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From Twitter 09-09-2010
Sep. 10th, 2010 03:00 am- 06:24:44: Morning, all. Foot clinic today. Scheduled visit, but I think it's slightly worse this week. Will keep u all informed. Wish me luck!
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Sep. 10th, 2010
When momfood becomes granfood…
Sep. 10th, 2010 11:30 amI cannot recommend The Momfood Project too highly. It is in the form of a blog or series of articles about food that your mom (yeah, it's American: here it would be called "The Mumfood Project"…) used to make and that you affectionately remember and try to consciously continue to make and pass along to your own offspring or friends. I've already contributed a link to Mother Hansen's Chicken Stew to them.
Some food isn't strictly speaking "momfood". Your mom might have cooked it at some point, but to her it was really momfood, as her own mother cooked it. Thus, to you it's granfood (or, in the UK, nanfood).
New England is full of such foods. People there pass along recipes from generation to generation. Something that's successful once continues down the decades as each generation's mom replicates the recipes that her mom used to cook for her. Occasionally some dishes fall out of fashion. Who cooks Indian Pudding nowadays? People who crave it go to Durgin Park Restaurant in Boston! (Beware of badly-designed website: the "turn off the music button is at the upper-right-hand corner) and the menu link in the middle is delayed so that no menu appears until a few seconds after you click it, but I digress…) The Baked Indian Pudding is $5.95 at Durgin Park, by the way.
About a year ago I came across a recipe for Grapenut Pudding. It is the New England response to rice puddings of all kinds. Grapenuts, of course, refers to the Post cereal which consists of nuggets of wheat that are hard as rocks in the box. When soaked in hot water then doused with milk and sugar, they make a passable breakfast cereal. My mother didn't like it as a cereal very much, so we only had it at my maternal grandparents' house when we holidayed there every summer. We thought it was "grownup food", but I think my grandmother believed that it was good for digestion (pardon my euphemism). If you didn't soak the cereal in warm/hot water, then drain it and put cold milk on it, the individual nuggets were hard enough to seriously threaten your tooth integrity.
The only thing my mother ever did with Grapenuts is make pudding with them. This is a detail supplied by my brother, oddly enough; I have no recollection of ever having had this dish at home or at any time in my childhood. He assured me, however, that she used to make it often. So it must be true. I guess it's now possible to make and eat momfood without actually recalling any occasion that your own mother actually cooked it.
I associate Grapenuts with my grandmother, which is why this is "granfood". It's basically a custard that is thickened and extended with Grapenuts cereal. I add raisins to it, but otherwise have left the recipe untouched.
Grapenut Pudding
Yield: 6 servings
1 quart milk, scalded
1 cup Grape-Nuts cereal
4 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar (I use Splenda as you can cook with it and I am diabetic)
1 tablespoon vanilla
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
Whole nutmeg
Water
Heat oven to 350°/Gas Mark 4 or 5. In a medium-size bowl, pour scalded milk over Grape-Nuts and let sit 5 minutes. In a second medium-size bowl, beat eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Add egg mixture to milk and Grape-Nuts and stir well. Pour into a buttered 2-quart casserole dish. If you're using raisins, put them in now. Generously grate nutmeg over the top. Place the casserole into a deep roasting pan. Place in the oven and pour water into the roasting pan, enough to reach halfway up the side of the casserole. Bake 45 to 60 minutes, until almost set in the center (very slight jiggle), or when a knife put into the pudding 1" from the center comes out clean. Around 15 minutes into the cooking, stir very gently once with a wooden spoon in order to distribute the grapenuts and raisins evenly throughout the pudding.
I just made one, and here's a picture of it, hot out of the oven.
With it I shall make Mom's Whipped Cream. Too many people use CoolWhip (or are they calling it KewlWip these days? I'm out of touch with US foods…). My mom even used it as we got to be teenagers and took too much of her time keeping us in line.
The ingredients are simple: 1 container of whipping cream, about 1/2 c sugar or Splenda, 1 tsp vanilla extract. By the way, use real vanilla extract, please. Do not use "vanilla flavouring" or anything that is not genuine—those things taste like cough syrup that has gone bad.
Put all the ingredients into an electric mixer bowl and beat, first on low, then medium, then high. Do not try doing this with an egg beater unless you are uncommonly strong and have taken an endurance test. You will fail to get it to the proper consistency and require revival afterward. You might even eat all the pudding with all the whipped cream before the rest of your family gets to it.
