I’m not the biggest fan of pumpkin pie. Give me pecan or chocolate cream any day. But I do enjoy a slice for Thanksgiving. This news just in from the Associated Press indicates Nestle anticipates a shortage of its Libby’s pumpkin pie products this year.
Nestle — which sells nearly all the canned pumpkin in the U.S. — says poor weather hurt its harvest, creating a potential shortage of its Libby’s pumpkin pie products through the holidays.
In a statement to customers this week, Nestle said heavy rains made it nearly impossible to pick its pumpkins during this year’s harvest.
The longer the pumpkins sit in the muddy fields, the more they deteriorate. As a result, Nestle said this week that it would not pack any more pumpkins this year, which means it may be hard to find its canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie filling product until next year’s harvest.
“Mother nature had other plans for us,” the company said in an open apology to customers online.
Nestle is the largest national brand for canned pumpkin products, with 80 to 90 percent of the market, the company said.
It plants a special strain of pumpkin at a farm in Morton, Ill., which provides nearly all its products. If you turned all the pumpkins on its farm to pie, it would total 90 million pies, Nestle spokeswoman Roz O’Hearn said.
The company had a wet harvest last year, too, which meant it didn’t have a surplus to carry over into this year and led to spotty shortages in late summer and early fall. The harvest started in August and it began getting products on its shelves soon after, but it won’t be able to meet its normal demand.”
I think salad has its place, but it’s not my favorite part of the meal. It often seems just too predictable. This one isn’t. It goes beyond lettuce and vegetables to add both a slight sweetness and a little tang.
My aunt made this more than a decade ago and it’s been a family favorite ever since.
Bok Choy Salad
Topping
½ cup margarine
1 3 oz package ramen noodles, crumbled
2 tsp sugar
3 oz (1/4 cup) slivered almonds
½ cup (plus or minus) sesame or sunflower seeds
Melt margarine in a skillet and add the rest of the ingredients. Sauté until mixture is browned (this happens very quickly, so be sure to watch) Remove from stove and chill.
Dressing
¾ cup vegetable oil
½ cup red wine vinegar
½ cup (plus or minus) sugar
2 tbs soy sauce
Blend all ingredients together
Salad
1 large head of bok choy, chopped coarsely
4 green oinons, chopped
Mix bok choy and green onions with dressing, add topping
Food is popular for any holiday, but there’s no food holiday quite like Thanksgiving. Nationwide cooks are pulling out family recipes, or looking for ways to supplement the classics with something new. So I’m kicking off these two weeks of cooking with some of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes and stories.
To start things off easy, it’s time for some sweet potatoes and marshmallows. The funny thing is, I don’t really have a recipe for this. I do it primarily by taste.
I use fresh sweet potatoes, nothing canned. Consider one or two potatoes per person as a good guide. I have found it’s sometimes easier to start boiling them until it’s easy to pull the skins off, or just peel them like any potato. One they’re soft enough, mash.
As you’re mashing them, add generous pats of butter, sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg to taste, plus a light dash of salt to bring out some of that flavor.
Spread in a 9×13 pan, bake at 350 until warm. Take the pan out of the oven and cover with miniature marshmallows. Bake until a light brown crust appears on the marshmallows.
Note 1: Note that I didn’t include any sugar in my recipe. I think the marshmallows add enough.
Note 2. WATCH THE MARSHMALLOWS CAREFULLY. We had one Thanksgiving with what we now refer to as kamikaze marshmallows that grew out of the dish and landed on the bottom of the oven to catch on fire. The best way to avoid this is to use the small marshmallows, and leave a little space between them so they have room to expand.
This is one of the dishes I first learned to make and contribute for Thanksgiving meals and one of my favorite treats.
Anyone who does any amount of cooking likely has at least a few cookbooks. If you’re my mother, you might have a few hundred. There are some you keep only for one recipe and some that you use on a weekly basis. Many are divided by theme — appetizers and desserts, meat or vegan, Italian or Chinese. Some are collections of favorite from restaurants, or simply favorites that a church group have put together to publish and raise funds.
I only have one shelf of cookbooks, though they will spill over and require two very soon. My first cookbook was actually one I started with my grandmother when I was 8 or 10. She would save the recipes from Rookie Cookie, a cartoon mouse who gave kids easy recipes to make and published them with themes in the Saturday newspaper. I’d cut out the recipes and glue them onto pieces of paper to put in a binder. Eventually I added recipes from other sources. I’ve dismantled that binder, but still have most of the recipes.
My favorite cookbook is similar. My aunt had put together a cookbook of family recipes for my mother when she got married. A few years ago my family started putting together another cookbook for my generation. It contains recipes for all the meals I enjoyed at family gatherings.
When it comes to my Saturday night theme cooking, I am much more likely to look online for a new recipe, but sometimes I pull from an old favorite. I’ve kept the recipes that work and put them into a file to make a cookbook of Saturday night recipes.
A friend asked me today how to organize the recipes she’s been clipping. I have a folder where I stash clipped recipes, with the intention of maybe typing them up and adding them to one of my favorite cookbooks. But I wonder how you organize your recipes. Any suggestions?
