Sugarplums! Done-sies.

Hello my darlings,

So, true to my word, I made sugarplums and they are pretty much the best thing ever. I took a recipe off the interwebs and tweaked it here and there... swapped honey for organic agave syrup, apricots for papayas and so forth. Thus I present:

DORIS PLUM'S SUGARPLUMS

1 cup walnuts, toasted
1/2 cup almonds, toasted
zest of one orange
About 1/2 cup organic agave syrup
1/2 cup prunes (these are called dried plums here in the States; HILARIOUS)
1/2 cup dried papaya
Icing sugar to coat

Blitz everything in a food processor, roll into little balls, cover in icing sugar and pop in the fridge. Voila!

Incidentally, the winner of the Doris Plum Sugarplum competition (drumroll please) is... Mark Pascoli. Congratulations, Mark. Enjoy.

I'm off to New York this afternoon, so happy holidays everyone. I will try and blog over the break.

Smooches,

Doris

My food resolutions for 2011

It's coming up to that time of year again. Bleugh. My resolutions in past years have been a mixed bag of cliche and whimsy; give up smoking (win!), take up hula hooping, get my drivers license, wear peppermint essential oil instead of perfume, don't wear so much goddamn black. Yes, I'm a recovering liberal arts graduate. For 2011, I want my resolutions to be exclusively food-related. So here goes.

I hereby pledge to:

• Start my own underground Supper Club. This is a super exciting resolution, my little kittens. This article gives you a bit of a run-down if you're unfamiliar with the concept, but basically, it's a small pop-up restaurant. Great, fresh food; a disparate array of people; BYO wine. One supper club per month, $20 for three sumptuous courses. More announcements are to come in regard to Doris Plum's Supper Club, but I'm scheming madly...
• Remember that eating is a political act, and that every bite is a vote. Not rocket science (after all, we've all read Fast Food Nation and seen Jamie Oliver lisping his way through that school dinner series). This means going out of my way to choose sustainable producers, buying food with less packaging, shopping in the organics aisle even if it bankrupts me and I have to live in a cardboard box.
• Give a non-dairy diet a chance. My rampant love of cheese has always thwarted this resolution in the past, but I have sinus issues and cutting out dairy will apparently change my life. Grumble grumble. I guess I'll give it a go, two week trial run. Apparently giving up alcohol will also help, but let's not go crazy now. *nervous giggle*
• Learn how to debone a turkey. This is step one of making turducken, which is definitely on my to-do list of ostentatious novelty foods. I also want to make meat cake, and maybe cake meat.

What are your food resolutions, my darlings? Comment here or email dorisplum@gmail.com.

Love, Doris

Visions of sugarplums danced in their heads...

There is a *raging* furore in the dance world right now about sugarplums.

For those who haven't been privy to the latest Fat is a Feminist Issue drama, Alastair Macauley of the New York Times wrote in a review of Balanchine's Nutcracker that; "Jenifer Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, looked as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many; and Jared Angle, as the Cavalier, seems to have been sampling half the Sweet realm." Ringer went on the Today show to respond to the jibes, and Macauley wrote a follow up article a few days later to defend his stance against the fatties. The dance world divided! Anorexia! Freedom of speech! Lycra!

Meanwhile I was just getting hungry. What the hell IS a sugarplum exactly, and how do I get my hands on one? So I did a little research, and my darlings, I present it to you with much joy and holiday spirit.

SO: Sugarplums belong to the comfit family, a confection traditionally composed of tiny sugar-coated seeds. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word sugarplum thusly: "A small round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugared and variously flavoured and coloured; a comfit." The earliest mention of this particular food is 1668. The term also has another meaning "Something very pleasing or agreeable; esp. when given as a sop or bribe," which dates to 1608. According to the food historians, the word plum in Victorian times referred to raisins or dried currants, not plums as we think of them today.

And here is another reference:

"Sugarplums were an early form of boiled sweet. Not actually made from plums...they were nevertheless roughly the size and shape of plums, and often had little wire stalks' for suspending them from. They came in an assortment of colours and flavours, and frequently, like comfits, had an aniseed, caraway seed, etc. at their centre. The term was in vogue from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, but is now remembered largely thanks to the Sugarplum Fairy, a character in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet (1892.)"---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 329).

In the interests of experimentation, I plan to make sugarplums this weekend, and post the results. Email "Sugarplum me, lady" to dorisplum@gmail.com to receive your very own sugarplum, boxed and delivered. I might even put a ribbon on it, if you're lucky.

Much love and many kisses, Doris.

Doris Plum in a nutshell (ba-dom chhhh)

My darlings. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Doris Plum, and I like food; buying it, cooking it, writing about it, eating it, talking about it. I'm a New Zealander living in Massachusetts, shortly moving to Canada.

Some meandering thoughts to get us started:

• Skim milk is the devil, and artificial sweetener will probably kill you in the end. Although I quite like the packaging for Sweet'n'Low. I think it's the colour; that sickly pink is strangely alluring, it reminds me of the bunny suit from A Christmas Story.
• If I could eat one food for the rest of my life it would be avocados, closely followed by roast chicken (skin on, thank you).
• Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a god among men, and Emeril Lagasse might be a secret misanthrope. I love how his TV audience screams like little girls whenever he says the word "garlic" though. That shit cracks me up.
• People should know where their food comes from. Go to the farmers' market even if it's raining, you goddamn wuss. Make it a social occasion. I remember arranging to meet my bestie Sarah Jane at the Sunday markets a few years ago. It had all the makings of a Shakespearian comedy of errors (minus the cross dressing) or maybe an American sitcom (minus the cross dressing). I was waiting at the Chaffers Park markets, meanwhile SHE was lingering at the peach stand of the Willis Street markets. Sarah Jane waited by those peaches for 45 minutes so she could deliver a dirty peach-related one-liner when I arrived. Alas it was not to be. And the little filth-monger never divulged what the one-liner was. It's time to spill, S.J.
• Eat more vegetables than you think you need. Brussels sprouts are gorgeous and deserve their own backlit display stands. The majestic leek is worthy of seventeen sonnets. And don't get me started on the shy, rustling beauty of kale. Oh, kale.
• I think it's bizarre that people add marshmallows to sweet potato casserole (when I say "people" I really just mean "Americans." Marshmallows are big here, as are some of the people).
• One day I want to make turducken. And when I do, I shall write about it here in the Adventures of Doris Plum. I'll also write fun food facts from the history books, home kitchen wins, beer write-ups, restaurant reviews, food-related present ideas, and some general foodie rants when I'm feeling snarly. Please join me.