Monthly Archives: March 2015

Sauerkraut and tomato soup — in your cake? A little food fun for April Fools’ Day

sauerkraut, potato chips, tomato soup

Sauerkraut, potato chips and tomato soup can put a little harmless April Fools’ Day fun on your dessert table. Photo by Laura Groch

As April Fools’ Day approaches, we’ll see plenty of ideas from clever, creative sorts for cakes, cookies and other foods transformed into things they are not, the better to turn the tables on folks. Such as cakes turned into what looks like, oh, scrambled eggs or hamburgers, or cookies turned into carrots, and the like.

Such “Fooler Foods” bring to mind some of our efforts at the now-defunct Times Advocate newspaper, precursor to the also-now-defunct North County Times.

Our Food Department was me, whichever feature reporter was free at the time, Continue reading →

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Welsh cakes, physalis, banoffee and more food notes from overseas

Welsh cakes in packaging

Welsh cakes in their native habitat. A UK grocery store, that is. Unprepossessing in appearance, they turned out to be surprisingly good. (Photo by Laura Groch)

Ah, St. Patrick gets all the love in March, but there’s another UK saint who deserves remembering, and that’s St. David. His feast day is March 1 (oops), and among other things, he’s known for urging his flock to “do ye the little things in life.” Not a bad sentiment.

I’m bringing up the Welsh saint as a (shameless) segue into talking about Welsh cakes, about which I’ll have more in a moment. This is my wordy way of returning to sharing observations about our (fairly) recent Scottish/English Continue reading →

Thanks, Grandma: Rediscovered zucchini recipe brightens meatless menu

zucchini casserole bread

Zucchini Casserole Bread is something different for a meatless meal. Serve with soup and/or salad. (Photos by Laura Groch)

When life gives you a bag of surplus zucchini, here’s a vegetarian dish to help you make use of them. It’s a nice option for those observing Meatless Fridays for Lent and/or Meatless Mondays or Meatless Every- and Anydays. (It’s also worth bookmarking for when the zucchini days of summer arrive.)

I rediscovered this dish recently while rummaging through my cookbooks for something a little different. (And yes, I had extra zucchini to use.) Grandma Teresa Continue reading →