If you’re a fan of the Food Network, you’ll want to catch Guy Fieri as he comes to Lowell later this month. The Guy Fieri Roadshow starts its monthlong tour with a stop at Lowell Memorial Auditorium on Tuesday, Nov. 17, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $39.50, $49.50, $150, and $250. The auditorium is located at 50 East Merrimack St., Lowell. Call 978-454-2299, or visit www.lowellauditorium.com.
Halloween has passed and your jack-o-lantern’s night in the spotlight is over, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy the seasonal taste of pumpkin.
We celebrated Halloween in the newsroom and I found this great pumpkin chili recipe to give a favorite dish a different twist. I was asked how many alarms this chili had and the truth is it’s not very hot at all. But it’s still quite tasty and a good dish for a cool fall night.
I adapted the preparation of this dish to suit the newsroom. Instead of cooking everything in a big pot, I cooked the beef and cooked some of the other ingredients together, but I added everything together in the crockpot and let it do most of the cooking there.
Pumpkin Chili
Ingredients
2 pounds ground beef
1 large onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 (15 ounce) cans kidney beans, drained
1 (46 fluid ounce) can tomato juice
1 (28 ounce) can peeled and diced tomatoes with juice
1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/4 cup white sugar
Directions
In a large pot over medium heat, cook beef until brown; drain. Stir in onion and bell pepper and cook 5 minutes. Stir in beans, tomato juice, diced tomatoes and pumpkin puree. Season with pumpkin pie spice, chili powder and sugar. Simmer 1 hour.
Sometimes the easiest recipes are also the best. That proved to be the case with the Bacon Maple Pancakes I made as the Saturday night newsroom honored our neighbors to the north, Canada.
This simple recipe put a new spin on a breakfast favorite, combining pancakes and bacon in one dish. I can easily imagine enjoying it for breakfast, brunch or even dinner. So can many members of the newsroom, as it earned rave reviews.
The recipe is from cooks.com
Bacon Maple Pancakes
1 1/2 c. Bisquick
1 tbsp. sugar
2 eggs
3/4 c. milk
1/4 c. maple syrup
1 1/2 c. shredded cheese
12 slices crisp bacon, crumbled
Heat oven to 425 degrees. Grease and flour 9 x 13 inch pan. Beat eggs, milk, Bisquick sugar, and syrup. Add 1/2 cup cheese. Beat until smooth. Pour into casserole. Bake uncovered until toothpick comes out clean, 10-15 minutes. Remove. Sprinkle with rest of cheese and crumbled bacon. Bake until cheese melts, 3-5 minutes. Serve warm with maple syrup.
If there was any doubt that garden season was over, snow over the last few days sealed it. Thanks to a poor growing season, blight and worms, I only got a handful of red plum tomatoes this year, and none of the bigger ‘big boy’ hybrids.
Instead, I ended up with several plants falling over from the weight of green tomatoes that refused to turn red. As the frost loomed last week, I finally plucked them all and decided the best approach was to search for green tomato recipes.
Many people have heard of fried green tomatoes, but I’d never tried them in any form. Tonight I sampled some and found them to have an interesting flavor. The bigger version seemed a little sweeter, while the plums were a little more tart. The only flavors I can compare them to are a very tart apple, an element of green pepper and some having more or less of the developed tomato taste.
I found a list of recipes at http://tipnut.com/green-tomato-recipes/. Based on the recipes I spent tonight dividing approximately 25 tomatoes into several cups each of diced and pureed tomatoes. I put some in the freezer to use later for green tomato bread. This week I may try the following green tomato soup I found on several sites online. I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out!
Green tomato soup
3 c Tomatoes; green -peeled & chopped fine
1 Onion; chopped
1/4 ts Cinnamon
1/8 ts Cloves; ground
1 ts Sugar
1/4 ts -Pepper
2 c -Water
1/4 ts Baking soda
3 tb Butter
3 tb Flour; all purpose
4 c Milk
Place in the saucepan; the tomatoes, onion, cinnamon, ground cloves, sugar, pepper and water. Bring to a boil and boil for 30 minutes. Add the soda. Melt the butter, add the flour. Mix and add the milk. Cook till creamy, stirring constantly. Add green tomatoes to the cream. Mix thoroughly. Salt to taste and serve.
The Taste of Andover, highlighting the restaurants of Andover and North Andover, returns on Wednesday, Oct. 28.
The event, running from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Wyndham Andover Hotel on Old River Road in Andover, will feature appetizers, desserts and a variety of menu items from approximately 25 restaurants and food establishments in Andover and North Andover, including The Chateau, Glory, The Meat House, The Lanam Club, Sandrino’s Best of Thymes, Greater Lawrence Technical School, and Whole Foods, among others.
Tickets, which include a cash bar, are $25 and are available from the Merrimack Valley Chamber of Commerce at 978-686-0900.
It’s a Sunday night TV staple for me. A new Iron Chef will be added soon, with competition for the coveted spot to start this Sunday night. Tell me who you’re rooting for and if there’s a test you’d like to see!
Stories aren't the only thing cooking in The Eagle-Tribune newsroom. Assistant Sunday Editor Catherine Stollak organizes a weekly food fest in newsroom every Saturday night for the weekend crew. Each week features a different theme and a delectable assortment of dishes. She blogs here regularly about recipes, cooking techniques (and mistakes!) and food trends. Catherine has been with The Eagle-Tribune for three years and experimenting in the kitchen for almost as long. She lives in Andover.
