CantaloupeAlone

I threaten myself with food adventures and stunts to keep me fresh. Constantly. Plan a BBQ, make jerky, decorate with fondant, churn butter, dehydrate fruit, go on a raw food diet. Mostly I entertain the thoughts. Canning is something I've been curious about. The country mouse inside my head reminds me that winter is coming, and the local tomatoes at the market are huge. I want to make the accoutriments to this year's party in advance. Bon Appétit's October issue has a great mulit-page illustrated tutorial on canning. It took 2 weeks to pull it together, but here is the a quasi-real time break down of my first canning adventure: Supplies: A week in advance I started looking for the supplies: quart mason jars and lids, a basic set of tools (funnel, jar gripper, an unsophisticated but helpful magnet on a stick for grabbing hot lids,) a tall stock pot with a rack for the bottom. I live in New York City. Canning is not too popular and Broadway Panhandler and Zabar's are ou...

I've been blogging about my recipes for a time and some months on my other blog Pre-Thanksgiving. But thats silly. Pre-thanks is a blog about entertaining and dinner parties. I'm hereby bringing the recipes, meals, tastes, photos, spelling mistakes (oh) and food love here. Expect to see some of my recipes on other blogs being displayed here, not out of laziness, just to give them a second and deserved chance. Much like a smorgasbord Cantaloupe Alone was born when I asked a guest what he would have for breakfast, somehow stumbling over the sentence that we "cant eat cantaloupe alone." Oh no, never shall I eat cantaloupe alone when I can share it with my dearest blog and readers.

Pizza dough, looks harmless but contains powerful raising agents, that could easily destroy any kitchen. Think about food over Thanksgiving? I did. I read up on pizza dough, 6-8 different variations. It came down to 2: The Frugal Gourmet and the Best Recipe Cook Book's. Best Recipe took the prize for explaining all the possible problems I might encounter. Here tis' the master dough recipe for 4 medium pizzas: 1/2 cup 105 degree water 1 envelop of yeast (I actually order a European bulk kind, extra springy yeast) 1 1/4 cup room temp. water 2 tablespoon olive oil 4 cups bread flour (really better then the cheap kind, and I use King Arthur) 1 1/2 teaspoon salt To summarize, you put the yeast in the 105 water, and wait until it blooms, then add the rest of the water and oil. Pulse flour and salt in a food processor, and add in most of the liquids to form a ball of dough. Continue to pulse 30 seconds. Scrape onto a floury flat place, knead a couple of turns into a ball...