Posts

Showing posts from May, 2011

The Amazing Chocolate Pie

For my birthday, I had a hankering for chocolate pie. Specifically, I was curious about the technique mentioned in the most recent Cooking Light which combines some melted chocolate with the chocolate crumbs for the crust. Rose volunteered to make the pie and was astonished by how easily it went together. She and a friend had a little pie business during their freshman year of college and Rose made many a chocolate pie during that time. She says that she never had a pie recipe work so well or be so quick as this. This was an amazing pie. A deep, rich chocolate flavor; perfect texture with no lumps; just firm enough. Truly a superior dessert experience. We did take two liberties with the recipe. We had whole milk and so used that instead of 1% milk. And we used real whipped cream instead of fat-free Cool Whip. Also, I didn't have any raspberries. They would have looked pretty but they weren't missed. Cooking Light named this Rich Chocolate Pudding Pie. We call it ...

When You Can't Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (Or Taste It Either): Reviewing "Season to Taste" by Molly Birnbaum

Image
Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way by Molly Birnbaum My rating: 4 of 5 stars Having been admitted to the Amazon Vine Program I was eager to find a book to try that I would not normally come across. This one, in which Molly Birnbaum relates her loss of smell due to a head injury and intersperses her story with delving into the science of smell, filled the bill. What makes Birnbaum's loss of smell, and subsequent almost complete loss of the ability to taste, all the more painful is that she was set to go to the Culinary Institute of America to begin training as a chef. Watching her learn to deal with her unexpectedly debilitating infirmity is fascinating and is making me more aware of all the scents that make the pattern of my life. Birnbaum is an unexpectedly good writer. Possibly because she had to focus on the visual and textural aspects of food and the world around her after losing her sense of smell, she describes her environment and experience