Carma's Cookery
Substituting Dried Herbs for Fresh Herbs
Since dried herbs possess a stronger flavor than fresh leaf herbs, you will need to adjust your habits when adding dried herbs to a recipe that calls for fresh herbs. Simply substitute 1/3 of the amount to adjust the strength in taste. You don’t want your final results to carry an overpowering favor. Also, there are some dishes that just require fresh — those whose main ingredient is an herb just don’t taste right when made with dried herbs.
Now that your jack-o-lantern has been laid to rest, it is time to think about pumpkins in a different way — as food and home decor.
Pumpkins are an integral part of November’s main holiday in the U.S. They are the prime ingredient in the most popular dessert, pumpkin pie. But you can also use pumpkins a variety of other fall recipes such as pumpkin soup (my favorite is a curried pumpkin soup), pumpkin bread and even pumpkin cookies.
But they also make great decorative items. Toss a few miniature pumpkins and gourds together, add some maize and a wicker cornucopia and you’ve got a perfect fall decoration.
Recently, I visited the atrium at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. They made great use of pumpkins for decoration. I thought I’d share a few of them with you here. I’ll be putting up a whole gallery of images later — after I’ve settled into my new home and the holidays are through.
With busy lives — and who isn’t crazy busy in the months of November and December, what with all the family, friend and co-worker get-togethers — it’s often hard to think or plan ahead. Statistics show that most people don’t think about what to have for dinner until after 4pm that day. And when day is done, what we want is to find comfort in our personal time, not the frustration of what to cook or the disappointment of a mediocre meal.
But think of it: all that slicing can become rather tiring and the slices are never perfect. Some are too thick while others are too thin. So what is a banana lover to do? Invest in the new handy banana slicer, which is reputed to be able to handle an entire banana at one time and produce perfect slices for all your banana slicing needs.
The most wonderful thing about the banana slicer is the simplicity of its design. A single piece of molded plastic in the delightful shape of a banana makes this product not only functional but also fun to look at. One quick chop is all you need to quickly slice an entire fresh banana for your cereal or a quick snack. The banana slicer is 10 inches long, so it suits most bananas on the market today. The gadget is also dishwasher safe so there is no messy banana mess to clean up afterwards.
The other day, as my husband was listening to one of his podcasts, it occurred to me that the world is so amazingly connected. The podcast was talking about the issue of bee die offs happening throughout the U.S. They even interviewed a pumpkin farmer about how bees were affecting his crops.
Also, to help me develop content for this blog, I have a Google Alert set for the keyword “pumpkin” and so I get a lot of news about how weather — both lack of rain and too much rain — are adversely affecting the pumpkin crops around the country.
When you hear about global climate change, does it occur to you that this might affect what kind of pie you’ll be able to serve with Thanksgiving dinner? If you don’t like honey, a bee die off might not catch your attention. But this simple fact actually might raise the prices of the vegetables in your local grocery store because the crops are smaller.
The Day of the Dead or La Dia de los Muertos is an important holiday in Mexican culture. It is actually a three-day celebration, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2. It is an opportunity to honor those who have left us behind and a very healthy approach to death that many other cultures would do well to adopt. This is a family event and as such there is typically a good deal of great food involved.
If this is your first celebration of the Day of the Dead you are not alone. Most Americans never adopt this custom and those that are interested enough to try out some of the cuisine of this important day in Mexican society are very rarely versed in the tradition, which makes it difficult.