Gone are the days of cupcakes in the classroom. By now most parents know that. But are Pop-Tarts acceptable? What about a few Oreos? Snack Time became Headache Time this semester for one Tempe mom left shaking her head over just what's okay to serve kids in public school.

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This past Saturday, Scottish transplants and local Haggis-lovers rejoiced as the popular dish made its way to the Glenmorangie 46th Annual Scottish Highland Games and Celtic Gathering at Phoenix's Steele Indian School Park. The import of Scottish haggis has been banned in the U.S. since the mad cow scare in the late '80s. Don't ask why, since there are absolutely no cows harmed in the making of haggis.

What IS haggis, you ask? (Weak Stomach Alert!!!)

Why, oh, why couldn't we have been writing up the strawberries and cream instead?

​Basically you take the castoff parts of a sheep -- the heart, liver and lungs or other offal -- grind 'em up and combine the "meat" with oats, suet and spices. The mixture is then stuffed inside a sheep's stomach, forming a giant globular sausage. Uh, yum?

Hard to find, harder to eat.

  

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Here at Chow Bella, we try to follow food trends as they pop up. So when we started seeing little peanut-sized lumps of cheese at farmers' markets and groceries around town, we figured it was time to stop and find out how and why they're made.

Superstition Farms' cheese curds at Oakville Grocery.

​ ​If you're from the Midwest (especially Wisconsin), cheese curds are likely a throwback to childhood. Apparently, they're a popular snack food. Dairy farms are plentiful there, so that's no big surprise. What is a surprise -- at least the first time you pop one in your mouth -- is that cheese curds squeak. Yes, food that squeaks. Awesome!

The question is, why do cheese curds squeak when you eat them? And what the heck are they made of, anyway? We popped by Tempe's Milk n' More Store at the United Dairymen of Arizona processing plant on Broadway and Hardy to find out. 

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By Wynter Holden

My original plan this week was to dish on the spotted dick (tee-hee) at George & Dragon, but our own Robrt Pela stole my thunder with his creative post on the can of spotted dick (I just can't resist saying it again) gathering dust in his pantry. Guess we both had spotted dick (one last time) on the brain. Oh, what Freud would say.

Instead, today's wacky item of the week was "spotted" on the menu at Tommy Bahama's Tropical Café at Kierland Commons in Scottsdale. It's not quite as deliciously unusual as the aforementioned British dessert, but it does have a funny name: pattypan. It's in the Ocho Rios Roasted Chicken, an all-natural half bird with accompanying veggie side dish. Even though the name "pattypan" sounds like a cake-y dessert to me (maybe because I had an Aunt Patty who liked to eat sweets, or because of the kiddie rhyme "patty-cake"), their presence amongst carrots, snap peas and corn clued me in that it was likely a veggie.

Yup. Pattypans, also called button squash or white squash, come in white, green or yellow varieties and are often served fried or scooped-out and used as edible containers. They're low in calories, about 20-30 per serving, and have zero fat -- well, unless they're served fried, of course. Most people say the tiny 2-3 inch summer squashes (they're picked young for best flavor) look like tops, but I see UFOs, or tulips, or creepy mutant baby feet.

Hey, what are those phallic-looking white veggies in the picture, snuggling with the pattypans? Too bad they're not spotted...

By Wynter Holden

Common sense says use what you have, right? If you live by the sea, catch and cook fish. On the plains or in the forest, pick berries and hunt game. And in the desert -- well, unless you want to hack up a cactus and start chowing down, you're pretty much stuck. Then again...

A few years ago, I caught an episode of a Discovery Channel reality game show where two contestants were challenged to cook and eat cholla cactus buds. Since then, I've been fascinated by local fare involving this plentiful desert ingredient. Prickly pear jelly and cactus lollipops can be found on any kitschy Scottsdale souvenir shop shelf, but truly gourmet cactus foodstuffs are hard to find.

Chef Travis Dimmick fills that gap with exotic creations like Roasted Quail stuffed with Cholla Bud Risotto, currently on the menu at The Gathering Restaurant at Camp Verde's Cliff Castle Casino. Not only does he use the buds -- which have to be plucked and the needles removed before use -- the dish is also garnished with sweet saguaro syrup, a rare treat in Phoenix.

Yes, we have those giant three-armed green bandits on every friggin' mountain, hill or nicely xeriscaped lawn in town. But apparently their protected status extends to the "fruit" they bear, which can only be harvested and cooked by a handful of folks (mainly Native Americans) licensed by the state. Go figure. Guess that just leaves roadrunner stew. No, too gamey. Scorpion puffs? All crunch, no meat. Javelina BBQ ribs? Now, that could be interesting.

By Wynter Holden

Holy basil. I giggled like a schoolgirl when I saw this heavenly sounding herb on the menu at Thai Elephant in downtown Phoenix. You know when something you see or hear just makes you bust a gut laughing -- and no one else at your table seems to get the joke? Yeah, that was me.

I imagined Buddhist monks spending hours praying and chanting over little plant sprouts, infusing them with love. "Om, mani padme grow. Om, mani padme grow." Or...wait! Maybe it's basil that's loaded with round crevices, like Swiss cheese. No, that would be "holey" basil. Perhaps the plant, when ingested, is reputed to fill you with the holy spirit. Cure all wounds. Cause you to have angelic visions. Of course, if the latter were true, I'm thinking more people would be growing holy basil (instead of other green, leafy plants) in their basement.

