Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Smoked salmon with horseradish-flavored whipped cream

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Mmmm graphics!

The FoodPairing website illustrates food inspiration of two different kinds:

1. Food combination: (quoting the site) “A list was made of 250 food products each with their major flavour components. By comparing the flavour of each food product eg strawberry with the rest of the food and their flavours, new combinations like strawberry with peas can be made.”
2. Food swapping:(quoting the site) “A food product has a specific flavour because of a combination of different flavours. Like basil taste like basil because of the combination of linalool, estragol, …. So if I want to reconstruct the basil flavour without using any basil, you have to search for a combination of other food products where one contains linalool (like coriander), one contains estragol (like tarragon),… So I can reconstruct basil by combining coriander, tarragon, cloves, laurel. The way to use it is to take from each branch of the plot one product and make a combination of those food products.”

Thanks to the always-inspiring Tingilinde for the link!

Ljungdalen0579

Originally uploaded by skrubtudse

Turnips. Parsnips. Carrots. Maybe an onion.

When we get home from yet-another-trip, these are the foods that will still be potentially dinner.

The green beans will be black and the spinach leaves will be liquid but the root vegetables will be waiting and looking delicious.

Just the way root vegetables waited in the cellars of my French and Irish peasant ancestors as the long days of winter slowly wore away.

If those ancestors had only had Knorr’s veggie bouillon cubes, plus ICA’s fullkorn rice and canned fish balls in bouillon, they could have had the same winter soup that we ate last night.

Frank says he doubts the Neanderthals had canned fish balls but he’d have to admit that, after way too many meals in too many restaurants including (scary thought, I know) airport restaurants, the winter soup I made last night was simply perfect.

Dorthe and JP

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and JP Steffensen are two of the climate scientists Frank and I met when we sailed around various icebergs in Chile, way back January-ish 2007.

These photos are from a little bit before we met them–they appear in Willi Dansgaard’s book Frozen Annals: Greenland Ice Sheet Research. Danish scientists have been capturing and cooking ice for a long time–and we know much more about our past and future thanks to their work!

Dorthe and JP gave us a wonderful tour of the ice-core research lab at Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute yesterday.

My photos don’t do it justice but they’re still undeniably “cool.” JP, I think my nose finally unfroze this morning!