the new york times is now charging money for my favorite chocolate cake recipe so i bought a subscription and screenshotted it and canceled my subscription and now it's here for you for free

i do a mixture of red wine and fresh squeezed navel orange juice for the liquid, plus the zest of one large orange. now you make the cake

Recipe transcript:

Yield: 8 servings

ingredients

3/4c or 177 mll extra virgin olive oil, plus more for greasing the pan

1/2 cup or 118 mll Earl Grey tea, or use coffee, dry red wine, orange juice, or water

1/2 cup or 50 grams Dutch processed cocoa powder

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp fine sea salt

1 cup or 200 grams granulated sugar

3 large eggs at room temperature

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons or 135 grams all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

preparation

step 1 heat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch round pan and line the bottom with parchment paper

step 2: in a medium saucepan over high heat, bring tea or other liquid to a simmer, then turn off heat. whisk in cocoa, cinnamon, and salt until smooth, then set aside to cool

step 3: in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine sugar, olive oil, eggs, and vanilla. beat for about 3 minutes. reduce speed and pour in cocoa mixture, scraping down the sides of the bowl. gradually beat in flour and baking soda until just incorporated.

step 4: scrape batter into prepared pan and bake until the sides are set but it's still slightly damp in the center, 35 to 45 minutes. A cake tester should come up clean but with a few sticky chocolate crumbs clinging to it. Transfer cake pan to a wire rack and let cake cool completely in pan.

I'm Christmas shopping and look at this incredibly suspicious appliance I found

I know Americans like to eat soup with cheese toastie so I guess this one is for you guys

SPECIFIC appliance. Not suspicious appliance. There is nothing suspicious about soup.

Little devil voice in my mind is telling me to buy one of these for every family member. But luckily I don't have that kind of money.

#on one hand this looks handy#but I also kind of feel about the prospective meal that it would be like that scene in SpongeBob#where Neptune makes like 500 krabby patties but they aren’t good#because they weren’t made with love#like the effort of grilling your own cheese is what makes it good you know?

... your problem with the device is that you disagree with toastie makers on principle? Because making a toasted sandwich should require more effort?

#i didnt know its called a cheese toasty in Australia but I kinda wanna use that from now on#in which case yes americans do love a cheese toasty with tomato soup#but that soup comes from a can and that pot probably fits like 5 cans of soup

Some parts of Australia call it a "jaffle" but yeah we love cutting words in half and putting -o or -ie on the end.

You gotta tell them that it's a jaffle specifically when it comes out of the toasting process in two perfect (sealed) triangle pockets. If it's squished flat and oozing out the sides, it's a toastie.

Spaghetti should only go in jaffles, ham is best suited for toasties. Chicken and mayo is good either way. Some sandwich presses you can even get with interchangeable heating plates.

I was going to defend sandwich makers but wtf you mean you put spaghetti in a sandwich

That's the sandwich maker's main purpose. To use up leftover spaghetti sauce. I don't normally put the noodles in but you can (and would have to if you're using tinned spaghetti).

With every reply this gets more and more unhinged. Tinned spaghetti? Like Chef Boy'R'Dee??? In a sandwich?????

Two houses divided, both alike in their food weirdness, Here in the fair kitchen doth our story lie.

#...i mean i guess its technically not too far off from a meatball sub?#trying really hard to give the benefit of the doubt here lol

It's more like a giant hot pocket.

Anko is one of my favorite dessert fillings.

Literally red beans, sans the skin, plus a shitload of sugar.

Tastes like chocolate’s non-creamy cousin.

Adding evaporated milk to it sounds very nice actually.

every time a website describes "appetite suppressant" as a feature of a type of food, i kill another hostage

"nuts are an appetite suppressant!" BECAUSE THEY ARE FOOD. YOU ARE LESS HUNGRY BECAUSE YOU ATE FOOD.

the diet industry is so unbelievably fucked and it’s in your fucking walls. “keeps you full longer so you don’t get hungry an hour after lunch when you’re trying to do something” is a neutral statement of benefit but no we have to treat pistachios like crucial medicine in the war against basic bodily functions.

eating disorder recovery is just getting angry over and over again because food is treated like some horrible necessary evil instead of one of the great joys of life. eat some nuts because they taste good and you are a living thing that thrives on pleasure and calories. you need both.

