Raise This Glass!

Pinch turns 5 tomorrow!

[Release confetti and streamers]

I've learned a lot in 5 years. I learned HTML so that I could customize my page layout and formatting. I've learned about what friends-of-Pinch like to cook, eat, and drink. I've learned to keep fresh ginger, limes, and jalapeños stocked in my fridge; not to give up on anything that hasn't yet born fruit (I'm talking about my lemon tree, which was at death's door in October but has since flowered and has a few teeny-tiny lemons growing on it); and that "the money shot" doesn't mean what I thought it meant (it means something entirely different from "a very good photo").

I've learned several new recipes from a few talented and generous cooks. Here's a quick favorite five:

1. Chicken Vesuvio: Best weeknight family meal;
2. Ragu Bolognese: Best weeknight family meal when you have an spare hour in the morning to prep for dinner;
3. Classic Chicken Curry: Best weeknight family meal when you've got enough time to also make fresh Naan OR if you only have time to serve with steamed rice. Also: honorable mention for being AWESOME left over the next day;
4. Cilantro-Ginger Steak Salad: Honorable mention for being a surprisingly scrumptious dinner;
5. Poblano Beef: Best weeknight family meal when you've got poblanos and lean sirloin steak in the fridge.

To celebrate Pinch's birthday I had some mugs made: the etched glass one pictured above. I can't tell you how many of you have confessed your fondess for glass mugs over the years! To win a Pinch mug, please send me your most Pinch-worthy recipe. The winning recipe will be healthy, family friendly, delicious, and it should be new to me. If it's not a real recipe, just something you make by heart, that's fine, just describe it for me. The winning recipe will be posted on Pinch and added to the Recipes page and the author will receive a Pinch mug and a package of Pinch granola (made with nuts in a nuthouse). 

Email your submissions to Pinchfood[at]gmail[dot]com by 11:59PM Pacific tomorrow, March 1 and I'll announce the winner on March 2.  Good luck!

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Celebrating Two Years with Fun, Games, and Pinch-worthy Cookies

Pinch is two years old today. I was surveying all the posts written since its debut (nearly 250!) and decided a fun way to celebrate would be to have you rank five posts in order of how many views they've tallied individually.

The contest will be open for 24 hours. To win, you must rank the posts (#1 will have been the most read post, #5 will have been the least) correctly. All entries must be submitted in the COMMENTS section in this post (below). The first person to submit the correct ranking will receive two dozen of my new favorite cookie, Hazelnut Biscotti.

So, here are the posts, in order of when they appeared on Pinch:

1. Cookie Monster, Yoda, and Afternoon Tea
2. Indoor S'mores: Seriously
3. Cookies that Could Cost You Your Job
4. Eight Reasons Coffee Might be the Boss of You
5. When You are Attacked by a Squirrel

Good luck! And thanks so much for reading.

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And the Winner is...

....catherinelisa who correctly chose cake #7 - an almond cake with Amarena cherries and mascarpone mousse filling. It is finished with a white chocolate band and white chocolate corneli on top. This cake was made in early June 2000, and was one of the first cakes I photographed. Well, that's partly true; I have older photos of wedding cakes but I didn't want to use those here. Congratualtions, CL!

Thanks, everyone, for playing and for all the birthday wishes. And I didn't even have to throw Pinch a party at Chuck E. Cheese like Andy suggested! But I like the mental image of Pinch cracked out on complex carbohydrates, scampering around the arcade, and having a birthday meltdown when Señor Cheese didn't make his promised appearance.

The cakewalk down memory lane was fun for me - remembering the people they were made for in Telluride and Chicago. Pinch has certainly helped recover some of the lost love for layered cakes. But the celebration is over - it's back to cooking that sensible food we love so much. Next up: jicama!

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Celebrating Pinch's First Birthday with a Cakewalk

1. Chocolate Layer Birthday Cake

Before Pinch made its debut one year ago today I was in a funky place with my cooking skills. I wasn't using them in a manner that was satisfying. Since my training was almost exclusively in the pastry kitchen I found myself spreading a lot of sugar, butter and white flour love (death?) and not nearly enough about the healthier foods I served at home. It wasn’t a dramatic Lady Macbeth moment with me racked with guilt over the butter on my hands, but it was close. “What, will these hands ne'er be clean?”

