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In last week’s column I mentioned that 250 species of cinnamon grow around the world and I thought about cinnamon all week. There are two in my spice collection: Vietnamese and Chinese Tung Hing. Vietnamese is hot, sweet, and potent; it’s the flavor in red hot candy. Tung Hing is extra sweet and pungent. Now I was curious. Which one of those 250 species is the best culinary cinnamon on planet earth? The one that stands out because it has such awesome flavor all the other cinnamons pale in comparison. The Supreme Grand Champion of cinnamon ‒ the stuff that makes epic apple pies, cinnamon rolls, and pumpkin spice lattes. Where on earth is that cinnamon?

My sojourn started with a short lesson on the geography of cinnamon and how it grows. It’s a tropical and sub-tropical plant, grown in ten countries. Indonesia, China, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka grow most of it. It grows in the United States in warm climates. In 2020, the world produced 222,122 tons (please remember that random fact if you ever are a guest on jeopardy). Cinnamon grows as a tall evergreen tree or a small shrub. To make cinnamon, farmers shave off the outer bark and harvest the tender inner bark. Cinnamon naturally curls up into quills as it dries. Those quills are then cut into sticks and crushed into powder and chips, or pressed for oil.

I went down the rabbit hole as I continued on  my quest. You know how it goes: you read one website and then the next and all roads eventually lead to  . . .  Amazon. And the winner is — Alba cinnamon from Ceylon. This rare cinnamon is the topmost grade and smoothest cinnamon in the world noted for its spicy, citrus, and floral flavors. I ordered a package of “Ceylon’s Finest True Alba Cinnamon 5 Inch Long Quills, Harvested in 2022.”

While waiting for this package to arrive I did a cinnamon sampling. I put equal amounts of vanilla ice cream in separate dishes and sprinkled the Vietnamese cinnamon from my spice cabinet on one and Tung Hing on the other. The warmth of the cinnamon and the cool creaminess of the ice cream were a perfect pair and I had ice cream for lunch three days in a row (please don’t tell anyone). The flavor differences were subtle yet distinctive.

I am so excited to get my new cinnamon! Freshly grated, world class Alba cinnamon sprinkled over vanilla ice cream for dessert anyone? Add a drizzle of dark chocolate syrup and chopped pecans and the experience may just well be over the top. Ah, life is good, isn’t it? Stay tuned for the next episode!

A question I contemplated years ago was, “What is the minimum number of foods a person needs in their pantry so they can whip up something delicious in just 20 to 30 minutes”? After all, the alphabet has only 26 letters, yet the Oxford dictionary lists 171,476 words made with various combinations of those letters. What could a person make with 26 “just right” food items in their pantry? That would be the ingredients ABC’s!

The next question I asked was “How many foods are there in the world”? Think about all the different foods grown in various geographical regions around the earth. Take cinnamon for example. Most people think the cinnamon commonly available at the grocery store is the only kind there is, but did you know that the genus of cinnamon has 250 different species?  Cinnamon comes in four forms – sticks, chips, powder, and oil. That’s potentially a thousand different kinds of cinnamon, each with subtle distinctions in flavor. Or how’z about lemons?  Surprise! There are 30 different varieties. The sort typically found at the supermarket is called Lisbon, but there are also Buddha’s Hand, Meyer, and 27 more.

Many foods are made with the same ingredient but are produced in different ways, such as cheese. There are thousands and thousands of cheeses, each made with only milk and/or cream, but created by unique methods. Each culture/region has its own indigenous version.

In the late winter, I like to flip through the five-hundred page “Whole Seed Catalogue” which lists hundreds, if not thousands of heirloom fruits, vegetables, and edible flowers. The catalogue explodes with beautiful photographs and mouth-watering descriptions of varieties not often seen in a grocery store. That’s just one seed catalogue; there are many others.

The possible food combinations are endless. I am so thankful to have this huge kaleidoscope of foods available to give me boundless fodder for discovery and adventure. I can browse the world of food just by standing in an aisle at an ethnic grocery store or perusing a website.

This Thanksgiving, I will take a moment to contemplate the unfathomable generosity of Mother Earth and the extraordinary playground she provides. Here, we can endlessly explore and discover the world of food among other things. What a sensory delight! I will thank Father Sun, as well, for giving her the power to create. Pondering on these musings evokes in me deep feelings of joy and my spirit expands with fullness. I love this big blue marble I call home and the tens of millions of letters in Mother Earth’s food alphabet. Oh my! That’s a lot of letters, isn’t it? To infinity and beyond!

