Freakish Oster Blender

[panthera]

well, you can now buy most of those, um---

I guess I should say edible goods, but won't. Peanut butter is beginning to catch on, although the peanut butter and jelly sandwich or peanut butter and banana mixture is viewed here with horror.
The truth of the matter is that nothing can replace fresh eggs, good butter, lard (even if I don't use it) and real vanilla in cooking.
Not to mention all the other little details which you can only get in the 'States at organic foods stores.
The difference in taste is just incredible - and well worth the marginal extra effort.
Crisco is only good for one thing, and that is non-safe sex.
It is not appropriate for cooking anything.
Oh - I read that palm fat is making a come back in the 'States. Anybody know why?

 

[mixfinder]

Fatty Substance

Coconut Oil is being touted again for being good for you. Proof positive that words about food are just that. Read a report today, change your life and tomorrow a report or agency says, "Never Mind!".
In the US lobbiests and money drive the propanganda about the "health" of food.
The body doesn't have the ability to discern fats. It interprets them all the same, gives them the same caloric assignment and burns them in the same fireplace. The unused fat that is stored and the smoke from the fire can be harmful if they contain toxins and unuseable properties.

Bottom line (which may well be on your bottom) as far as the body is concerned, fat is lard, lard is butter, butter is canola oil canola oil is is cold pressed elephants nuts, CPEN is lard lite etc. It could give a s&&t and will.

Eat what tastes good and what you BELIEVE makes you taller smarter, more successfull and grow a bigger lala.

Kelly

Taking this vein of thought to a new thread. (Organic, not lalas!

 

[foraloysius]

Actually there is no such thing as European cooking and baking. There are big differences between the kitchens of the various countries. The French kitchen is different from the Italian and then again the Spanish is different from those two. Between Germany and the Netherlands there are also huge differences although we are big trade partners and are neighbour countries. We always had peanut butter and also all kind of coconut products.

Starting a cake by dissolving sugar into butter is also quite common in the Netherlands. However there is an alternative way and that is to beat the eggs first, then add the sugar, after that the butter and the flour. But I think starting with the butter and sugar is the most used one.

I've experimented with recipes from quite some countries. The last few years I started using American recipes also. I noticed that there is one big difference between American and European (in general) recipes and that is the amount of sugar used in cakes. Pound cakes is a good example. Americans use about twice the amount of sugar in a pound cake than Europeans.

 

[brettsomers]

Americans use about twice the amount of sugar in a pound cak

how telling. i dont doubt it either. when i was a teenager and lived at moms house i baked up a storm. one of my biggest peeves is cakes that are too sweet. and with frosting added to boot! omg, ...must stop thinking about cake...

 

[mixfinder]

Big Mouthed Blow Hard

I speak in brushstrokes and every statement can be pulled apart for individual points of view.

My statements are based my grandparents and exponential relatives who emmigrated from Holland in the 30's and 40's and the relatives who still come to visit, from Holland.

In the late 80's and early 90's, 7 German students lived in my home while attending a performing a 1 year internship that included attending the classes I taught in baking.
They shared their experiences and each not one, but all seven said the same thing about the availablity of the before mentioned food items.

I wish for my sake the items they liked were available there.
It takes time and money to send them.

In the future I will make no reference to Europe in my posts and say things like, my experience has been or my feeling is, as those are truths.

I am sorry to be so bold.

Kelly

 

[mixfinder]

