No words needed. Maybe just a heavy gagging sound. Or the sound of me choking on my own vomit.

UPDATE: as a commenter noted this is not a real product, but a ThinkGeek.com April Fool’s joke. Real or fake, it’s still gag-worthy.

I have kind of been on a no sugar thing lately. However, my nephew Gus, who is is celebrating his 5th birthday tomorrow, is decidedly NOT on any such diet. I asked him what kind of birthday cake he wanted and he requested strawberry, but he’s picky so he clarified that he didn’t want any actual strawberries involved in the cake. He was talking pink strawberry cake from a box. Since most 5 year olds are simply sugar fiends as opposed to cake connoisseurs, I am completely OK with making him a cake from a box.

Now I have made cake from a box before, but never the strawberry kind. As you can see from the photo on the box, the cake should turn out a rather putrid color of pink. I poured the dry mix into the bowl and was rather surprised when the mix was pure white, like powdered sugar. Hmmm.

Adding the wet ingredients yielded some anomalous red spots, like little sores breaking out in the batter. Iwww.

A little mixing and you get that Pepto-pink you’re looking for. WHICH TOTALLY BLEW MY MIND. How do you go from pure white mix to My Little Pony Pink? It’s MAGIC. Or maybe it’s chemicals. Magical chemicals.

I would classify the batter as sickeningly sweet with artificial overtones and a strong Starburst nose. It’s baking right now and it’s making me nauseous. It smells like Strawberry Shortcake puked all over my kitchen. In other words, the kids will go crazy for it.

A note: While I enjoy a box cake from time to time, one thing I will not accept is frosting in a can. I just think it tastes nasty and chemically. So I’ll be making this pink cake into a car shape (somehow) with some tasty frosting tomorrow.

I couldn’t resist sharing these neat and somewhat bizarre foodstuffs (and food-related) stuff I found in Japan…

• single serving glass of wine with sardine-can top from the Muji flagship store

• my favorite- milk in a tube. huh? (ok so it’s condensed milk… but still.)
  

• wasabi-beef flavor chips. yuk.

• a kit to make sushi look like soccer balls, to entice your kid to eat it. you’d have to be a REALLY nice mom or dad to go through all that trouble.

• I have never seen curry like this in Vermont, myself.

• Kobe and Matsuzaka beef for sale at Takashimaya- about $200/lb, raw (they were really mad that I took a picture, but I’m not sure why.)

Are you feeling nervous about your turkey-cooking abilities? Fear not, Butterball is totally high-tech and ready to help you prepare the bird this year. There are a variety of different ways to take advantage of their expertise. Which will you choose?

• The “Turkey Lovers” newsletter
• The “Turkey Talk” podcast
• The Turkey to Stuffing Ratio Calculator (including the important question “do you want leftovers?”)
• El Sitio de Butterball en Español

And if all else fails, you can always call the Butterball Hotline at 1-800-BUTTERBALL for all of your basting, stuffing, roasting, crisping, doneness-related questions.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Happy Halloween! So, it’s a cute idea to put gooey candy into plastic Star Wars lightsabers, right?

Oh wait. Picture a kid trying to get the candy out. Um… creepy and perverse. Not helpful that it’s called “spliquid.”

I bought this rice called Tiny Rice, because it’s tiny and adorable, and also because I like saying “Tiny Rice” all together like it’s one word. Tinyrice. Tinyrice. Tinyrice!

So what is Tiny Rice and why is it so tiny? It’s a small (some might say tiny) grain basmati rice imported from Bangladesh. It’s also called Kalijira rice (which incidentally is ALSO fun to say) or sometimes baby basmati. It says on the package it’s the Prince of Rice. (And here I was, not even realizing that rice could be royalty.) It’s cute, it’s delicious, and it’s way more fun than those big awkward rice grains you’re used to, as you can see in the photo below.