Last week I wrote about my alarm over the high price of lettuce – seven dollars for a head that weighed about a pound (this week that same head of lettuce is $7.49). That’s about the same price as ground beef. This seems just  . . . well, NQR – not quite right.

When I complained about the soaring price of lettuce to my friend, she suggested that I view the situation in a different way. Why not be thankful we can even get lettuce and other out-of-season produce any time of the year?

When I grew up, pineapple was available only in December and it was a huge treat. My mother would serve it as dessert; it was special! My father was born in 1899 and was a lifelong Oregon resident. He said at Christmas he got one orange in his stocking and citrus was not seen for the rest of the year. Now we have not only citrus and pineapple, but blueberries year around. I once studied the “global blueberry supply chain”. We are so fortunate to get blueberries in the winter from Peru, Chile, and Argentina. Raspberries are available all year too, along with a long list of other out-of-season fruits and vegetables.

I took my friend’s advice and in the spirit of being grateful, I started to think about all the people involved in getting iceberg lettuce onto my plate. How many people participate in the process from the time the farmer plants the seed to when a shopper plucks the head of lettuce from the produce aisle? Think about it. Fertilizer and pesticides, farm labor and machinery, farming cooperatives, processing plants and warehouses, trucking and containers, refrigeration, food safety, regulators and inspectors at every turn, and labor unions. Then include all those involved in the policy-level issues such as immigration, trade, and subsidies. On first glance the head of lettuce may seem commonplace, but consider the collective effort it took to get it onto your plate.

I can make a choice. I can complain about the high price of lettuce or appreciate all those people who make it possible for me to eat that sweet, succulent, tender lettuce when it’s 30 degrees outside. Having a gratitude attitude might sound cliché, but when I notice the constant stream of the small little blessings in life, I feel fullness and joy. It’s like Thanksgiving every day when I see the cornucopia of good things that come my way.

This Thanksgiving, acknowledge the contribution of the all unseen people who help get food onto your table. This will add richness to your celebration. Maybe now you can even be grateful for that $7.49 head of lettuce.

The other day, I went to the store to buy some salad greens and I was aghast to see that a head of iceberg lettuce was seven dollars, a big price jump from the week before. Why the sudden increase? After all, iceberg lettuce is rather traditional and not exactly upscale.  We have all noticed creeping food inflation. Is this sudden price spike a harbinger of things to come? Will a salad become financially out-of-reach for most people or eaten only on special occasions?

Later that night, I talked to my friend Jerry who had talked to his friend Larry who had also been to the store and noticed the price of lettuce, too. Oh my! Hot gossip from the produce aisle! Was this true in other places? I texted my friend, Margie, who lives in Salem and asked her to please note the price of iceberg lettuce next time she went to the store. Did lettuce cost seven dollars only for people in rural Central Oregon for some random reason?

Two days later I was still pondering on this situation. My inquiring mind wanted to know why the lettuce price is so high! I posed my question to Google; apparently many other people had inquiring minds, too. The price spike wasn’t all due to inflation. A disease called the Necrotic Spot Virus hit the Salinas Valley in California (nicknamed the nation’s salad bowl) and caused severe damage to harvests. Seventy-five percent of the crop has been tossed out. The disease affected most of the lettuces, not just iceberg. Add to that more expensive fuel, fertilizer, a shortage in truck drivers, and soaring labor costs and that picture looks grim. Soon, lettuce will be harvested in Yuma, Arizona and prices will decline. If not, who knows, lettuce could soon become a black market item.

For the time being, lettuce is a precious commodity. Store it correctly so that it does not go to waste. When I researched food waste, I learned that the number one wasted item was bagged salad greens, with almost half being tossed out. Most people tend to store lettuce in plastic but lettuce needs air and moisture. Store it wrapped in moist cloth or paper towels that you spray with water occasionally; doing that will prolong the life of your lettuce. The stem on iceberg lettuce falls out when you forcefully whack the stem end on the counter and twist it out. The leaves easily separate that way.