I need to get some sleep but in case you need to hear it: you deserve to eat. your appetite is not the enemy. if you can, treat yourself to a filling meal of foods you love today. throw pistachio shells at people. be free.

DISCLAIMER: if you or your selected victim have a nut allergy, consider throwing rocks instead. I love you.

my potion #MyPotion

per The Chart, this is a "Hell at the Bell":

This is easily the most enduring thing I've ever made. Godspeed funny little jpeg. See you again soon

fucked up how cooking and baking from scratch is viewed as a luxury…..like baking a loaf of bread or whatever is seen as something that only people with money/time can do. I’m not sure why capitalism decided to sell us the idea that we can’t make our own damn food bc it’s a special expensive thing that’s exclusive to wealthy retirees but it’s stupid as hell and it makes me angry

bread takes like max 4 ingredients counting water and sure it takes a couple hours but 80% of that is just waiting around while it does the thing and you can do other things while it’s rising/baking plus im not gonna say baking cured my depression bc it didn’t but man is it hard to feel down when you’re eating slices of fresh bread you just made yourself. feels like everything’s gonna be a little more ok than you thought. it’s good.

bread is amazing and it’s also been sold to us as something really hard to make? Every time I tell someone I made a loaf of bread I get reactions like “you made it yourself???” and “do you have a bread machine then?” I haven’t touched a bread machine in probably 10 years. You CAN make your own bread, folks, and it’s actually pretty cheap to do so. I believe the most expensive thing I needed for it was the jar of yeast. It was about $6 at the grocery store and lasted me MONTHS (just keep it in the fridge.) The packets are even cheaper. destroy capitalism. bake your own bread.

You can also make your own yeast by making a sourdough starter, so that cuts cost even more.

But you have to feed the starter daily/weekly and that means it grows quickly, but there are tons of recipes online for what to do with your excess starter. Cookies, pretzels, crackers, pancakes, waffles, you name it!!

Here’s a link to The Home Baking Association’s site. It has recipes and tips.

Make it even easier - “No-Knead Bread”. All YOU do is mix the ingredients together and wait until it’s time to heat the oven. The yeast does all the rest.

Here’s @dduane​’s first take on it and the finished product. We’ve made even more photogenic batches since.

Kneading is easy as well; either let your machine do it, or if you don’t want to or don’t have one, get hands-on. It’s like mixing two colours of Plasticine to make a third. Flatten, stretch, fold, half-turn, repeat - it takes about 10 minutes - until the gloopy conglomeration of flour, yeast, salt and water that clings to your hands at the beginning, becomes a compact ball that doesn’t stick to things and feels silky-smooth.

Here’s what before and after look like.

My Mum used to say that if you were feeling out of sorts with someone, it was good to make bread because you could transfer your annoyance into kneading the dough REALLY WELL, and both you and the bread would be better for it.

Then you put it into a bowl, cover it with cling-film and let it rise until it doubles in size, turn it out and “knock it back” (more kneading, until it’s getting back to the size it started, this means there won’t be huge “is something living in here?” holes in the bread), put it into your loaf-tin or whatever - we’ve used a regular oblong tin, a rectangular Pullman tin with a lid, a small glass casserole, an earthenware chicken roaster…

You can even use a clean terracotta flowerpot.

Let the dough rise again until it’s high enough to look like an unbaked but otherwise real loaf, then pop it in the preheated oven. On average we give ours 180°C / 355°F for 45-50 minutes. YM (and oven) MV.

Here’s some of our bread…

Here’s our default bread recipe - it takes about 3-4 hours from flour jar to cutting board depending on climate (warmer is faster) most of which is rise time and baking; hands-on mixing, kneading and knocking-back is about 20 minutes, tops, and less if using a mixer.

Here ( or indeed any of the other pics) is the finished product. This one was given an egg-wash to make it look glossy and keep the poppy-seeds in place; mostly we don’t bother with that or the slash down the middle, but all the extras were intentional as a “ready for my close-up” glamour shot.

I think any shop would be happy to have something this good-looking on their shelf. We’re happy to have it on our table.

Even if your first attempts don’t work out quite as well as you hope, you can always make something like this…

can we have more posts like this in future please? this is really useful and could help those who are struggling

i love this post!

I’d been saving up for one of those portable ninja air fryers for a while, thinking it might help me have better access to safe food when we have to travel/spend time with family over the holidays. (The risk of cross contamination when sharing oven spaces/stovetops is just too high when you have an anaphylactic reaction to gluten so I just often… don’t get to eat for several hours.)

