The Food Timeline

Have you ever wondered when people began making beer? When did Americans begin drinking coffee? What is the history of the marshmallow peep or pop tarts?

I found an interesting website recently containing a timeline of food history created by reference librarian Lynne Olver. It's quite an interesting read! (The website contains recipes as well.)

Edible Book Festival at Johns Hopkins

Hello all~

Every year, I enter the Johns Hopkins University "Edible Book Festival" where people make a wide variety of cakes (and other desserts) based on books. Since I already made a post, years ago, of my first entry, A Clockwork Orange, I'm going to post images now from the past three years of my Edible Book festival entries! Enjoy my cake entry pics!

Dragons Love Tacos cake entry for the JHU Edible Book Festival, 2017

The Wizard of Oz cake entry for the JHU Edible Book Festival, 2016

HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban cake for the JHU Edible Book Festival, 2015

Fast Food Hats

Check out these knitted fast food themed hats!

Vegetarians in Iceland

Hello everyone! It's been awhile! I don't know why I'm so bad about updating my blog but I am. (Sorry!) This entry is going to go far back to March, of this year, when Nick and I took a trip to Iceland!

Iceland is truly one of the most beautiful places I have been to. The landscape is absolutely striking- volcanoes, hot springs, geysers, black sand beaches with stunning basalt columns in the facing cliffs, and glaciers- and we even saw the Northern Lights (I can check that off my bucket list)!

Black Church of Búdir

Knowing before we arrived that Icelandic cuisine is traditionally animal based, we stayed in a hotel that contained a small kitchen, in our room, just in case we had to cook our own food for the duration of our stay. However, we didn't really have any issue finding vegetarian friendly restaurants during our trip (which I didn't really think would be a problem, since we were staying in Reykjavik), so our in-room kitchen remained spotless! Oddly, there was a night we were going to head to a local grocery (Bónus) and make our own dinner but it had closed by 6:30pm! Since we would go gallivanting around Iceland all day, every day, we never made it back to the city in time to go the store, sadly. It's also good to keep in mind that many restaurants close by 7pm and some as early as 5pm. (The closing times may be different in the summer months, I don't know for sure.)

Reykjavik had quite a few really great places to eat, with veggie options, that I'll discuss more of below.

A copy of Harry Potter, in Norwegian, found in Café Babalu

If you're looking for an eclectic, vegetarian/vegan friendly coffee house, check out Café Babalu. They're open late, filled with interesting knickknacks, board games and books to peruse, and they make a bangin vegetarian lasagna. (Nick had a delicious veggie chili.) They also give pretty generous portions.

C is for Cookie is another cute coffee house, not far from our hotel, where we ate a light lunch of sandwiches and hot beverages before heading out on the road for the day. They also serve soups, pastries and all the standard coffee joint stuff. Only downside? They close early (at around 5pm).

'Cool American' flavor Doritos found in Reykjavik

Having Iceland's first and oldest bakery, the Bernhoftsbakari Bakery, so near to our hotel was very dangerous. Obviously, we went here several times to load up on delicious Icelandic pastries. The prices are good, the staff were very friendly, and the pastries were out of this world! We just couldn't help ourselves!

Iceland in March is still pretty saturating-ly cold. Nothing beat the cold like the gigantic bowls of Thai veggie noodle soup we purchased from Noodle Station. The food was cheap, quick, and tasty.

Delicious pastries from Bernhoftsbakari

Garðurinn is a pretty good veggie café with a limited menu (as in every day they serve two different items- a main course and a soup) but we still enjoyed our food. I had a vegetable curry and Nick had a chili.

We ate at Durum twice during our week stay in part because they're open late (and we kept getting back to the city late) and also because they make a mouth watering falafel wrap.

Um... what?!?!

One of our last meals in Iceland was at Bakarí Sandholt which is a very popular bakery and coffee house. I had a big delicious coffee and a sandwich with goat cheese, lettuce, nuts, and honey, on homemade sourdough bread, while Nick had a light breakfast of Skyr, Icelandic yogurt. (We actually ate quite a few yogurts during our trip. They're so good!)

Interesting BBC Article

300 Years of Picnics

Fighting and Feasting

Here is a very interesting link to an article titled, "Fighting and Feasting: The Life of a Medieval King." The article focuses on the research of King Richard III's tooth and bone chemistry and what that can tell us about his diet at different stages in his life.

Baking Frenzy

I've been in super baking mode this weekend. I get this way before it becomes full summer in Baltimore (i.e. 90-100+ temps). I live on the top floor of a rowhouse and although I have two window AC units, their cooling awesomeness does not extend to my kitchen. My summer baking plan is simple: bake a ton, early on, and freeze it. That way I can have homemade baked goods throughout the summer and not die of heat stroke. This weekend had perfect temps, so I had to take advantage of it.

Olives galore!

Yesterday, I made homemade pizza. Today I made two loaves of olive bread (one loaf with kalamata olives, the other with green olives) and three loaves of Afghan Rote (one loaf I'm going to take to work tomorrow). I slice each loaf in half and freeze them for the summer.

Olive breads cooling

My favorite olive bread recipe is actually from Cooking Light. It's a yeastless batter bread, which means there is no rise time. Just mix the ingredients and bake!

Afghan rote

Afghan rote is a lightly sweetened flat bread, with hints of rose water and cardamom, and has sesame and poppy seeds sprinkled on top. It's lovely as a snack or served alongside a hot beverage for dessert.

Of course, I also made dinner today (a warm lentil salad with walnuts and roasted red peppers), took a bus to Trader Joe's, and washed about 1,000 dishes, so needless to say, I'm beat.

But tomorrow, I'm making strawberry rhubarb crisp after work. Yum! (We picked up the rhubarb at the Waverly Farmer's Market.)