So what's the real deal? Holy basil, or Tulasi, is a spicy purple or green-leafed plant native to India. Tulasi is hairier than it's cousin, the standard bright green Thai Basil found in many ethnic restaurants. Sadly, the cultivation of holy basil doesn't involve monks or exotic chants, but the plant is considered sacred in the Hindu culture and is known to have antiseptic and anti-bacterial properties. And it is used in Hindu ceremonies, which involve chanting and rituals. Guess I wasn't that far off after all.

By Wynter Holden

While house hunting a few years ago, I saw one cottage with a lovely orange tree in the backyard. The house itself was nothing special. But the tree was perfect. I imagined myself picking plump ripe oranges and making fresh juice; the first step on my way to becoming the domestic goddess of my new domicile.

Then my husband snuck up behind me and squashed my dream like, well, an orange beneath his big, clumsy foot. According to him, the tree was decorative and would produce bitter, inedible fruit. I'd forgotten all about that house and the sweet little tree, until a recent exploration of the menu at Scottsdale's Pepin Spanish Restaurant yielded "fresh pork leg marinated in sour orange." Yum!

I looked up sour orange and lo and behold there was a picture that looked just like the pretty orange tree at that cottage in East Mesa. The sour orange tree (also called bitter orange) produces edible fruit just like its sweet cousins. The taste is pungent enough to dissuade most people from eating sour oranges raw, but it's perfect for making marmalade or other sweetened sauces like the one used on Pepin's pork legs.

I could let my hubby in on his little citrus snafu, but that would just sound like sour grapes. Or oranges, in this case.

by Wynter Holden

I do love a good fennel sausage. They had a mean spiced sausage with sweet, licorice-y fennel at my local organic market back in Portland, where I spent the past year and change. I sautéed it with apples and pasta in a light olive oil and garlic sauce. Yum. So when I glimpsed this on the menu at North Scottsdale's swank Sassi, I was intrigued:

House made fennel sausage with "blind husband" style beans.

Blind husband beans? At that point, I forgot all about my fennel sausage. I cocked an eyebrow at my hubby and wondered what kind of interesting side dish Sassi had cooked up. I imagined there was an interesting story there. Unfortunately, my trusty Internet guides Ms. Yahoo and Mr. Google came up completely empty on this one. What to do? I picked up the phone and gave Sassi's home office a ring.

GM Stephen Plunkett had the answer I was looking for. Or at least, part of it. Chef Wade Moises was inspired by an old Italian recipe for a multi-bean dish nicknamed "blind husband soup". Sassi's version is more like a stew, and contains several varieties of beans (including French navy, garbanzo, cranberry and scarlet). The bean base is mixed with garlic oil, broccoli rabe, and spicy bread croutons to form a mushy, thick stew.

Seems like an odd combination of flavors, but according to Plunkett, this dish is a winner -- so much so that guests often ask for it as a side dish even if they don't want the fennel sausage. I never actually got the explanation behind the name, but my own clever husband proposed that perhaps a blind husband searching in the dark for stew ingredients might hand over fistfuls of mismatched beans. And the wife, feeling sorry for her poor feeble mate, doesn't say anything and puts the odd ingredients into her soup.

Yeah, I'll just let him think that.

By Wynter Holden

It all started at a recent weekend brunch. Things were running pretty smoothly, until two of the girls at the table next to me started a vicious sauce debate that threatened to come to blows. Or at least a good catfight. Now, don't get me wrong, I love sauce. I can't eat my shoe-leather-like well done steak without A-1 or Heinz 57, I'll eat cardboard if it's dipped in a good barbecue sauce and penne ala vodka practically makes my toes curl in delight. But the great béchamel vs. béarnaise vs. hollandaise debate of 2008? Does anyone really care?

I changed my mind after a recent trip to Bacchanal Greek Restaurant, where my citrus-allergic friend Mr. T (sadly, not the Mr. T of A Team fame) spit out a mouthful of meat-stuffed grape leaves in avgolemano because he failed to realize that the Greek sauce is made with lemon. Inside I was screaming, "Duh, ask the waiter if you don't know what it is," but instead I offered him some of my béchamel-coated moussaka (think eggplant lasagna). After all, who am I to judge?

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By Wynter Holden

Reading an ethic restaurant menu can be like trying to decode a mysterious ancient parchment; at least, if you don't speak the language. It can also get you into a lot of trouble if you're remotely picky about food, or allergic to any ingredients. Does pesche mean chicken or fish? What exactly is Avgolemano? Does pecan pie have nuts in it? (Ok, not that last one, but I always loved Ben Stiller's bad date story in the movie Keeping the Faith.)

My sister and I have always wanted to sample the South Indian Thali Platter at Udupi Café in Tempe. She’s a vegetarian, and I dig ethnic food, so this is one of the few places we can both eat together without complaint (and from my diet-friendly point of view, without sinking into a carb coma).

The sharable dinner plate is listed as: Roti, white rice, sambar, dhal, kootu, avial, poriyal, rasam, curd, pickle, pappad, payasam and coffee or tea. Sounds cool, but who knows? Rasam could be marinated leaves and twigs for all I know. At least I can say with confidence that it isn’t pig’s liver, caterpillars or any other meat product, since Udupi is strictly herbivore grub.

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