The war against variety can come from all directions. There are the people so into health food that they demonize meat, cane sugar and all sorts of vegetables and fruits that they deem in one moment and out the next. (I've seen prohibitions against citrus and nightshades for supposed health reasons.) On the other hand, the folks who believe in variety can sometimes not really favor variety at all.
Look at the guy who was here looking for cookie recipes that don't use sugar. I might have been the only regular here who had experience baking with maple syrup, rice syrup (also called yinnie syrup), fruit concentrates, molbuttes, or barley malt. Most of us use cane sugar and and possibly honey, but that's it. There's tons of variety and flavor from all sorts of sweeteners, but we miss it because we're used to cane sugar.
The same goes for flours. You can get rice flour, millet flour, barley flour and a bunch of others at the health food store, but most of us only ever bake with wheat flour (bread, cake, pastry and whole wheat) and possibly oatmeal. If we were really into variety, wouldn't we know all about baking breads and cakes with all of them?
Asian PestoI just made an "asian pesto" based an a recipe I got from Asian Ingredients, A guide to the Foodstuffs of China, Japan...
I know I'm terrible about cooking with a variety of fats. I use butter and a few sorts of oils but know almost nothing about the flavors and properties of duck fat or bacon fat or beef suet.
I'm probably better than the average cook about getting a good variety of vegetables and fruits, but I still probably only get a fraction of what's out there.
Cheese! Where has it been all my life? In the past year I've started appreciating the varieties in cheese that comes from different breeds of cattle, sheep, goats and buffalo. Before my current job, I stuck to cheddar, havarti, swiss, and mozzarella.
Eggs. I know only about large chicken eggs, nothing about duck or any of the other domestic birds out there.
I know so little about the varieties of meats that I can hardly talk about what I don't know. I don't just stick to the same animals, I stick to the same cuts of meats.
I like to say that I get a varied diet, and I'm sure I do better than most, but when I really think about variety, it isn't very varied.
The FruitcakeThanks to all for your suggestions about the booze and for anwering all my other baking questions! Here's my fruitcake recipe, which I may have found here and amended. Sorry for the absence...
--Lia