2. Classic Yellow Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Coconut

3. Chocolate Layer Cake with Strawberries and Whipped Cream

A year has passed and the exercise of blogging about the foods I love and writing recipes for the meals I serve has rekindled my appreciation for the skills I amassed in the sweet kitchen. In celebration of Pinch’s first birthday, twelve birthday/celebration cakes are pictured. Since knowledge and cake are meant to be shared, the first commenter to correctly guess the oldest cake wins a chocolate torte from the Pinch kitchen. And yes, I will ship outside of Chicago. :)

4. Chocolate Layer Cake with Strawberries and Whipped Cream and Chocolate Frosting

5. Banana Cake with Whipped Cream

Getting to write and think about the things in our kitchens and markets that make life simpler and more healthy has been its own reward. It pleases me to no end to be a resource for healthy, family friendly meals and the occasional celebration cake. Thanks so much for reading this past year.

6. Mocha Layer Cake

7. Almond Amarena Cake with Mascarpone Mousse

8. Classic Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting

9. Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

10. Chocolate Cake with Blackberries and Cream

11. Baby Shower Cake: Sponge Cake layered with Mascarpone Mousse and Amarena Cherries

12. Flourless Chocolate Torte -- Could be yours!

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10 Ways to Start Eating Along Practical Guidelines

I’ve been looking at the Pinch tag line over the last few posts as a means of explaining further what is advocated on the site and to refocus the blog on its core values. After a holiday season filled with sweets and other indulgences it’s a good time to get back to the basics of sustainable eating.

This is the final installment in the series. Today I’m looking at the final part, “…eating along practical, healthy guidelines.”

What does this mean to you? For me, it’s not about weight loss or even weight management, though overall health is usually better when bodyweight is appropriate. Here’s what it means to me:

1. Eat breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. And a snack or two in between (see #4).
2. Create a healthy balance of protein, fat, carbohydrate for your body and keep every meal balanced accordingly. Popular diets advocate different ratios - Atkins and South Beach are high protein and fat, low in carb (SB sensibly argues dieters minimize saturated fat). Ornish and Pritikin are very low fat, high carbohydrate. The Zone Diet is high protein and low carb, but more lenient on carbs advocating a 40:30:30 ratio of carbohydrates, fat and protein at every meal.
3. Eat a variety of foods - fish, veggies and whole grains should probably be increased in everyone's diet.
4. Make snacks meaningful - no empty calories! 100 calorie packs of Pringles are neither nourishing nor satisfying - they’ll only make you reach for another 100-calorie pack of Pringles.
5. Consider the mini-meal, smaller meals throughout the day.
6. Eat close to the vine. Choose fresh foods, not processed.
7. Cook your own food. One way our weekly diet becomes less healthy is by eating out. Restaurants will either overload you on fat or calories, neither of which should be consumed in excess.
8. Eat like people are watching. Slow down - it will help you to appreciate your body’s cues that you’ve had enough.
9. Keep sweets to a minimum. Following the TCBY-binge of the early 1990s we all learned that hard way that low fat is not low calorie and that excess carbs become fat quicker than you can say “small fat-free vanilla-chocolate swirl.”
10. Make sure your protein is lean protein.

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On Shopping Responsibly

The New Year demanded a State of the Blog address. A week ago I posted thoughts on the first part of the Pinch tag line (the entirety of which reads, "Sophisticated home cooking that supports shopping responsibly and eating along practical, healthy guidelines.") In three installments I'm explaining what Pinch holds dear. This is the second installment.

The middle part of the Pinch tag line concerns itself with shopping. Some of you love it, some hate it. Some of you leave it to Peapod, some share the responsibility with spouses and some of you wouldn't dream of letting someone else pick your avocados. I'm in the latter camp, though am lucky to be married to a gem of a man who picks a fine avocado when called upon to do so.

What does it mean to shop responsibly? Why is it important?

Shopping responsibly means being thoughtful about what you buy, how much you buy (or how much is wasted), who you buy it from, and how much time and money you spend buying it. We can live more responsibly by minimizing waste (food waste, money waste, environmental waste (in the form of gas and packaging) and exposure to needless chemicals or prices.