The fact that our oven is broken right now is just serendipitous.

Anyway. This might be the best $150 I’ve ever spent. That chicken was done before I had time to finish doing the dishes to eat it off of.

And the faster cook time means it’s lower in histamine and the texture is like, actually good??? Like what???? I can bring fresh food to my MIL’s, keep it separate from everyone else in the kitchen and just commandeer a wall socket for 20 minutes and have a whole ass meal with protein and vegetables???? I can eat safely at other people’s houses again???!?

I am having too many emotions for an air fryer but like… I never get to eat with other people anymore. I honestly might be about to cry.

i think a lot of ppl assume food pantries are for if you're completely destitute and have no food in your house at all.

just so you know if you forego certain foods because you can't afford them or you can't "justify" spending the money, you might be able to get that food at a pantry.

i was living in a super wealthy area once where the only grocery store within a 40 minute drive was all fancy upcharged local organic and i literally pretty much stopped eating fresh produce because i couldn't afford it. i went months without eating a carrot or greens or anything that didn't come from a can. sometimes i got frozen veggies.

so sure, i was eating. i wasn't starving. i was getting nutrition. but it was nuts that as an animal on earth where plants grow in abundance, i didn't get to eat any of them fresh. people deserve fresh produce!

one day i was lamenting it and my friend was like, "oh yeah i get all of my produce every week at the food pantry."

i was surprised bc she made the same paycheck as me and i wouldn't have thought of either of us as someone who 'qualified' for food assistance. i went to the food pantry and found out because the median income in our town was so high, i did qualify. more than that, they asked for no proof of income, it was more of a 'if you think you need help, we don't make you prove it,' situation.

for like 8 months i got all of my produce (and eggs!) there every week. and yes if i had made sacrifices elsewhere in my life i probably could have afforded some produce at the local grocery store. i could have, i don't know, skipped seeing the one movie i saw at a move theater once every couple of months and spent the $8 on spinach one time instead of the ticket and had spinach once every couple of months.

but the point is the food pantry had more than enough to go around. if i hadn't taken some of their produce, it would have gone bad. the resource was available to me, and there was no reason for me to crawl on my hands and knees to qualify for it.

resources like food assistance are not available everywhere and they can be very limited and hard to come by. they won't be given out just for fun to anyone. if you ask for assistance and are offered assistance in reply, you need to believe that the assistance is available for you.

if a food assistance program doesn't have resources to help you, it'll say so. there is no harm in asking! you will be told 'yes' or 'no.' but you won't know until you ask.

stop convincing yourself that you don't deserve assistance, that everyone else needs it more than you, that you're taking it from someone else, that you should have nothing at all in order to deserve anything.

you deserve to not only eat but to eat well. if there's assistance for you to access better foods than what you have, understand how fortunate you are, and stop denying yourself that resource!

accessing food assistance at pantries is also a great way to help yr community, because you can spread the word and help normalize receiving food assistance in yr community. you can even become a volunteer and be part of the team providing to you and others (i did that and it rocked)!

my point is, yes, there is always someone who needs something 'more' than others. i have been completely destitute and it sucks. but when i went to the food pantry never once did i think, 'nobody better be here if they have more than me.' i was grateful that we all had support.

found goat milk and wheat ale at the store. theres no way im NOT making a white gilgamesh tonite

ok here we go. recipe/original post here:

i sent this post to my friend who is known for making Concoctions. thinking she'd just find it funny. i underestimated her hubris

so for anyone curious about the white gilgamesh experience. i hope this satiates that sick desire in your hearts

TWO THIRDS BEER AND ONE THIRD MILK

FROM A GOAT OR OF ITS ILK

SURPRISINGLY IT'S REALLY GOOD

WHITE GILGAMESH, MISUNDERSTOOD

actually the craziest impact animorphs has had on me is that i never really got an urge to eat cinnamon buns from reading them BUT the phrase "the refreshing beverage known as vinegar" has forced its way into my head every other week for years to try and convince me it would be a good idea to chug a whole glass of it

tyhe voices in my head are gettinh louder

Vinegar is what we used to use as the acid in our sodas before we switched to Carbonated Water in the 19th century, and vinegar-based sodas trace their roots all the way back to the Bronze Age Meditteranean! The Romans called it Posca! The Ottomans adopted it from the Romans and called it Sharab, which means "Drink", and then American colonists acquired the recipe from the Ottomans in the 17th century and changed the name to Shrub!