Jerry dropped off a pound of elk meat today; I invited him to come for elk burgers. I will go ahead and buy a head of iceberg because whenever I eat elk, it’s a special occasion. 

Last week, I emptied out a storage unit that had hung like an albatross around my neck for several years. I opened up boxes and was surprised to see contents I had long forgotten about. Old things became new again, like presents, as one after the other jumped out of those dormant boxes.

One large box in particular was quite heavy and with all my might, I hoisted it onto a table and opened it. The box contained swing-top-bale jars in a variety of sizes that were filled with food from my previous pantry (a swing-top-bale jar is a jar with a metal clasp and a rubber gasket typically used for canning and they are great for storing dry ingredients too). I opened a few jars expecting dull and stale aromas but was pleasantly greeted with all sorts of concentrated scents. The food was the same as I had left it. The colors were vibrant and none of the food looked unappetizing. Porcini mushroom powder, dark cocoa, smoked paprika, peppermint tea, and black pepper all had strong fragrances and the food still seemed fresh. How would that food taste after all those years?

That night, I took a few jars home to find out if their strong scents indicated fresh flavors. The litmus test would be a jar of black pepper that was at least five or six years old, maybe more. I had ordered it from a store in New York City named Kalustyans, after reading an article in Cook’s Illustrated magazine that said their house blend pepper was the best in the world. I filled my pepper grinder with that old pepper and put some on a fried egg sandwich and much to my surprise, the pepper burst with multiple layers of flavor. I also made a hot cocoa with the dark chocolate powder and it was delicious as if I had bought the chocolate yesterday.

When I opened the jars, I heard a popping sound because the jar was sealed airtight. That explained why the food had lasted so long; food deteriorates quickly when exposed to air. Bale jars are somewhat spendy as far as jars go, but are one-time investments that can last a lifetime. Maybe consider buying a few at a time. The French made La Parfait, Italian Fido, and English Kilner jars the best. They are well designed and easy to open and close. The rubber seals are replaceable; you will know you need new ones when the rubber starts to crack. The seals come in a pack of ten and are inexpensive. You won’t have to ever replace or recycle the jars. Even if they stay in your storage unit for years. Or decades.

I love the color explosion of fall when suddenly poof! the leaves change color almost overnight and then the pumpkins arrive. There they are dotted around town in front of stores, shops, and on doorsteps painted with so many artistic faces. Next comes a pumpkin that roasts in the oven, followed by warm pumpkin bread smeared with butter and eaten with a cup of Earl Grey at teatime. Maybe a surprise visit from a friend will be the perfect accompaniment.

I’ve been making this pumpkin bread recipe for years and love it because in addition to pumpkin, you can switch it up with applesauce, zucchini, bananas, and probably any other pureed fruit or vegetable (though I doubt radishes would work well). Reliable and versatile recipes are worth their weight in gold; they are very much like good friends or a comfortable old sweater with a hole or two in it.

Pumpkin Bread

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
½ to 1 cup sugar depending on how sweet you like it
Spices: ½ tsp each cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger or 1+ tablespoon any other combination of warm spices
2 eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla or other flavoring (I like maple, almond, and hazelnut)
1 cup pumpkin or other pureed fruit or vegetable
Chopped nuts, raisins, dates, candied ginger, chocolate chips, etc.

Combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and thoroughly mix them together. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan. You can vary the size of the loaf —just make sure the pan is filled about ⅔ full; you can use muffin tins, too. Bake in a 350⁰ oven for 35-40 minutes or until the bread starts to pull away from the edges of the pan and cracks appear on the surface. Cool in the pan. This bread freezes well, too.

Last week I visited my dear friend Marge and she had baked a butternut squash so we decided to make this pumpkin bread. She has a friend from Nepal who gave her a spice blend of cardamom, cinnamon, clove, and black pepper. I was a bit reluctant to use the spice blend because I wasn’t sure how the pepper would taste, but it turned out to be a splendid addition. We soaked some raisins overnight in rum and toasted some walnuts in a cast iron skillet. The loaf came out of the oven and with great impatience we ate it while it was still steaming.  We were not even polite enough to wait for it to finish cooling! That was at noon and by five it was almost gone. It was undoubtedly the best version of this recipe that I have ever eaten. Try it! You might just like it.

