Archive for the ‘Green Eggs & Ham’ Category

Although not a big TV watcher, I have to admit I really love ‘Jamie at Home’. I was  recently watching his winter squash episode, and he  very quickly whipped together butternut squash cupcakes with a very low-sugar icing. ‘Hm’, thought I, ‘I have a bunch of jack-o-lantern pumpkin in the freezer that needs to get eaten’. Then, thought I, “I also have lots of chevre from Smoky Valley Goat Cheese in my freezer”. Hm.

See, back when we did a cheese tasting for Holly the cheesemaker, one of the ideas for use of her chevre was cream cheese icing on carrot cake. Every time that idea crossed my mind, I thought it  was genius. It was time to give it a go.

We directly substituted pumpkin for butternut, and chevre for sour cream, and as unlikely as it is for me to get excited about cupcakes, these are really awesome. They will be a new staple in our home. The girls like them, mom and dad like them, and they’re heavy on winter squash and goat cheese, and relatively light on sugar. The chevre doesn’t need a lot of sugar to whip up into an icing – a few tablespoons of icing sugar per cup of chevre, and it’s really, really good as icing – only a slight tang of tartness reminding me it’s goat dairy and not cream cheese. Because of the light tang, go easy on the citrus, I think, if using Jamie’s recipe. We used no citrus.

So there you have it. Me, endorsing a cupcake. Never thought I’d see the day.

It’s not news:  food does not need to be complicated. This morning at the market we stopped by Green Eggs & Ham to pick up some duck eggs. $4/half dozen that even this self proclaimed cheapass is fine paying, as duck eggs are sizable, going roughly twice as far as chicken eggs. And the verdict is that not only are they novel, the quality is superb.

Although I try not to be a snob if I can avoid it, I do curse when I crack open a paper-thin shell to have the watery-runny-white and pale-insipid-yolk spill in a splash into a bowl or pan. And generally speaking, I’d prefer not to have any of my raw foods, especially animal derived, in the distribution chain for as many weeks as I have toes. Fresh, please.

If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to an egg-off. Fry up or poach [particularly revealing of the white consistency disparity] a stored-forever-industrially-farmed egg next to a fresh-non-industrially-farmed egg. I dare you. You’ll be converted. You too will shamefully succumb to becoming an egg-snob. Fresh, sensibly raised eggs are quite simply: better.