Some food isn't strictly speaking "momfood". Your mom might have cooked it at some point, but to her it was really momfood, as her own mother cooked it. Thus, to you it's granfood (or, in the UK, nanfood).
New England is full of such foods. People there pass along recipes from generation to generation. Something that's successful once continues down the decades as each generation's mom replicates the recipes that her mom used to cook for her. Occasionally some dishes fall out of fashion. Who cooks Indian Pudding nowadays? People who crave it go to Durgin Park Restaurant in Boston! (Beware of badly-designed website: the "turn off the music button is at the upper-right-hand corner) and the menu link in the middle is delayed so that no menu appears until a few seconds after you click it, but I digress…) The Baked Indian Pudding is $5.95 at Durgin Park, by the way.
About a year ago I came across a recipe for Grapenut Pudding. It is the New England response to rice puddings of all kinds. Grapenuts, of course, refers to the Post cereal which consists of nuggets of wheat that are hard as rocks in the box. When soaked in hot water then doused with milk and sugar, they make a passable breakfast cereal. My mother didn't like it as a cereal very much, so we only had it at my maternal grandparents' house when we holidayed there every summer. We thought it was "grownup food", but I think my grandmother believed that it was good for digestion (pardon my euphemism). If you didn't soak the cereal in warm/hot water, then drain it and put cold milk on it, the individual nuggets were hard enough to seriously threaten your tooth integrity.
The only thing my mother ever did with Grapenuts is make pudding with them. This is a detail supplied by my brother, oddly enough; I have no recollection of ever having had this dish at home or at any time in my childhood. He assured me, however, that she used to make it often. So it must be true. I guess it's now possible to make and eat momfood without actually recalling any occasion that your own mother actually cooked it.
I associate Grapenuts with my grandmother, which is why this is "granfood". It's basically a custard that is thickened and extended with Grapenuts cereal. I add raisins to it, but otherwise have left the recipe untouched.
Grapenut Pudding
Yield: 6 servings
1 quart milk, scalded
1 cup Grape-Nuts cereal
4 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar (I use Splenda as you can cook with it and I am diabetic)
1 tablespoon vanilla
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
Whole nutmeg
Water
Heat oven to 350°/Gas Mark 4 or 5. In a medium-size bowl, pour scalded milk over Grape-Nuts and let sit 5 minutes. In a second medium-size bowl, beat eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Add egg mixture to milk and Grape-Nuts and stir well. Pour into a buttered 2-quart casserole dish. If you're using raisins, put them in now. Generously grate nutmeg over the top. Place the casserole into a deep roasting pan. Place in the oven and pour water into the roasting pan, enough to reach halfway up the side of the casserole. Bake 45 to 60 minutes, until almost set in the center (very slight jiggle), or when a knife put into the pudding 1" from the center comes out clean. Around 15 minutes into the cooking, stir very gently once with a wooden spoon in order to distribute the grapenuts and raisins evenly throughout the pudding.
I just made one, and here's a picture of it, hot out of the oven.
With it I shall make Mom's Whipped Cream. Too many people use CoolWhip (or are they calling it KewlWip these days? I'm out of touch with US foods…). My mom even used it as we got to be teenagers and took too much of her time keeping us in line.
The ingredients are simple: 1 container of whipping cream, about 1/2 c sugar or Splenda, 1 tsp vanilla extract. By the way, use real vanilla extract, please. Do not use "vanilla flavouring" or anything that is not genuine—those things taste like cough syrup that has gone bad.
Put all the ingredients into an electric mixer bowl and beat, first on low, then medium, then high. Do not try doing this with an egg beater unless you are uncommonly strong and have taken an endurance test. You will fail to get it to the proper consistency and require revival afterward. You might even eat all the pudding with all the whipped cream before the rest of your family gets to it.
If you live in Toronto (hi, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
trawnapanda!), you can now get your household electronics waste recycled. The following commercial is kind of like a reverse of Crazy Eddie's ads in the New York area in the 1980's. BUT…I wish that London had a similar service.
trawnapanda!), you can now get your household electronics waste recycled. The following commercial is kind of like a reverse of Crazy Eddie's ads in the New York area in the 1980's. BUT…I wish that London had a similar service.