Tiny rice only takes about 10 minutes to cook, so that’s pretty cool. It has a great texture because it’s so small- sort of between a rice grain and a couscous grain. When you serve it to people they say things like “what kind of rice is this? I’ve never SEEN such tiny grains of rice!”

I bought it at BiRite Market, but if you need an online source I found it for sale online at at the Lotus Foods website. They Lotus link also has recipes using Kalijira, including a couple of rice pudding recipes which look super tasty. They sell tiny brown rice too, but I’ll be honest, the tiny brown rice grains look a little bigger than tiny. I haven’t tried it yet but that’s next on the list.

Tinyrice tinyrice tinyrice!

When I was but a youthful lass of 22, I worked at the fabulous Extraordinary Desserts in San Diego for about a year. If you’re ever in San Diego, I highly recommend stopping there for one of their scones (the best I’ve ever tasted, to be sure) or to dazzle your friends with one of their heart-stoppingly gorgeous cakes. I learned a lot there, but probably the most important thing I learned was that the way to a good bread pudding is simple: make creme brulee mixture and don’t use regular bread. This opens up a realm of delicious and easily adaptable flavor possibilities and combinations that are blissfully simple to make, as well as very forgiving.

For this occasion, I bought a soft loaf of Semifreddi’s cinnamon twist bread and made an orange zest-infused vanilla brulee mix, then dotted it all with dark chocolate chunks. It took about 5 minutes to put together and tasted like a million bucks. With a scoop of Bi-Rite Creamery’s salted caramel ice cream, it was almost transcendent.

Orange-Cinnamon Bread Pudding with Chocolate Chunks

serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• zest from 1/2 orange
• 3 egg yolks
• 3 T sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 loaf cinnamon bread (1-2 days stale is better than fresh but it will work either way)
• large handful semi-sweet or dark chocolate chunks (can use chocolate chips)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 250.
• Heat cream in saucepan until hot but not bubbling. Turn off heat and add zest. Set aside.
• If bread is a few days old and a bit stale and hard, just use it as is. If it’s fresh soft bread, toast in a 350 degree oven or toaster to dry out a bit before using. Cut bread into 1 inch cubes.
• Whisk yolks, sugar, and vanilla into cream until fully incorporated.
• In a loaf pan or half-size casserole pan, arrange half the bread in the bottom and pour half the cream mixture over. Sprinkle with half the chocolate. Repeat with remaining bread, cream, and chocolate. Press mixture down with the back of a large spoon or your hands, so it’s tightly packed in and all bread is moistened.
• Bake at 250 for about 20-30 minutes, until custard is set but wobbly. Serve warm with ice cream.

A couple months back I posted about a condiment competition between me and my Dad. At the time, I made a black mustard, which I called Moutarde Le Bête Noire (”Black Beast Mustard”), and it was extremely pungent and spicy.

It turns out if you mellow this mustard in the fridge for about a week, it’s absolutely fantastic. Although it didn’t win the competition at the time, it’s now a family favorite. One of our newly learned tricks is to quickly saute green beans or asparagus and toss with this mustard before serving. It’s mellow, rich, and complex, and adored by mustard aficionados and skeptics alike.

You’ll need black garlic to get the full complement of layered flavor here- otherwise it will lack the depth. If you’re not familiar with black garlic, there’s more info in this post.

Moutarde Le Bête Noire

Makes 5-6 cups mustard.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups cabernet sauvignon
• 2 cups red wine vinegar
• 12 cloves black garlic, smashed
• 2 cups brown or black mustard seeds
• 2/3 cup yellow mustard seeds
• 15 black peppercorns
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 whole allspice
• 2 tsp molasses
• 2 T brown sugar

Method:

• Combine all ingredients and let sit for 24 hours at room temperature, loosely covered.
• Pour into food processor or blender and pulse until desired consistency.
• Put into jars and store in fridge for 5-7 days to mellow.
• If you plan to give all the mustard away and have it eaten within a couple of months, it will keep in the fridge. If you want to save it for the future, I recommend pressure canning it in jars.