Too Sweet

In the Southern parts of the US the 1234 cake is very popular.
One cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of flour and 4 eggs, along with liquid, flavoring, and leavening.
Most recipes call for more flour than sugar.
I have witnessed a trend beginning in the sixties, where I felt homemakers were relying more on mixes and baking less from scratch.
It has been my experience most cakes and mixes commercially prepared have a higher sugar content than those made at home.
It has been my experience, working in the food manufacturing industry, in the preparation of mixes, all components are dehydrated.
Sugar is the heaviest ingredient and most mixes are sold by weight.
Sugar retards bacterial growth and slows rancidification of oils.
Sugar attracts moisture so the finished product will stale out more slowly.
It has been my experience, sugar is less expensive and more readily avaialable than in some places outside the US.
It has been my experience in working with with focus groups the desired flavor profile is getting sweeter and sweeter in baked good as time goes by.
Before powdered sugar, the homemaker cooked frostings which taste less sweet.
In my home, I baked from scratch, take the time to properly cream, aerate and combine the ingredients. I bake them in very good pans in the finest oven I can afford and take them out before they are too done. I do not use powdered sugar in the formulation of frosting.
Guests always say, I don't like cake its twwo sweet. They marvel at the difference.
On a good week I bake 10 cakes, which are taken by my friend to offices and parties all over the city, because they are different After the first bite, you know it did not come from a mix or bakery.
It has been my experience, I have studied, cooked, tested and served my food my entire life and I feel like I know a little bit about the art.
Food from the heart is art and medicine for the soul. My greatest desire is to nurture.

Kelly

 

[foraloysius]

Don't worry

I guess I'm quite as bold as you are by talking about American recipes while there are quite some differences within the USA also.

Which part of Holland is your family from?

 

[mixfinder]

Far From Home

My grandfather came from the area of Zwoole. His name was vanBelle. My grandmother's family name was Denhardig.
The two families orgianlly came to Cananda and then later to the US.
The Dutch families that were in my town had a system of sponsoring each other. The price tag for getting here was sponosoring another family.
Our cousins were Bos, Newhouse, Schilperoot, verHulp and Weenink.
We all grew up together in the same small town over 50% Dutch heritage and went to the Christian school.
My grandfather was Netherland's reformed but later most all switched to Christianed Reformed, because Cornelius Woermenhoven, the elder woundn't let any of the dairymen have communion if they allowed Maid o' Clover to pick up milk on Sunday.
After much prayer, my grandfather answered the problem by selling his herd and becoming a farmer,
Until his death, other than family weddings he never set foot in a church.
Many of the family went to Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michigan.
In later years I lived in Kalamazoo just 30 minutes from Calvin College, so I got to be the outpost for lonely cousins and family traveling in and out.
The saying in our town was "If ya ain't Dutch ya ain"t much". We were kind of like an early gang or mafia, in a very clean and stubborn way.
My favorite joke: "Why do Dutchmen wear wooden shooes? To keep woodpeckers off their heads!"
We still gather, once a year at New Years. We rent a school and eat and play cards all day.
My mother's family was my salvation growing up. We were very poor and I would go to Grandma's to use her Sunbeam Mixer and bake in her Frigidaire stove and vacuum with her blue Electrolux model G and wash in her Maytag Commander.
My grandparents worked extremely hard to integrate and embrace the American culture.
They would have died if they saw the movement now in the US to separate, teach ESL, keep us so diverse and apart.
They risked their lives to come here and become one with a new dream.
More than Maytag has passed away.
Its funny, as I am writing this I am starting to cry. So many losses in my 55 years.
Slowly I adjust and say, "it is good, it will be okay: and like dripping hot water into the tub, when you look at it all at once it's too late, you're scalded.
A rather sobering end to a pleasant remembrance.
I guess I am glad gramma and granpa never had to see this.
Kelly

 

[sudsmaster]

Evil Crisco

Europeans are fortunate if they didn't have hydrogenated fats/oils like Crisco for many years. The trans fats that result from hydrogenated are particularly unhealthy, leading to high blood levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides. The big difference in health between Americans and Europeans (American whites are twice as likely to get diabetes and heart disease as white English, for example), might be traced to the use of these hydrogenated fats and other over-processed foods.

Eating anything that tastes good is not necessarily good for your health. Your taste buds can easily be fooled, but your body will suffer the consequences.

We also evolved physiologically as hunter-gatherers, where nutrients like sugars, fats, and protein were in rather short supply, so there was little risk of over-indulgence. Take a raccoon from the forest, put it in a large cage, feed it as much as it will eat, and it will balloon to three times its normal weight and develop obesity related health problems. Don't be like the caged raccoon!