What you buy
Food you buy should be nourishing, healthy and leave the smallest footprint possible.

For help finding or improving the balance in what you eat, the revised food pyramid (I like the new one from Harvard School of Public Health) is a good place to start. Figuring out the protein-fat-carbohydrate ratio that works best for your body will get you eating healthier more balanced meals. Weekly menu planning helps a lot in this area. If you want to make sure you eat fish once a week, or increase protein in your diet, the way to do it is to shop accordingly. If your cupboards are full of pasta or rice and beans, that’s what you’ll be cooking that week.

Related to footprint, consumers sometimes struggle between buying local or organic. Personally, when forced to pick between the two, I go with local.

Who you buy it from
Where you choose to spend your grocery dollar determines your part in the food economy. I don’t like spending all my money at the farmer’s market but if we want to have smaller farms we need to out our money where our mouth is. It’s important to appreciate the true cost of our food, whether it’s paying $0.89/pound for chicken thighs at Safeway or $1.99 for an avocado at Whole Foods that was grown in South America. In both cases the consumer is footing the bill for more than cheap chicken or avocado airfare. In Slate, Sara Dickerman summed it up nicely,

“…Most of us followers of the food revolution believe that industrially produced cheap food is not actually cheap. It might not cost much at the checkout line, but it hides a raft of government food subsidies and externalities like pesticide and methane pollution, not to mention the inhumane mass production of animals. So it can be hard to get to the bottom of the bottom dollar.”

How much to buy
Shopping precedes cooking and menu planning precedes (or should precede) shopping. When a weekly eating plan or menu is written, it enables the family cook to shop once and cook meals all week long. When I know we’re eating beans, broccoli, artichokes and salad during a given week it’s easy to only buy what we’ll consume that week. This saves time and money.

How much time/money to spend shopping
Over the years I've streamlined the process to make my grocery shopping more efficient. I've significantly reduced the number of weekly grocery runs. Many weeks I've only had to go grocery shopping once (disclosure: I hit 2-3 different stores to get everything on my list).

Before I had children I was a daily market shopper. Granted, we lived down the street from the Pike Place Market in Seattle where it was easy to walk out of my restaurant job, pass thru the market and round up ingredients for dinner for two. It may be inefficient in terms of time, but it did enable us to eat well, seasonally, and left a small footprint.

Spending is entirely personal. My grocery budget is probably on the high side since cooking is a passion of mine. Do vote in the poll this week!

Next up: the final installment in the series will look at how to eat along practical, healthy guidelines.

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Pinch on, Pinch (or Five Ways to More Sophisticated Home Cooking)

I borrowed the funny comma placement in the headline from Lynne Truss, the Eats, Shoots, and Leaves author. I was going to title the post "Pinch on Pinch" since it's going to be a State of the Blog sort of a post. But then the command to PINCH ON! sneaked into my brain.

Anyhoo, the New Year commands me to revisit the Pinch tag line to check that I'm on course. The tag reads: Sophisticated home cooking that supports shopping responsibly and eating along practical, healthy guidelines. Over this week I'll break that down into its three parts. For now, let's consider the first part, sophisticated home cooking.

What does sophisticated home cooking look like? It looks a lot like the menu at your favorite local café -the one where everything on the menu looks great, comes from not too far away, and was made by a person with care in about sixty minutes (beware of things called 30 minute meals - they usually amount to false promises). Sophisticated home cooking is safe (no organ meats or extreme beans) but allows eaters to stretch a bit and try new things.

To be sure, sophisticated home cooking is meant for everyone at the table. Three cheers for parents like my old friend Rachel who cannot bring themselves to serve chicken nuggets to their kids. I don't have a magic menu that everyone in your family will appreciate equally. But, as Frances said, "How do you know what I'll like if you won't even try me?" Coming up with more ideas about the family dinner is on the agenda for Pinch this year.

Back to the sophisticated cooking, how do we get this kind of food to the table?

