(no subject)
Spent most of Sunday chilling in my friend’s apartment (the ex-brothel one). One of the guys has recently moved over from Texas, and we got to talking about pumpkin pie. Now, this is not a food we have in New Zealand at all - in fact, pumpkin here is only eaten as a savoury vegetable, e.g. in roast vegetable salads or toasted paninis, and most kiwis can’t imagine how it could be a sweet dessert. But Texan G. & I got to work and produced a delicious pumpkin pie, which everyone else was most curious about and eventually proclaimed delicious.
One thing G. and many of my other American friends have noticed is the difference in food prep between our countries. By and large, things are a lot less pre-packaged here. You can buy ready-made cake mixes and cookie dough, but I honestly don’t know anyone who would buy them instead of making it from scratch. And while apparently at home G.’s mom makes pumpkin pie by basically buying a pastry-shell and pouring in the contents of a can of pumpkin-pie mix, we started with raw pumpkin and made our own. I can see that it takes quite a bit longer, but I still like baking the old fashioned way - it’s fun, but also means you always know exactly what’s going into your food. Not to say that all Americans cook this way of course - I’m aware that there are a lot of culinary queens on my f-list! But that’s the perception I’ve built up from both friends and my visit there.
Sidenote: Today I discovered the joy of frozen cookie dough (that I made myself, of course). I'm never cooking that stuff again, it's too good!
One thing G. and many of my other American friends have noticed is the difference in food prep between our countries. By and large, things are a lot less pre-packaged here. You can buy ready-made cake mixes and cookie dough, but I honestly don’t know anyone who would buy them instead of making it from scratch. And while apparently at home G.’s mom makes pumpkin pie by basically buying a pastry-shell and pouring in the contents of a can of pumpkin-pie mix, we started with raw pumpkin and made our own. I can see that it takes quite a bit longer, but I still like baking the old fashioned way - it’s fun, but also means you always know exactly what’s going into your food. Not to say that all Americans cook this way of course - I’m aware that there are a lot of culinary queens on my f-list! But that’s the perception I’ve built up from both friends and my visit there.
Sidenote: Today I discovered the joy of frozen cookie dough (that I made myself, of course). I'm never cooking that stuff again, it's too good!