Food in brief

Good Monday morning!

This week is already shaping up to be exciting and notable:

~ Remember my rave about Hickory Nut Gap Farm? Here's an article about locally-produced meat from Sunday's Citizen-Times.

~ This week marks the beginning of my participation in the Eating Down The Fridge Challenge, hosted by Kim O'Donnel at The Washington Post. The goal is to eat for an entire week without succumbing to the urge to go grocery shopping. As I have a nasty habit of hoarding food in bulk, this should be an interesting experiment. The brown rice that's been lurking in the back of my fridge will finally have its day!

A confession: brown rice intimidates me. I always burn it, or don't cook it long enough, or it ends up tasting like soggy cardboard. This is the week to change my attitude. Especially since I snagged some tips from Saveur on making the "perfect" brown rice.

What about you? Any foods you struggle with making or that intimidate you?

~ Speaking of rice, I tried my hand at rice pudding last night using this recipe from The Pink Peppercorn. Perfect as is, though I might sprinkle in some ground cardamom next time in addition to the whole pods. Delicious and creamy without being heavy. I packed some for lunch today.

~ I've also been conducting some casual research into the prices of bulk items around town. I'll share my results at some point. Nothing too surprising, but still interesting.