1. Accumulate recipes – supplement the Pinch cookbook by looking in the right places. Cooks Illustrated, Gourmet, and Food and Wine are all great resources, especially when you use their handy healthy indexing resources. Look for recipes that you would be proud to serve to guests. And disregard recipes with convoluted or lengthy methods. Simple prep is the key to cooking more regularly for yourself or your family.

2. Share with your friends and pick over their recipe catalog for ideas. Everyone loves new recipes, especially ones that have been vetted by other busy families.

3. A well stocked bookshelf is a great resource. Check out my Shelfari bookshelf (below right) or the Pinch store for ideas if you need an infusion of cookbooks.

4. Read menus at your favorite restaurants and remember what sounded good. Do a food blog search back at home and try to replicate entrees at home. I can't tell you how many recipes I've created this way. Love Chicken Vesuvio or French Onion Soup? Both are easy enough to recreate at home. Google may be the best menu assistant around.

5. Practice, practice, practice! Lucky thing that you'll practice eating every day, usually more than once. And if you're the Designated Cook you'll practice your cookery skills every day.

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Pigs on the Video Bar

Owing to a small household disaster I haven’t been able to cook the last few days. I couldn’t even make coffee. My Bodum thermal French press sat shivering like the little match girl behind sheets of protective plastic while a drywall guy patched my ceiling. The low point in a week that included death (of a kitchen, now resurrected) and taxes (blechk) was served to me in a 12-ounce paper cup: Starbuck’s new Pike Place Roast. If you haven’t tried it yet, well done. One, it’s always better to avoid advertising gimmicks and two, this stuff is no good.

Anyhoo, I spent the free time I accumulated not cooking watching the Swedish Chef. I also included him in the video bar (below, right) for your entertainment. I wrote awhile back about Food TV, namely how it’s failed to captivate me (well, Nigella captivates, but I think she could be hanging drywall under those soft lights of hers and enchant viewers) and asking what it's done for you lately.

If you’ll allow a Muppet digression…doesn’t John Hodgeman, the comedian who plays PC guy on Mac commercials look just like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew the Muppet scientist – Johnny to Beaker’s Ed McMahon?? (Disclosure: I had to Google “Muppet scientist” to produce the doctor’s name, but “Beaker” is burned on the brain.)

photo courtesy American Public Media

photo courtesy Muppet Wiki

The Swedish Chef accomplishes what food TV should: convey to the viewership that cooking is fun (and frequently funny). The Muppet has to have been based on Julia Child who defined food television and helped create the modern celebrity chef. She demystified the professional kitchen and haute cuisine for her viewers and arguably the country. She was likable, funny, and human. Possibly if it weren’t for her I would never have entered the culinary profession. That’s what Food TV has done for me.

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How to Pinch

Thanks – so much – to all who visited, subscribed, emailed and left comments this past week. My favorite part of this effort is the conversation. It’s been such a pleasure to be a part of.

I’d like to take a moment to address the top three questions that came up via email this past week.

Comments: There have been several questions about how to leave a comment. The bottom of each post (in the main column) looks like this:

POSTED BY KATIE FAIRBANK AT 3:30 PM 2 COMMENTS
LABELS: THIS, THAT

If you click on 2 COMMENTS a screen will open up for you to add a comment. You also have to enter a code which proves that you are a human being, and not a spam-bot. Sorry about that. Not my rule.

Please leave comments! Share what you know!

Subscribing: There are three ways to subscribe to Pinch: via email, in a news reader, or live bookmark. Each of these keep you up to date on what’s been written on Pinch.

If you choose good ole’ email, you’ll be emailed each time I publish something new (no email means no new content).

If you chose news reader you will be able to view a few recent Pinch posts from the comfort of your home page on Google, Yahoo, etc.

If you chose live bookmark, you’ll get a bookmark in your browser window that shows recent posts.

What the heck is a food mill? This was a popular question. A food mill is a hand-powered kitchen tool used to make purées. It removes seeds and unnecessary fibers via perforated discs and a hand crank. I use mine weekly, almost exclusively on tomatoes. I buy whole peeled tomatoes, or those fantastic fire-roasted ones, and purée them in the food mill before cooking. You can spend $20 or upwards of $100 on a fully stainless steel mill. I really couldn't do without one (and I've got the $20 version).

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