Every now and then I surprise myself.

I like to think of myself as a seasonal, regional cook who chooses local ingredients and prepares them in their proper season. But this morning, I ate homemade cinnamon swirl bread, toasted and buttered. It’s August and there is nothing local or seasonal about buttered cinnamon swirl bread. And yet, that breakfast really hit the spot.

When I thought about it, I realized that the Ultragrain® flour in the bread, plus the eggs, milk and canola oil all came from Costco. So did the organic sugar and the Saigon cinnamon. For that matter, so did the organic butter I spread on the finished toast.

What’s up with that?

The whole situation compelled me to re-read an essay I wrote about the mega food warehouse a couple of years ago for an article in Pacific Northwest Magazine. Read it here: On Shopping at Costco. Recently I read that the company aims to collect twenty percent of its members’ food dollars and I guess that’s just about the right figure for my household. Another twenty percent goes to local farmers where I buy all our meat – a quarter of a steer and half a hog plus some random fruits and vegetables. The rest goes to the local groceries and stores like Trader Joe’s, where I occasionally shop.

I guess I am a seasonal, regional cook but I’m also a regular person with the freedom to shop wherever I want to gather the ingredients I need to make the things I like to make.

Enjoy the recipe for Cinnamon Swirl Bread. Bake it today, toast it tomorrow.

Here's a wonderful video of Michael and Ariane Batterberry. They "discovered" me in Friday Harbor, asked me to write about what I was doing at Canlis restaurant, and put me on the masthead of Food Arts as a contributing editor. Thanks to Michael's recommendation that I keep a journal of my experiences cooking in several restaurants in New York for one week, I won the James Beard Award for best food story of the year in 2000. Thanks to them, I have had the most amazing opportunities of my career. Michael passed away earlier this month. Watching this video is like having a bit of Michael's spirit back:
Michael and Ariane Batterberry

I recently procured a set of ice pop molds: plastic vessels with lids that include a plastic stick to penetrate whatever goes inside the mold; they came as a set of six with their own tray to hold them securely upright in the freezer. My son, who is no longer a child – he’s twenty-one this summer – persuaded me to buy them when we spotted them strategically placed near the check-out stand at our local grocery. And the pop molds have prompted us to devise a number of delectable frozen treats this summer.

First came coconut bars; we made four different versions. I got us started with a simple and straightforward blend of canned coconut milk, organic sugar and water. We stirred the warm water and sugar together until the sugar was dissolved then added the coconut milk, distributed the mixture evenly between the molds and popped them in the freezer. While his sixteen-year-old brother and I thought these were perfect, my older son thought they needed some work.

“The ice crystals are too large,” he said, “and they could use some shredded coconut.” Our next trip to the city found us scouring the freezer section at Viet-Wah, Seattle’s huge and wonderful Vietnamese grocery store. We bought frozen shredded coconut and a box of coconut cream, richer than mere coconut milk. This time the mixture went into the food processor before it went into the molds, but the results were less than perfect; the pops seemed dry and a little grainy. We persevered. This time an unprocessed mixture of coconut cream, shredded coconut, sugar and water spent a short sojourn in the ice cream maker before going into the molds.

“I think the ice cream maker will prevent the formation of those large crystals,” I said “and if we don’t process the mixture, the shredded coconut won’t give it that mealy texture.” Voila! We had nailed it!

Coconut Ice Pops

Next came frozen fudge bars. Fudgesicles® were my favorite treat from the ice cream truck when it rolled through the suburban scene of my childhood summers so I set about trying to recreate the elusive texture of those “quiescently frozen confections.” I had always wondered just what that meant, but had never bothered to look it up; turns out it means “frozen in a restful state,” to distinguish it from ice creams which are churned. Mystery solved.

After boiling a mixture of water, sugar, corn syrup and cocoa powder, I added milk and vanilla. The results were good. The flavor is infinitely better than the flavor of the processed junk, but the texture was not as smooth as the traditional ‘sicles. A visit to the Popsicle® website revealed the ingredients list for my gold standard. Some guar and some palm oil were involved. Guar gum – not as dreadful as it sounds is actually a starch derived from the guar bean and Bob’s Red Mill produces 8-ounce bags of the stuff that cost less than four dollars at my local grocery store. Like other polysaccharides, the complex starch acts as thickener and a binder; it does basically the same things eggs might do in a traditional ice cream or custard. Palm oil in the form of Spectrum® natural organic shortening comes in a two-pound tub. I usually have some on hand for certain pastries; but that’s another story. So my next attempt at frozen fudge pops will include both of these -- albeit in trace amounts. For now, here’s the best I have come up with so far:

Frozen Fudge Pops

While perusing that Popsicle® website I learned that the world’s most popular flavor for the frozen treats is cherry. So, before cherry season is over, I’m trying out some Bing cherry pops. The surprisingly short and non-scary ingredients list on the original brand lists guar gum in these as well. But I’m thinking natural fruit pectin might be more appropriate. I'm going to try some peach pops using the same technique. I'll post the results of those experiments soon.

Meanwhile, some early-ripening blackberries prompted our third ice pop flavor. These little beauties, still warm off the canes in the backyard were pureed with a  sugar at the end of an immersion blender then passed through a strainer to remove the seeds. We stirred in Greek style yogurt and opted for an agitated rather than quiescent finish. That is to say, we put the stuff in the ice cream maker to get it mostly frozen before piping it into the molds. The results? Sublime.

Himalaya Blackberry Yogurt Pops

Copyright, Greg Atkinson, 2010