There's a famous example of Posca that most people misremember because we don't drink Vinegar much anymore. If you're familiar with the Crucifixion of Jesus in the Bible, you probably remember the bit about the Roman soldier offering Jesus a sponge full of vinegar to drink. Most people think the Roman dude was mocking Jesus, but that's wrong. That was a sponge full of Posca. The Roman dude was like "Well this sucks. Want a Sprite?"

...Fun fact, I know this because the phrase "Refreshing Beverage known as Vinegar" got stuck in my head one night at work, and I started googling "Does anybody drink vinegar". I had to know. It turns out the answer is yes! And you can still find vinegar-based soft drinks today! Switchel is a vinegar-and-ginger drink you can find at some bars in the US, and it goes back to pre-carbonated soft drinks.

Also, I know several people who drink pickle juice regularly, and white vinegar is a key component of pickle juice! So that's also where vinegar as a drink can pop up in your day to day life.

There's also a trendy New Age beverage called fire cider that's literally just vinegar, cinnamon, spice, and pretensions. RIP Ax, you would've loved the fire cider craze.

op here. imagine how i feel. i've been dealing with this propaganda in my notifications all week.

Alright so one of my past jobs was working at an on tap place called Oil and Vinegar store. It’s supposed to be for salad dressings and stuff. People would bring in their bottles and we’d fill them up.

Vinegar is basically just made from fruit sugars so we had. The most. Amazing vinegars. There’s this one made with mango pulp that I straight up would have just drunk but if you add it to soda water it was truly the most decadent beverage imaginable. So there’s like passion fruit, raspberry, elderflower- just every wonderful sharp flavor imaginable.

We had pregnant ladies who’d buy several bottles at a time because it’s really great for nausea.

What I’m saying here is that Ax wasn’t wrong at all, that dude knew what was up even if he was probably chugging boring household white vinegar.

The things I learn on this godforsaken website.

even growing up in a majority non-white neighbourhood with a mum who used to live in india meant that my safe foods growing up were palak paneer and mango lassi. and, unrelatedly, my biggest sensory trigger was meat, particularly processed meats like. say. chicken nuggets. the thing about autism is that things are safe because they’re familiar, they’re consistent, and they’re reliable. and all of those things are soo contextual. I don’t really. understand. how anyone could think that only one category of anything (but especially food) could be Universally Safe unless they somehow forget that the universe includes people who aren’t them 🤔 crazy

I remember a conflict over catering for a disability event coming up because one person involved wanted the entire thing to be chicken and chips. citing the fact that chicken is a safe food. and quite apart from the fact that it wouldn’t have met specific allergy concerns. what do you mean chicken is a “safe food”? for who? quite frankly not an assumption anyone can (or should) be making

My childhood “safe food” was Granny Smith apples, canned beans, and black canned olives. If I had nothing else, canned olives and canned beans always tasted the same.

Personally not a fan of chicken nuggets - always had a chemical-ish taste on my tongue.

Safe foods vary WILDLY depending on the person.

Dont take choices out of other people’s hands, even if you think it’s “for their own good” and ESPECIALLY with adults.

Allow other people the FREEDOM to choose.

Offer variety. Offer CHOICES.

Y'ALL THIS IS SO COOL AND COULD BE HUGE FOR SO MANY PEOPLE

additional article:

BRIEF SUMMARY:

It is an mRNA vaccine with successful mammalian (mice) trials.

The vaccine targets life-threatening inflammation and immune responses.

Mice with serious allergies, which received the vaccine tailored to those allergies, stopped having immune reactions when exposed to those allergens.

Aka: vaccinating against allergies.

If they can develop it for safe human use, it could save an enormous amount of lives, and IMPROVE the lives of people who live in constant fear of encountering their lethal allergens.

Because it’s able to be tailored, and specifically affects the immune system response, it may one day be able to adjust immune responses to chronic conditions like Celiac Disease, Asthma, Food Sensitivities, Food Allergies, and potentially many other autoimmune disorders.

Imagine a future where a child with a deadly shellfish allergy could get a shot and just… not be allergic anymore. Eat shrimp with no fear.

