Black Gold or 2,4-Dithiapentane

There was a big flap a few years ago when someone figured out that most truffle oil doesn’t contain any truffles at all. Since then, I have gone back and forth on whether to use it. The bottom line is, I like the way it tastes. If I never knew that there were such a thing as real truffles and someone said “hey, try this 2,4-Dithiapentan oil I have”, I would still dig it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to pull on a HazMat suit to finish some pasta, but I am hard pressed to name anything that tastes like truffle oil (either real or imagined).

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Slow Food Event: How To Smoke-Out Indoors

There is nothing quite like the feeling of walking into a hotel conference room and being overwhelmed the smell of frying bacon. Awesome. Marshall and Greg did a great job walking us through the basics of curing, drying, smoking, wet cures and pink salts. The pork was from Richardson Farms. (Did I hear they are milling their own flour now?) If you haven’t been to a Slow Food event in a while (or at all), you should check one out.

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Elevated Artisanal Goods at HOPE Farmers Market

Sunday morning, in the drizzling rain, I headed down to HOPE Farmers Market and I believe this woman may have saved my life. With the weather like it is, soup is like a miracle drug. Skyler and Blake at Elevated Artisanal Goods had four of their specialty soups on hand: Fall Vegetable, Smoked Tomato and Fennel, Roasted Carrot, and Blue Mushroom. All were very good, but the Mushroom was fantastic.

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Switched to Gourmet Medley

I named this pie the Polka Dot because of cherry tomatoes on top. I had been using those tomatoes that come on a vine, in a red mesh bag. They are good, but something else caught my eye: Sunset Gourmet Medley. It’s a mix of different color and size cherry tomatoes. The flavors are sweeter and the mix of color adds a little more pop to the top of the pie. I picked these up at Central Market.

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