I’m a blue cheese fan and I’ve noticed that people either love it or they hate it; there’s no in-between. Some people abhor the idea of eating moldy cheese – eeeeew!! Yet blue cheese has an extraordinarily pungent, savory, and concentrated flavor. Blue cheese lovers, read on!

My friend Joanne recently gave me her recipe for blue cheese salad dressing and it’s the best I have ever eaten and so simple to make. The dressing gets better with age and it lasts for a couple of weeks in the fridge. I like to use it on a classic “wedge” salad, the kind served at high-end steak houses: a wedge of iceberg lettuce, crumbled bacon, and blue cheese dressing. Simple! Over the years fancy baby green lettuces have appeared on the market and iceberg lettuce has taken somewhat of a back seat, considered to be pedestrian and boring among the sea of these fancier “party greens”. Yet iceberg is succulent, sweet, crisp, and crunchy and it has little crevices that coddle the dressing. It’s a lovely supporting actor that makes other flavors “pop” beautifully. I also use blue cheese dressing on a salad of romaine with baby shrimp, tomatoes, hardboiled eggs, and cucumbers. I’ve even used it on a baked potato – yum!!!

This dressing can be made in any amount; it’s the proportions that matter. I usually use a cup of each ingredient and two cloves of garlic and the juice of one whole lemon.

Blue Cheese Dressing

⅓ sour cream
⅓ mayonnaise
⅓ blue cheese
Minced garlic
Lemon juice

Crumble the blue cheese (if it isn’t already) and vigorously mix the ingredients together with a fork. Make it at least one day before you plan to use it and store it in glass jar. Blue cheese freezes quite well and in fact, I’ve noticed that after it has been frozen it lasts much longer in the fridge. I like the widely available Danish blue cheese for use in recipes because it is relatively inexpensive, crumbly, available, and the flavor is wildly complex and robust.

A blue cheese from Oregon won international recognition several years ago. The Rogue River Creamery’s “Rogue River Blue” was given the World Champion award at the World Cheese Awards in 2019. This was the first time ever a cheese from the United States took top prize in this contest and it competed against a record-breaking 3804 cheeses from 42 countries.

A judge commented “the flavor is exceptional, exhibiting blackberry, vanilla, hazelnut, chocolate, and bacon flavors”. Wow! Now I am absolutely curious! This cheese is available on their website. I’m gonna’ put it on my wish list for Santa. I hope that Santa likes blue cheese too and knows how to shop on the internet.

Last week I wrote about the conundrum I was in while shopping on the internet for a mandolin — a tool that makes easy work of slicing fruits and vegetables. Trying to find a mandolin that was a cut above the rest (did you spot the pun?) was not an easy task because there were soooo many choices. I finally ordered one that was 20 dollars,  easy to use, and made by the Japanese company Kyocera who specializes in razor sharp ceramic blades (caution — consider using cut-resistant gloves).

When the package arrived, I was filled with glee like I was a little kid who expected a toy to be in the box. That got me thinking; as adults we do not use the word play very often. Why not? We get serious and focused and busy and think of tasks like slicing vegetables as work. Well, to heck with that attitude.I wadded up the idea of “adults can’t play” and flung it over my shoulder and with sheer delight, opened the box to have fun with my new toy.

There it was and I was so excited, I dashed into the kitchen and looked in the fridge for vegetables to cut up. I found mushrooms, cucumbers, and potatoes. I started with the mushrooms but they crumbled into little pieces and my spirit sank in disappointment. I tried a cucumber but the slices were so thin I could fold them in half. This was not overly helpful since I don’t use vegetables sliced paper thin in my everyday cooking. I fiddled around with the thickness setting and then tried a potato. Now I was getting somewhere. The slices were about ⅛ inch thick and I cut up the potatoes lickety split. Then I remembered the reason I wanted to buy a mandolin in the first place – to make caramelized onions.  Later that afternoon I went to the store to buy sweet onions grown by a local farmer.

When I returned, I heated up my electric skillet, melted some butter, adjusted the setting on the mandolin to “thickest” and cut the onions with great speed. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to use the mandolin and the uniformity of the slices was truly something to behold. Curious to know how long it took me to peel and slice one onion, I set the timer on my phone and sliced away. I did this on several onions and the average time was 50 seconds. I made a batch of caramelized onions in less than 30 minutes from start to finish. The $20 was well spent.

