Episode 287: Mushroom Pasta, Biscuits, Climate Repair

Alex Jones likes ice cream.

This week, Alex Jones joins Joy as guest cohost.

In food news, we chew over a Washington City Paper article that examines the trustworthiness of Instagram’s so-called influencers.

In our What’s for Dinner segment, Alex tells us all about a delicious and easy sounding creamy mushroom pasta. (Alex improvises her version, but if you a recipe, this one can’t possibly be bad.)

In How’d You Make That, we look at biscuits, especially how the tall fluffy biscuits of the US South differ from those in the North. Alex was intrigued enough by this Atlantic article on the subject to start working on her own version. If you want to give it a try, remember: White Lily brand flour is 9% protein. According to SouthernKitchen.com, you can make your own self-rising White Lily facsimile by blending equal parts all-purpose and cake flour to get closer to that 9% number. To make it self-rising, add 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoons salt per cup of flour.

 Alex tells Joy about Jordan Fink, a landscape designer and permaculture practitioner in Portland, is trying to do to mitigate climate change. He’s on a mission to recruit volunteers to plant varieties of chestnuts (like chinkapins, something the Experimental Farm Network folks are also into) across the continent (something like a billion trees is his vision) to provide us with a food source that’s an alternative to grains and also sequester carbon. Would love to talk about this a bit and talk about how chestnuts may be used in place of staples like wheat, etc in home cooking. 

Some links if you want to learn more:

https://www.greatitalianchefs.com/features/chestnut-flour-tuscany-dishes

https://www.thespruceeats.com/make-chestnut-flour-from-whole-chestnuts-1338028

https://www.patreon.com/JordanFink

https://www.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/project/3

And finally, in What We’re Loving, Alex tells Joy about the new cheese powders from Old City Cheese Co., which can you use to upgrade the usual boxed mac and cheese!

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