Home-made Bagels

I recently bought an oven. It’s not my first in China, but the first since moving to Haikou and first since I began delving deeper into cookery as a hobby. Despite it essentially being an over-confident toaster, the oven has allowed me to expand what I can make here at home considerably. Home-cooking and baking …

Things Done Well: On The Anatomy Of Thrift

The following three videos are a series put together by Farmrun, a creative studio that is working to capture the “burgeoning agrarian renaissance by producing beautiful media for agricultural enterprises and organizations.” Teamed up with Farmstead Meatsmith, a traditional animal processor, they’ve produced On the Anatomy of Thrift.

If you are squeamish about an animal being butchered for food, you may not want to watch. If you eat meat and are not able to watch (let alone do) this, it may be worth considering the more philosophical side of the modern disconnect between our food and the place it comes from. Not judging, just saying. The videos are fun, informative and done well.

On The Anatomy Of Thrift: Side Butchery

(more vids after the jump)

Overnight Zucchini Pickles

Much like my prior post on preparing home-made sauerkraut, this is another “I can’t believe how simple it is” recipe. It’s also another no-cooking recipe for the Home Cooked category. Chinese supermarkets are no stranger to pickles. In fact, it was only after moving to China that I really examined the term “pickle” and realized …

Until Starbucks, Coffee World it is.

I never thought I’d be one of those people who craved a Starbucks, but the last few years in Suzhou spoiled me. Within a two kilometre radius of our place there we had four Starbucks. Four. That’s roughly on par with the number of mainland Chinese food restaurants in the same area. Haikou doesn’t have …

Casey’s 1st Birthday

I did all my jawing about being a dad for 365 mostly-wonderful days last post, but would be failing in my fatherly rights of overly saturating this blog with talk of my son. We ended up dividing Casey’s first birthday celebrations into two. For his actual birthday we hit the local park and took him …

If you eat food, you should watch this movie

I just finished watching Food, Inc. — a sobering, yet hopeful, documentary about the modern industrial food machine. It’s an incredible film and I don’t think anyone should take another bite before they watch it. It makes me appreciate that a lot of my food happens to come from small “farmers/wet” markets. Cheers to Ben …