Be born with Celiac, get a shot, and casually eat gluten with no side effects.

We’re not quite there yet, but it’s performing well in mammalian trials, and we have high hopes!

The recipe:

PUMPKIN PUDDING PIE w/ ORANGE ZEST & CARDAMOM WHIPPED CREAM

(makes ~3 pies)

pumpkin pudding pie w/ orange zest

whipped cream

"I can never get it tasting like my mom used to make" yeah, because your mom had a giant Costco-size bottle of a specific pre-mixed spice blend that was discontinued by its manufacturer in 1998 and spent your entire childhood putting it in every meal to use the stupid thing up faster – she doesn't know how to replicate it any more than you do.

The tragedy of culinary nostalgia is that most of the time, the flavours of your childhood aren't memories of lost secret recipes – they're the irreplicable accidents of folks tossing whatever happened to be cheap and available into the pot, and there are no recipes to recover because the people doing the cooking never knew them.

I am reminded of this reddit post and update, from a person seeking to recreate a dish their mum used to make based on not much more than "chicken, peaches, and it was beige".

Update 6 days later:

You will never be a mad scientist like the motherfuckers at r/macarons

Luckily this lady is just a pastry chef and not building death rays

The base Macaron is in itself a very technical task, and they're notorious for being difficult to bake. Lots of things can go wrong: your merengue can be the wrong texture, the merengue can refuse to foam up at all from trace oils in the bowl, the ingredients love to misbehave if they're not measured precisely, a shell can refuse to form or dry cracked, the oven can have weird drafts that make the cookies sag, your flavor ingredients can mess up the recipe, you can break the shell trying to release them from the tray, and so on. It's almost stupid hard to get consistently viable macarons, and these people practice a lot to get to this point.

Not to be deterred from the already difficult task of creating good macarons, these people are making experimental flavors, irregular shapes, complex designs, even handpainting designs with foodsafe watercolors. Sometimes for free.

I'm glad this kind of technical skill and dedication is put towards delicious cookies, because if these people were into making bioweapons or something instead, we'd all be so fucked

why are so many canners so determined to get botulism 😭

"our great grandmas fed their entire families with their knowledge. they didn't need the government telling them how to do it."

great grandma also lost babies for want of vitamin k shots and antibiotics and would have had fewer babies to start with if she'd had the option to access birth control.

great grandma did the best with what she had and knew.

why can't we do the same 😭😭

edit after

@princessxombie an excellent point!

the reason for a preference of bottled lemon juice over fresh squeezed for canning (as reported through the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach): "It is a USDA recommendation that bottled lemon juice be used.  And consistent with the recommendation, reputable canning sources will agree that the best source of lemon juice for canning is commercially bottled lemon juice, as opposed to the juice of a fresh lemon. The reason for the recommendation is that bottled lemon juice has been uniformly acidified or standardized per FDA regulations: “lemon juice prepared from concentrate must have a titratable acidity content of not less than 4.5 percent, by weight, calculated as anhydrous citrus acid.” With a guaranteed pH...there is a consistent and known acid level which is essential for the critical safety margin in canning low-acid foods and for making jams gel properly. "

as for resources:

go forth and enjoy canning without giving yourself and others botulism, friends.

yes! an excellent thing to point out!

as reported through michigan state university: "The acidity of a tomato is considered borderline between a high- and low-acid food. Tomato varieties have been changed through the years and as a result, many now have milder flavor and lower acidity than in the past. Testing has shown that some current tomato varieties have pH values at or above pH 4.6; a few have values of pH 5 or even higher."

for reference (thank you, university of georgia): "The bacteria that cause botulism poisoning can grow and produce toxin in sealed jars of moist food at room temperature if the pH (measure of acidity) is above 4.6."

so great grandma's recipe might have been perfectly safe with the ingredients she had access to! but you may or may not still have those same ingredients.

It's also important to note that if your recipe relies on vinegar for acidification (some recipes do), you need to need to need to check that your vinegar is 4% or greater vinegar. Many vinegars now are 3% or lower and they WILL NOT get you to the necessary ph. Companies have lowered the percentage slightly, and for someone who's, like, making salad dressing, it doesn't really matter, but for canning? It really really matters.

OMG THIS IS THE MOST HELPFUL THING EVER

Seriously, thank you for all of the links and information. This is really really valuable right now to many people, me included.

Go forth and reblog!