Megan R.'s Profile

My favorite was actually a kind bought at a street stand in downtown Asheville, NC. I wish I could remember the name - this guy grew, smoked, mixed, and bottled all of his four varieties of hot sauce, and the one I bought was a sort of chipotle-style one. It was so good; I could just smell this stuff and my mouth would start watering. Sadly, I ran out and I can't find his website again. It was something like balzama or balsama.com...

Otherwise, I just tend to use my giant bottle of Sriracha.

I love Rieslings. My taste in wine tends towards the sweet, so Rieslings are usually about as dry of a wine as I'll tolerate (although I prefer the semi-dry ones to the dry ones - too bitter and minerally for me)

What? No North Dakota? They have fleischkiekle (I hope I'm spelling that right), but that's very similiar to Tennessee's fried pie - it's a spiced beef patty inside a deep-fat-fried pasty. I had never heard of it before spending a summer in ND, I have never seen it anywhere since, but a great deal of the run-of-the-mill restaurants and food stands had it.

A couple of Thanksgivings ago, I brought some parsley bread to share. It went over really well, and my dad noted that I should try my hand at my Great-Grandma Violet's Swedish rye bread. When I asked about the recipe, my mom showed me the source: a bound cookbook put out in 1957 by the ladies' aid society Great-Grandma led at a local Lutheran church. My mother had received it as a gift when she and my dad got married.

As my older sister and I poured over it, it turned out to be a vertiable treasure trove of recipes. While sadly none of the Swedish rye recipes were attributed to her, there were more than enough baked goods and cookie recipes of hers to make up for it. A couple of them were even attributed to my Great-Great-Grandma Hilda. I barely knew my great-grandmother - she died when I was 8 - so finding this cookbook was in a way the closest I've felt to her in ages. Plus, it got the rest of my family to remember holiday meals of the past - Dad remembered the fruit suppa he loved (and my sister remembered it looking...well, not the most appetizing), and my mom remembered suet pudding served en flambe, served during the early years of their marriage.

I love pfeffernusse! I found a different recipe and made it for a Christmas party a couple of years ago. Sadly, most people didn't go for it, but one girl who had it said it reminded her of some she had eaten in Germany, which is about as good of a compliment as one could hope for.

I dont' know about you, but all this did was inspire me to try to make ricotta-stuffed meatloaf sometime. That could be really awesome...or better still, mixed with blue cheese!

So I'm sure someone else is now devising how to make chocolate bacon cake a reality.

Admittedly, I wasn't thinking of waste when I saw that picture. All I thought was "OMG MINI SCOTCHAROOS!"