Butter made in the European style is slightly higher in fat—82% versus 80%—has fewer milk solids and a lower moisture content. These aspects make it superior for cooking and baking; and as a table butter, it delivers a richer flavor.

• More butterfat and less water in the butter produces higher and fluffier cakes. Cookies are crisper and pie crusts, croissants and puff pastries are flakier.
• Less moisture content gives a creamier texture to sauces, risottos and sautéed foods.
• Compound butters have noticeably intense flavor.
• Table butter—whether on toast, baked potatoes or lobster—is noticeably more delicious.

Plugrá is available in both unsalted and
salted varieties. If you can’t find locally,
it’s available from iGourmet.

Make a plan to use European-style butter for your next baking project. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

• See all the different types of butter in our Butter Glossary.
• Check out the history of butter.

Everyone will howl at the sight of this
haunted gingerbread house. Photo
courtesy MackenzieLtd.com.

In the new and exciting category, we’ve got everything from a gingerbread haunted house to gourmet chocolates in a coffin box to the very best chocolate caramel apples. They’re all terrific treats and memorable gifts.

Artisan products are made in small amounts, and tend to sell out. So take a look at these Halloween specialties and place your order. Otherwise, you may be trading boo! for boo hoo!

• See our recommended candy and cookies.

Throughout October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, you can send specially packaged “Pink Pears” as a gift. Nine large pears, some wrapped in pink foil, plus a limited-edition pink tote bag, are $36.95.

Your purchase helps fight cancer: 25% of proceeds will be donated to breast cancer research.

Pear Nutrition: Pears are a nutritious food. In addition to fiber, they contain large amounts of vitamin C and copper, both antioxidants that help fight free radicals (learn more in our Antioxidant Glossary).

Consumption of pears has been linked to cardiovascular and colon health; and they help to fight against postmenopausal breast cancer and macular degeneration.

Pears for the cure. Photo courtesy
Harry and David.

• Shop now.
• Learn how these comice pears got the name “Royal Riviera.”

Pear History: Pears have been cultivated in what is now western China for 3,000 years. However, they may date back to the Stone Age, some 2.9 million years ago.

The original wild pear is small and bitter. For millennia it was made into a fermented drink (now called perry), similar to cide. The ancient Romans cooked and served it with meat, the common practice until the 16th century, when it was discovered that some varieties could be consumed raw. In the 17th century, botanists discovered how to breed sweet, juicy varieties.

The pear came to America with early colonists. America remains the world’s largest producer of pears, along with China.

Make wine ice cubes. Photo courtesy
iSi Orka.

Then, when a sauce calls for a few tablespoons or a quarter-cup of wine, just pop and drop one or two into the saucepan.

This saves you from opening a bottle of wine for cooking, and provides far better flavor than a cheap bottle of “cooking wine.”

We keep a red wine tray and a white wine ice cube tray in color-coded, lidded iSi Orka ice cube trays (read our review). But you can make the cubes in a single tray and then store them in freezer bags.

You can also use the cubes in wine cocktails, or “winetails.”

What’s up, doc? Here’s a little history of one of our most popular veggies: carrots. According to the USDA, Americans consume 11.8 pounds a person per year. (Beyond raw carrots, this figure includes carrot cake, carrots in soups and stews, and so forth.)

In the beginning, all plants and animals were wild. Over thousands of years of cultivation/domestication, many took on different forms, as farmers bred them for the most desirable characteristics.

The domesticated carrot, botanical name Daucus carota subspecies sativus, started life about 10,000 years ago as a bitter white root vegetable. Over thousands of years, it has been bred into a fleshy, juicy, sweet edible root.

Its name originated in the Indo-European root ker-, for horn (due to its horn-like shape). That evolved to the Greek karoton, the Late Latin carota and the Middle French carotte.

Cultivated carrots originated in present day Afghanistan some 5000 years ago, most likely as purple or yellow roots. Mutants and natural hybrids occurred naturally, that crossed the purple and yellow carrots with both wild and cultivated varieties and produced other colors, including the now-ubiquitous orange.

For a long time, purple carrots were the norm, with occasional mutations producing yellow and white varieties, which lacked the purple pigment anthocyanin. You can still find these heirloom breeds in farmers markets.

It was Dutch farmers in the late 16th century who took mutated strains of yellow and white carrot and, over time, bred them into the orange carrots that are standard today.

Some believe that the reason the orange carrot became so popular in the Netherlands was in tribute to the emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence. This could be, but it also might just be that the orange carrots that the Dutch developed were sweeter and plumper than their purple forebears.

THE ”INVENTION” OF BABY CARROTS

Fast-forward 200-plus years to the next carrot innovation:

In 1986, a California carrot grower named Mike Yurosek sought a use for carrots with flaws and imperfections that could not be sold whole. These “reject carrots” accounted for up to 70% of the carrots headed down the bagging conveyer belt! Yurosek made lemons out of lemonade and invented the baby carrot. He took the broken and dwarfed carrots and sold them as “baby carrots,” which have become the fastest growing segment in carrot industry.

But if you want to save money and slice your own from conventional carrots, we highly recommend a crinkle cutter. It makes veggies as fun as…baby carrots.