May the year bring you love and luck in all of their iterations.

A fully moderated discussion on meat and milk from cloned animals is going down as part of the BBC News Have Your Say beta.

Would you be happy to eat cloned meat? Could cloning techniques be used to boost food production? Are you in the US, if so, will you be taking part in the public consultation?

The thread is titled Would you eat cloned meat? and brought about several choice responses.

Ed, from Tampa, Florida wrote:

Would I eat clone meat…or will I? Since there are no requirements that meat pakagers require a label "saying" its cloned then I think we all will sooner or later.

I love this bit from elrohana, in Leeds:

I check for GM labels already and will not buy anything that has been tampered with - in fact, I am trying to grow my own veg this coming year to avoid having to eat pesticides. However I suspect that the British consumer is too canny to eat this stuff anyway. I can't believe Americans would be so stupid either

Sarah in Boston penned:

To confidently claim that cloned food is completely harmless is arrogant and shortsighted. Most importantly, this meat should be labeled so as to provide consumers with a choice concerning what food we're putting on the table.

There are a number of other great, articulate arguments in a place that gets very high traffic. Plus, the BBC news site is fairly up-to-date with all the good techy stuff. There is an RSS feed for the entire discussion.

Tara passed this bit of information about Cheddar Cheese over to me this morning -

...artisan cheddar producers do exist, most notably the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company - the only cheddar cheese-maker still in Cheddar.

You read that correctly - there's only one Cheddar Cheese maker in Cheddar, England. And he uses unpasteurized milk.

The FDA has ruled that food from cloned animals is safe to eat and does not require special labeling.

The Food and Drug Administration planned to brief industry groups in advance of an announcement Thursday morning. The FDA indicated it would approve cloned livestock in a scientific journal article published online earlier this month.

Consumer groups say labels are a must, because surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable with the idea of cloned livestock.

However, FDA concluded that cloned animals are "virtually indistinguishable" from conventional livestock and that no identification is needed to judge their safety for the food supply.

I love that phrase "virtually indistinguishable", because it's a phrase that can mean anything from "there's no difference" to "there's kind of a difference".

I have no problem with the idea of cloned food. There's almost 7 billion people on the planet and having cheap food alternatives is always a good idea. However, I do have two issues.

First, as with genetically modified foods, it's not the quality of the food as much as the quality of the production techniques that has me concerned. I'm not sure I trust the Monsanto's of the world to give this technology and the process involved the respect it is due.

Secondly - I really dislike the idea of the FDA stating that the cloned food doesn't need to be labeled as such. Rightly or wrongly, there is a sizable segment of the population who will have misgivings about cloned food, and they have the right to not eat the stuff. By avoiding labeling the product, the FDA has essentially said that "You're going to eat this food whether you like it or not".

I feel the same way about GM foods - I believe I should have the right to be as an informed as a consumer as I can be. The FDA thinks otherwise.

Now if Uncle Frank gets drunk and unruly at the Holiday table, you can simply disconnect his video feed.

It's an interesting idea, but I'm wondering the market is big enough to sustain the product.

Via Jack and Gizmodo

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 12

This is the last holiday recipe of the year. Can I get a "Hallelujah?"

Amen, Brothers and Sisters!

I bring this recipe forth today, as it has been said by others that it is Divine, that it is the Divinity. Can I get a "Hallelujah"?

Amen.

The moral of the recipe is that one can find the Divine in anything - a child's smile, the song of a bird, and yes, even a recipe thats primarily egg whites, granulated sugar and corn syrup. Can I get yet one more "Hallelujah"?

Amen, Sisters and Brothers.

Alas, the recipe I used resulted in really thin divinity, so I've altered the recipe so as to provide the congregation with thicker, more sinful, cuts of the white fudge.

'Cause that, my friends, is the true meaning of Divine - Something so wonderful that it seems that it seems wicked.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Note the sorry state of the divinity in the picture. The recipe instructions below tell us where I went wrong.

• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

In a medium saucepan combine sugar, corn syrup, and hot water. Cook and stir till sugar dissolves and mixture comes to boil. Stop stirring and let the sugar come to temperature.

Cook, without stirring until 250 degrees F is reached.

In a large, steel or glass mixing bowl, beat 2 egg whites with salt until stiff and forms peaks. Pour a constant stream of the syrup slowly over the egg whites.

Beat on high for about 5 minutes or when soft peaks form. Make sure the divinity loses it's gloss and holds its shape. This is where I failed, and you can see the results in the picture.

Finally, mix in the walnuts.

Spread in a lightly greased 8"x8" pan, and cool before cutting.

