When I was a kid, I remember taking a bite of mince meat pie wondering why this would be a dessert, and being very surprised at how yummy it was. I am sure it was some frozen store-bought version, but I thought it was just so amazing that they had made meat taste like fruit and spices. (Little did I know it had no meat whatsoever in it.) The mixture of fruit and meat with strong spices was brought to England from the Middle East during the crusades. It became a Catholic custom to eat it at Christmas, and during the English Civil War, was outlawed by Puritan leaders. According to an excellent wikipedia page on Mince Pie, in his History of the Rebellion, Marchamont Needham wrote…
Posts tagged “pears”
Yet another picaresque Halloween here in King William, except for my nuissance cough. I am trying not to cough on the trick-or-treators. I did manage to cook some delicious fall food earlier in the weekend, but then got too sick to deal with blogging. This evening I took some meds and managed to carve a couple pumpkins, and even cook up the pumpkin seeds. Although it is about 77 degrees tonight, there are enough leaves on the ground to crunch so that when it’s dark we can pretend it is Autumn. Our Fall will come, just probably not until the end of November, and it will be brief. I like my seeds a little well-done, with soy sauce and worcestershire. But I will leave to you cook those without…
Tagged: apples, butternut, curry pumpkin soup, honey mustard dressing, pears
I know you may think of pears as a fall fruit, something to sing about on the first day of Christmas, or make into a compote for your winter pancakes. You also may think of pears as a northern thing, something from a cold place, like Washington state, or the Hudson Valley. Surely they must be trucked in to South Texas. Well, I certainly thought so. Until someone handed me a bag of pears from a ranch in Lytle, TX. Perfectly ripe, home-grown, sweet, delicious Texas pears. In the middle of our drought plagued August of 103 degree days and dead grass. (Only the cactus look healthy around here.) But no, we have JUICY pears ripening, right under our noses. Texas is a place of…
Tagged: monterrey pears, pear almond tart, pears, poached pears, recipes, texas pears
