Makes 8 6-ounce custards FOR CARAMEL: 1 cup sugar FOR CUSTARD: 5 large eggs 1-1/3 cup sugar for the custard 1 tablespoon vanilla 1 cup water 1/2 cup half-and-half 12 ounces evaporated milk 1 cup of cooked pumpkin, pureed as smooth as possible 1/4 teaspoon allspice 3/4
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Garlic's Unexpected Gems
By Barbara Damrosch, published Thursday, September 6, 2007 in The Washington Post
Some of the best garden discoveries are made by accident. Last fall a friend gave my husband and me some family heirloom garlic. Against the standard advice, he hadn't removed the flower stems, known as scapes, when they appeared, and when he harvested he pulled up the whole plants -- bulbs, stems and flower heads. Inside the flower heads were tiny bulbils (above-ground bulbs) the size of rice grains. We broke apart the regular garlic bulbs at the base of the plants and poked the individual cloves into the ground the way you normally would plant fall garlic. On a whim, we also planted those tiny bulbils, one by one, just to see what would happen.
What we expected to find, come spring, was green garlic, a tasty scallion-like treat you get by planting any small garlic cloves you think aren't big enough to make full-sized heads. But the green shoots the bulbils sent up were so spindly they weren't worth eating, so we let them grow through the summer.
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Italian town slims down by fattening residents' wallets
Overweight residents of an Italian town will be paid to lose weight, the mayor said on Monday.
Men living in the northwestern Italian town of Varallo will receive 50 euros ($70) for losing 4 kg (9 pounds) in a month, Mayor Gianluca Buonanno said. Women will get the same amount for shedding 3 kg (7 pounds).
If they can keep the weight off for 5 months, they will get another 200 euros ($280), he told Reuters.
"Lots of people are saying, 'I really need to lose some weight but it's really tough.' So I thought, why don't we go on a group diet?" said Buonanno, who said he was about 6 kg (13 pounds) overweight.
The town of 7,500 people started the campaign on Friday and some residents have already signed up, he said.
Around 35 percent of Italians are overweight or obese, according to European Union figures, with waistlines expanding as the country's healthy Mediterranean diet has given way to processed foods rich in fat, sugar and salt.
Source: Reuters
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