Makes 9-16 pieces of divinity

It's Christmas Eve and Jolly Old Saint Kristen's gonna hand out the internet's finest food related links of 2006 (more or less) to you, in this one-time only kind-of-a-blow-off-because-come-on-it's-Christmas-Eve post!

(Seriously, give me a break here. I still gotta wrap a bunch of gifts and figure out a way to somehow muffle the sound on this freakin' Barbie keyboard my kid's been asking for all year.)

Anyway! Let's see what I've got here for you...

For you metrophiles, I give you: a collection of recipes from the MTA NYC Transit retirees. Some of the recipes sound pretty good, some that border on the bizarre, and some that you're going to need a translator for. So.... pretty much like living in New York, come to think of it.

For those who love all everything in the kitchen -- the cookbooks, funny foods, cool gadgets, etc. -- I give you: Food Maven, written by the same woman who brings you Coconut and Lime. (In the interests of full disclosure: I was interviewed via email by Food Maven a while back, but I'm pretty sure I only came to her attention after leaving a number of omg i <3 yr blog!!1! fangirlish comments.)

For anyone who's worn out their copy of Lilek's Gallery of Regrettable Food, here's an equally hilarious collection of Weight Watchers recipes from the 1970s: The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s

For a blog that will inspire even the humblest of beginners: The Fumbling Foodie. If Dave can teach himself to make White Chocolate Souffle with Raspberry-Chocolate Sauce, I know I, for one, am certainly inspired to do it as well.

For the snarky TV watcher in us all: Television Without Pity's recaps of Top Chef. It's everything you wish you had thought up to say to your coworkers over the watercooler.

For people looking to read a blog about NYC food that a genuinely good read (and won't make you feel like you're not too cool enough read it): Madison & Mayberry, the "culinary adventures of a Southern girl in the city."

For fans of everything kawaii: Cooking Cute, featuring bento lunches so unbearably cute, you can't see how anyone could possibly eat them and destroy all that cute.

For everyone so inspired by that last blog you're ready to rush out and pack your own bentos: Bento TV, featuring all the how-to bento videos you could ever want.

Well, that's the bottom of Santa's pack, kids. Have a great Christmas -- or at least enjoy your day off -- and I'll see you back here in two weeks!

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 11

Ooof. Out of all of the cookies I've made so far, these have impressed me the least.

I was looking for another 'novelty' type cookie, and found these little treats. Teeny tiny cookies appeal to some base instinct within me that I yet to figure out.

But after making them, they ended up being nothing more than tiny pieces of shortbread. The novelty of the idea of the recipe did not match up with the reality of the results. Alas, this happens from time to time.

And yes, when we're referring to Santa's workshop helpers the word is 'elfin'. When we're referring to the pointy-eared snobs of Middle Earth, it's 'elvin'. And when we're referring to the peanut-butter and banana sandwhich afficianado, it's 'Elvis'.

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3 Tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
• 2 Tablespoons red+green colored sprinkles

In a mixing bowl, whip together the butter and sugar. Add the flour, 1/4 cup at a time, until you get a doughy consistency. Stir in the sprinkles. Cover the dough and refrigerate for at least one hour.

To bake, preheat your oven to 325 degrees F.

Take the dough and place it one parchment paper. Roll it into 1/2" thickness. Then cut into 1/2" by 1/2" squares. Place parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Place the cookie sheet into the oven and bake between 14 to 16 minutes. Remove and allow to cool on the sheet.

Makes a lot

Technorati Tags: Recipe, Cookies, Holiday+Cookies, Shortbread

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 10

Here we are, heading into the homestretch of this cookie marathon. Let me state, for the record, that I have hit the figurative "Cookie Wall", where I'm not sure I can bear to face another recipe and another load of cookies to make. I just thank goodness that Tara's coworkers have taken on the task of eating a fair majority of the items I have baked thus far.

Which comes to what I believe to be a new law - Let's call it "Kate's Law of Christmas Cookie Baking". This law states that "Unless one is a professional baker, one should make no more than five different cookie recipes for any Holiday season."

Meanwhile, to answer a question posed to me by the ever lovely Tara - These are not macaroons, for a variety of reasons. The primary reason is that macaroons need egg whites, which this recipe lacks.

• 2 2/3 cup shredded coconut
• 2 Tablespoons corn starch
• 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
• 2 teaspoons almond extract (Amaretto will also work)
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds

Preheat yoru oven to 325 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, combine the coconut and the corn starch. Stir in the condensed milk and the almond extract and mix well. Lastly, mix in the slivered almonds.

Drop the coconut dough, one teaspoon at a time, onto a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet, spreading the drops at least one inch apart from one another.

Place the cookie sheet into the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Remove and allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet.