 “It’s fun to have fun but you have to know how.” — from the Cat in the Hat~!

Last week, I wrote about caramelized onions and how nice it is to have that delectable treat on hand. Why had I not made them in a couple of years? Then I pondered. An onion can be difficult to cut uniformly, so it becomes a cumbersome task. I remembered a gadget I once had called a mandolin. Its sole purpose is to uniformly cut fruits and vegetables with a sharp blade attached to a platform. Even a person with excellent knife skills cannot do what a mandolin does; it can cut almost any vegetable or fruit paper thin. It also waffle cuts and juliennes.

Once upon a time I had a mandolin. It was stainless steel, clunky, and bulky with multiple parts that I found very confusing. Try as I might, I never could get the hang of using it and eventually passed it on. There were a few times where I did have the patience and the result was awesome: vegetables cut with precision and accuracy which elevated my creations to an art form. Curious, I wanted to know if the mandolin had evolved over the years.

When I googled “best vegetable slicer mandolin” I was dismayed to find myself lost in a sea of reviews. Consumer Reports wrote that there were over 100 models currently available. I read reviews from Bon Appetit, Food Network, Good Housekeeping, New York Times, Serious Eats, All Recipes, and a few others. There was even a site that reviewed the reviews. Really? Add to that all the reviews written by professional chefs. To further muddle matters, some models were touted by one site as being the best and then the same model was dissed by another. Each site had a different favorite. Will the real mandolin please stand up?  I read so many reviews and articles about mandolins that I started to lose interest and think that a sharp knife would work just fine. The price range was from $20 to $200 but more money didn’t correlate to a better product. Down the rabbit hole I went and after over two hours of perusing, a clear winner did not appear. I was mentally exhausted from sorting this out. I’ve heard of a phenomena called “decision fatigue” and yes, it’s a definitely a “thing” in our modern society. There were so many versions and options that no matter which choice I made, it seemed it would not be the right one. After reading the many reviews, there wasn’t a mandolin that was a cut above the rest.

I finally decided on one that was twenty dollars, easy to store, and razor sharp. Stay tuned next week; I will reveal who the winner is!

Recently I was shopping at the Mercantile in Fossil and in the produce aisle was a cook’s bounty; a basket heaped with attractive sweet onions. A hand-written sign said “organic locally grown”. Wow! These onions had varying sizes, shapes, and colors and were more interesting to me than the “regular” yellow onions sitting on a nearby shelf. Those onions had been graded for size and appearance and had an orderly look, but were uninspiring. The organic onions stood out, as if they had vibrant personalities and even notoriety. They seemed to say “Look at me, I’m sooooo special”. Lured in, I bought five pounds and started my walk home.

As I walked, I remembered my caramelized onion recipe and wondered why I had not made it in quite some time. This condiment gives food remarkable zing. A boring baked potato, scrambled egg, burrito, or sandwich suddenly becomes a delicious special occasion treat, as if the fare was made by a five star chef who just happened to drop by. They are ridiculously easy to make, too. 

A caramelized onion differs from a sautéed onion because caramelized onions cook very, very slowly, and deep, rich, sweet flavor develops as the natural sugar in them reduces down. The result is an intense, savory condiment that keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge. You will love having these on hand to transform your meals into gourmet treats. You can make these with any amount of sweet or yellow onions. I like to cook six or seven at a time. There really isn’t a recipe – just a list of ingredients and a cooking procedure. And don’t let the simplicity fool you; simplicity is enormously powerful.

Caramelized Onions

Medium or large onions
Butter or butter and extra virgin olive oil; one generous teaspoon per onion
Salt (I like to use sea salt or kosher)

Slice the onions about ¼ inch thick. Heat the butter/oil in a skillet until bubbling; add the onions, sprinkle the salt, and stir to coat. Cook for thirty minutes to an hour on low heat. When they start sticking to the pan, let them brown a little and then stir. The trick is to leave them alone enough to brown. If you stir them too often they won’t brown and not often enough, they will burn. Add more oil/butter if the onions seem on the verge of burning. At the end, you can add some balsamic vinegar; I like to add thyme as well. 

Yesterday I bought some more of those onions. They not only taste fabulous, they sparkle. Food has not only taste, but “feel” too. I can definitely feel that vibe, as if they absorbed the tender care of the farmer. Caramelized onions make anything taste better!