 

[mixfinder]

Trans Fats

Trans Fats cannot be digested so they are stored. They are a large contibutor, but not the ONLY contibutor of fatty acids and arterioscherosis.

Sadly, as we read labels and eat out, it is overwhelming to see how fully hydrogenination is integrated into our daily food supply.

Kelly

 

[sudsmaster]

I remember in college in the early 70's, when I was taking a mix of biochemistry and nutrition classes. I recall on more than one occasion we discussed hydrogenation of oils to become semi-solid fats. I recall the comment being made, "We don't know at this point if there are any health effects from these foods".

I believe that most artificially created food additives, unless they are identical to natural food substances, are of unknown safety if not downright toxic. I view with suspicion such chemicsls as "Splenda", which in reality is a chlorinated sugar. I also believe that it can take many years for adverse health effects of such artificial foodstuffs to become evident, longer than most safety trials can economically run.

Now the health scientists have determined that no amount of trans fat is safe. It is quite likely the biggest food-related cause of ateriosclerosis. Natural cholesterol, such as occurs in eggs and meat, would play a distant second. Remember, cholesterol is an essential component of every human cell, and your body manufactures cholesterol, but it has never evolved to manufacture trans fatty acids or chlorinated sugars.

I also recall seeing Julia Child rant about margarine and artificial shortenings in her cooking shows and interviews as early as the '70's. "It's no good for you" she'd say flatly. "Use butter instead". Even lard is better than Crisco.

 

[foraloysius]

Julia Child in one of her shows with Jacques Pepin: "And if you're afraid of butter, which many people are nowadays, you just put in cream."

Kelly,

Great reading about your family history. So very Dutch!! Some Netherland's Reformed and all the Christian Reformed were strict religious people. They were righteous men, very convinced of their principles. I think moving to another country didn't make them more liberal. Most Dutch communities in other countries seem more conservative than most people in the Netherlands. Like time has stood still when they moved. For those people it's a shock to come back to the Netherlands after many years. Not only the USA has changed but the Netherlands also. I think we all lost things. But we gained and learned a lot to in our voyage through life.

Zwolle is a very nice old city, it's about an hour away from here.

 

[mixfinder]

Prim and Proper

The rest of the story:
My mom's brother married a mormon. He embraced the church of LDS and has become quite prominent. He and my aunt are 80 and still travel to different parts of country and stay several months being missionaries.
He needed to know the geneology for the head of each family so he could be baptized for the dead. Then we would all be sealed together, in heaven, as one family.
He went all the back to the 16th century
He did exhaustive research and learned why my grand father had emmigrated.

Seems my great and proper grandfather took in a maid for my sickly great grandmother.
He provided the maid with a "benefits package" for her hard work.
The whole comminity knew of his escapades.
My great grandmother died,
My great grand father married the maid with whom he had been having a thinly veiled relationship.
My grand father left Holland because he was disgraced and disgusted.
It made him twice as rigid, in holding to proper respect for God and the rules in the Bible.
He was a wild man who drove his 47 Pontiac like a maniac and held court at the soda fountain in the local drugstore.
The local police cheif would beg him to slow down and beg his children to take his car away.
That was nothing when he got his 1960 Chrysler 300, children ran for cover.
A women was enthralled with his accent and asked him where he came from. He stared her down and in his thick brogue he said, "I come from my mother's womb! What did you think, an elephant!"
He wanted to be young and healthy. He would try anything he heard or read. He took garlic pills by the hand full.
When he would thow his back to laugh his hearty laugh, ten people across the room would collapse.

Kelly

 

[foraloysius]

Not an unwise decision of your great-grandfather to move country after such. All the gossip and ignoring he would have had to endure in a small minded community would be horrible. At least he was able to make a new start. Sounds like your grandfather was the right type for that. Quite a character!

Louis