Becca Stareyes

I'm trying to walk more, but taking a half-hour break in the mid afternoon for 'wander about campus' is making me tired. Or maybe I didn't sleep well last night.

Also learning there are vegetables I don't care for. Kale is kind of one -- it's not that bad with tomatoes and cheese on toast, but inevitably I don't use it until it's not good any more. Pumpkin may be another; I have some roasted pumpkin in my fridge and eating it with dinner is one of those 'swallow it quickly so it's done'. Which is a shame, since I like most veggies, so I shouldn't have to feel like they're medication.

In addition to at least half a cooked pumpkin, I also have an uncooked butternut squash. What to do with that...

It came up in a discussion of North American* cuisine, that we don't really have one set of cuisine -- rather we have some foods that are North American specialties**, and some foods that have smaller regions than that -- Louisiana has its own food, the US southeast (or the South) has its own regional foods, Canada is famed for things like poutine that USians are like 'what's that?'.

When I moved to Nebraska, this was my first experience with the fact that 'American' food wasn't some kind of monolith. At that point in my life, I'd only been through the Northeast (New England and New York), which is pretty constant food wise. And a trip to Dublin where there was the excuse of 'foreign country, duh'.

It wasn't that Great Plains folk put ranch dressing on everything, or call soda 'pop'. It was that there were new foods that I hadn't even heard of.

Consider the runza, popular enough that there was a regional fast-food chain devoted to them, and our elementary school got sued for improper use of the trademark when they served it.

For the non-Nebraskans, a runza basically comes from Eastern European immigrants. You take meat, cabbage, spices and onions and cook them together, then wrap them in egg-bread dough and bake them. There are other variants, but that's the basic. I never actually tried one until I stumbled onto a recipe a week ago and made a batch with leftovers (no cabbage, though -- I might use the kale I have for the next batch). It's not bad -- you can't go wrong with things wrapped in bread dough, and I see why it's a fast food item. Runza restaurants still serve the normal American fast-food staples (burgers, fries, chicken sandwiches, etc., but the runzas are the selling point).

There's also the cheese frenchee, which my mother had to have explained to her. Basically, you make a cheese and mayo sandwich, bread it and deep-fry it -- yes, someone found a way to make a grilled cheese sandwich even more spectacularly bad for you. I still don't know where this comes from.

Things like this make me want to start seeking out regional foods wherever I go.
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* Here I mean US and Canada, though southwest USA food blurs into Mexican foods.

* Granted, foods tend to spread and mix. A lot of North American food comes from European foods that have had centuries to change.

This is adapted from a recipe I found in the New York Times -- I just added the cinnamon and raisins. And sarcastic commentary. I brought it to the Astronomy picnic where it was a hit -- a loaf and a half were eaten, and Shoshe (the one who gave me the recipe) was quite happy, since the bread is low fat (and also vegan). Now, if only I could come up with a gluten-free version and handle everyone's food preferences/allergies/etc. at once.

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So, my air popper -- which I purchased after realizing that I despise the artificial butter most microwave popcorn bags us -- gave up the ghost. As in, it was emitting sparks, and it was a good thing I was there to see this, turn it off and unplug it before I had to dash to get the fire extinguisher.

kuchenhexe suggested I try popping my corn over the stove. And I haven't had such good popcorn in ages. Air-popped popcorn might be better for me, but it was pretty much 'crunchy filling thing'. With the oil on the stove, the salt actually sticks to the popcorn, giving me the full flavors of salt and grease -- totally worth the extra calories.

I might try popping it in butter next time.

I need a food icon