wheat.berries@thermos.ca

Edyth Young Cottrell The Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Cookbook at the end of the Breakfast Breads and Cereals section provides an easy method for cooking wheat berries overnight in a thermos. Soaked wheat is brought to a boil then placed in a heated thermos and left for at least 8 hours.

cookies@galore.ca

There is in The Milk-free and Milk/Egg-free Cookbook by Isobel S. Sainsbury, M.D. a whole chapter devoted to cookies (much of the book is dedicated to explorations of eggless and milk-free baking). I like how the brief introduction to the chapter champions a greater place for the cooking in daily nibbling.

THESE DELIGHTFUL SNACKS are the great treats of childhood. Most adults, too, enjoy a freshly baked cookie as a breakfast bit, a lunch supplement, a coffee or tea treat, a snack, or even for a dinner dessert.

And the first of the cookie recipes is one of my favourites, one that I learnt from my mother, we called them Chocolate Macaroons. Here they are called "Unbaked Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies" and they are made without milk (and include raisins which my childhood treats did not). And are just as easy. One basically creates a chocolate sauce, adds oatmeal, coconut (and raisins) and then spoons out the mixture on a tray to cool.

food.work.@comment.ca

Stewart Lee Allen author of In The Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food in the Chapter devoted to "Sloth" remarks "American workers now pay more money for worse food so they can hurry back to jobs they hate." Hyperbole from 2002. :)

soubise@bechamel.ca

It is Len Deighton's French Cook Book Où est le garlic that put me onto a different way of making sauce soubise i.e. without incorporating onions into a rice purée. The technique that Deighton offers is to incorporate the chopped onion cooked soft in 1/2 pint of dry white wine in a b&eactue;chamel sauce.

yogurt@cheese.ca

Thick and stabilized is not necessarily desired...

Yogurt cheese is very similar in taste and texture to cream cheese, but without the calories! Drain yogurt overnight, and in the morning you will find a ball of creamy cheese ready to be used for tasty appetizer spreads or sandwich fillings. this is an excellent way to use leftover or aging yogurt. The older the yogurt, the tangier the cheese. Some commercial yogurts are not satisfactory for making yogurt cheese. They are overly-stabilized, and the whey may not drain off fully. Best results will be achieved with homemade yogurt or a dairy yogurt not highly thickened.

from Susan Mintz. The Complete Yogurt Cookbook (Nitty Gritty, 1978)

frozen.egg@hard.boiled.ca

Gary Lee in The Wok (Nitty Gritty, 1970) mentioned the interesting texture that can be achieved by freezing hard boiled eggs along the same principles used to freeze dry tofu. He did this with boiled egg. The egg comes out spongy. Lee cooks the frozen then thawed egg in a sauce and calls the result "Eskimo Eggs".

soba@slurp.ca

Russ Rudzinski (Ryoichi Kokku) in Japanese Country Cookbook (Nitty Gritty 1969) under the rubric "Summer Soba" has a charming description of stands that sell buckwheat noodles

It seems that summer soba stands appear at every turn of a road in a small town. Soba in this fashion is very refreshing since it's served cold. The summer soba stands are particularly inviting in hot weather. They are roughly of simple gazebo construction with a clean, earth floor. In addtion to the setting, 4 people or so slurping soba (it isn't a delicate process) makes a joyous symphonette.

And after instructions on preparing the cold noodles and a dipping sauce, more about the slurping...

Eat by picking up a chopstickful of soba, lifting it high and dipping it into the sauce (keeping it on the chopsticks) and then begin to inhale. Usually served with cold wheat tea.