Food In The Fort

This is one of those healthy eating gimmicks that I always look askance at. You know, those little tricks like making fresh “ice cream” by throwing a couple of frozen bananas in your blender. You and I both know any resemblance to ice cream lies only in the mind of the diet guru trying to sell you their book. Sure it might be tasty, and it might even be palatable but it’s not what it promised to be and you only end up feeling cheated.

So when I saw this video showing how to substitute summer squash for fettuccine making the rounds of the food blogs a couple of weeks ago I thought this was just more of the same food fakery. But I needed something to make to bring with me to book club this past Tuesday so I decided to use Fort Wayne’s literati as guinea pigs. Read the rest of this entry »

Somewhere, perhaps deep in a mountain lair or maybe hidden away in an abandoned missile silo, there are scientists who speculate that should Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup disappear from store shelves tomorrow it will herald the end of civilization as we know it. Oh, I didn’t say they were the sort of scientists you’d want running the Large Hadron Collider or even tinkering underneath the hood of your Ford. I’m sure they exist though simply because no matter how ridiculous a proposition someone makes, you can always find somebody who will support it. Witness Scientology.

Whether you believe that Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup was the foundation of modern civilization, you have to admit that it’s pretty handy to have around. How else do you explain almost 80,000 recipes using it on Google? Today I have an un-recipe for a yummy pasta sauce taking advantage of that mushroomy miracle in a can.

It’s an un-recipe because I’m a little light on the measurements. The truth is, I wanted pasta with a meat sauce for dinner and I didn’t have any tomato sauce in the cupboard. So I just made this up on the spot with what I had lying about. My suggestion to you is just that… take this un-recipe and any measurements as only a suggestion of what you might want to do. Everybody’s tastes are different and who knows what you have in your pantry. Besides, it’s not like I wrote anything down. I was hungry! Read the rest of this entry »

This recipe, which comes to us from the top of a Tribe of Two Sheiks hummus container via Catherine’s mom, is one we really wanted to like. Honestly, we did. After all, hummus, pasta and veggies are all things we heartily approve of. Catherine’s mom and dad both loved it but, alas, we found it a bit bland for our tastes. It’s not that it’s a bad recipe. The texture is nice and we found the rotini we used held the hummus and veggie mix very well. It’s also a welcome change from tomato or cheese based sauces.

We just think it needed something, maybe cumin and some ground red pepper. Perhaps we were, for a change, just too shy with the garlic. Catherine’s mom suggested that maybe she had used a spicier hummus. Perhaps. And maybe our readers will have some hints on how to improve this dish or some more recipes that make clever use of hummus. Let us know in the comments. Read the rest of this entry »