds
4 tbsp butter

8 ounces white extra-sharp cheddar cheese
3/4 tsp salt
1 cup flour (we used Atta or Chapati flour; it's whole-wheat but very finely ground)

1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1/2 tsp yellow mustard

Equipment:

Kitchen shears
used soda cans
food processor (you can also use a cheese grater and knead by hand.)
parchment-lined cookie sheets

For the first step, Sparky and his good friend Dr. Lasergonapus measured the annatto seeds into the butter, and we heated it on medium-low heat on the stovetop until the butter fizzled and slowly became shockingly orange.

Then we strained it into a ramekin and stuck it in the freezer while the boys played a round of mayhem.  This is how most orange-colored foods are dyed, and if you want some color in your Mac and Cheese, it's a good way to go.


When the butter was frozen solid and the universe was safe, the boys came back to the kitchen.  We cut the cheese (tee hee) into strips, and pulverized it in the food processor with short, quick pulses. (Note me Hitchocking in this photo.)


Once the cheese was completely broken up, we added the flour, salt and frozen butter and blended it until it came together in a bright-orange ball.

We wound up with a lump that looked and felt like play dough, which we divided into three parts.  Each separate part went back into the food processor for a whirl round with one of the three flavorings, and then each was seperately wrapped and stuck into the fridge while the boys made cookie cutters.


Made cookie cutters? You heard me - thanks to Krisgo (where you can get specifics,) this turned out to be incredibly easy and far less dangerous than I'd imagined.

I rinsed out the soda cans and cut them into circles using kitchen shears, and the boys used the strips and tape to shape different tiny cutters (I did make a fishy one just to identify the Goldfish flavor crackers.)  Surprisingly, the edges were not dangerously sharp - but cutting through metal with scissors provided that element of suspense and risk that this project desperately needed!

If you have smaller children or sensitive fingers you may want to cover the top edge with more tape. 

At this point, we were joined by another of Sparky's buddies, Mr. McAwesome, who helped us to go from dough to crackers.





So, we rolled out each type of dough to about 1/8 inch, cut it with the cutters and put it on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.


As you can see, we used the fish cutter for our "Goldfish" flavor, and the random shapes for our mustard-flavored crackers.



Cheez-its are just squares cut with a pizza cutter,




and then we used a fork to crimp the sides, and a skewer to poke a hole in the middle (if you have a pastry wheel, you can skip the crimping.)



We baked the first two batches at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes...which gives them a kind of "frico" flavor and texture.  Baking at 300 degrees for 15 minutes produces something more like a packaged cracker.





After cooling, we munched!  Crispy baked cheese...Mmmmm! IMO, the three flavors weren't really substantially different, but it was definitely fun having all the different shapes!

Enjoy!