Makes 2 dozen cookies, give or take

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Cookies, Holiday Cookies, Coconut Drops

Dear Kraft,

I realize that not many people can read or write the Aztecan language of Nahuatl. But it's worth remembering that the term 'guacamole' comes from that historic language.

And if you dig just a bit deeper, you can find out that 'guacamole' is a hybridization of the Nahuatl term AhuacamOlli/ahuaca-mulli, which literally translates to avocado (Ahuacatl) sauce (mole/mulli).

So yeah, when you don't put avocados in our avocoado sauce, you're bound to tick off a few of us, not to mention it makes you look a tad bit uncaring because you're not really following the spirit of the consumer trust, even though you're following the letter of the law.

Oh, and just because other companies do it doesn't mean you have to. If Mission Brands jumped off a bridge, would you jump off as well?

Just thought you should know.

Love,

Kate

Technorati Tags: Kraft, Guacamole

12 Days of Christmas: Day 9

I remember these cookies from my childhood, but did not know that they were called Kris Kringles until recently. It's one of those names that make little sense to me, as the dominating ingredients (various citrus zests) seem to be the antithesis of the traditional Christmas giftbringer of Germany.

But they are fine looking cookies, that is for sure.

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 cup AP Flour
• 1 Tablespoon orange zest
• pinch o' salt
• 1 egg white, beaten
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped
• 12 candied cherries, halved

In a medium mixing bowl, mix together the butter and sugar until the butter becomes slightly whipped. Then beat in the egg yolk, lemon zest and lemon juice. Once combined, add the flour, orange zest and the pinch o' salt. Mix until the dough forms and the flour is thoroughly incorporated. Cover the dough in plastic wrap and place inthe refrigerator for at least one hour.

Immediately prior to taking the dough out to use, pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll the balls in the beaten egg whites and then roll in the chopped nuts. Place on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Top each cookie with a cherry half.

Put the cookies into the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and immediately place on a wire rack to cool.

Makes 2 dozen +/-

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Cookie Recipes, Holiday Cookies, Kris Kringles

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 8

These little treats contain three of my favorite ingredients (sugar, cocoa and rum) and places them into a cookie. Rum? In Cookies? It's like I've died and gone to liquor heaven. And since these are no-bake cookies, the alcohol doesn't burn off. Can life get any better? I think not.

Since there's still alcohol in the cookies, one might wish to avoid handing these out to kids. Not that I think that there's enough alcohol to do any damage to the kids, but rather because I think the adults need their own cookies. Let the children have their sugar cookies and rice krispie treats. We have our rum balls.

One could easily replace the rum with any number of other alcoholic beverages. I'd recommend bourbon, vanilla vokda or cinnamon schnapps. However, I personally like the rum because it allows me to use my favorite brand of rum - Sailor Jerry's (or as I refered to it recently, "The breakfast of Champions).

• 1 1/2 cups pecans
• 1 1/4 cups (vanilla wafer cookies
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon cardomom (optional)
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 1/4 cup spiced rum
• Powdered sugar and sweetened cocoa powder, to garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place the pecans on a baking sheet, place in the oven and toast for about 8 minutes.
After cooling, chop the pecans with either a knife or place in a food processor. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.

Gronud the vanilla wafers by either placing them in a plastic bag and smashing the bejesus out of them with a mallet, or place them a food processor and pulse into fine crumbs. Add the crumbs to the bowl with the chopped pecans. Add the powdered sugar, cinnamon, cardomom and cocoa powder and stir until combined. Add the corn syrup and rum and mix well.

Chill the dough for one hour and then shape into 1 inch balls. Place the remaining powdered sugar and the sweetened powdered cocoa into two seperate small bowls. Roll the rum balls in either the sugar or cocoa.

makes 3 dozen

Technorati Tags: recipes, cookies, rum balls

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 7

If memory serves me correctly, Cook's Illustrated recently did an article on how to make the best chocolate chip cookie and found that the Toll House Cookie recipe that we've all come to love is as close to perfection as one could get (at least when it comes to chocolate chip cookies).

That's not to say that one cannot nor should not tamper with a classic, all in the name of "The Holidays". To wit, add red and green M&M's in place of some of the chocolate chips and voila!...Instant holiday cookies.

Part of me is fascinated by the fact that one can add red and/or green ingredients to a cookie, and suddenly it's thought to be a "Christmas Cookie". It's amazing to me that these two colors are so iconic.

Equally amazing to me is the fact that legend the "red" in the red and green comes from the representation of the blood of kings and then later the King of kings. Note that this is probably not a good tidbit of trivia to share with children and the more fundamentalist of Christians.

Thanks to Tara for pointing this tidbit out. Oh, and the color green? As best as I can gather, it roughly represents the fertility of soil extrapolated from any number of myths and traditions revolving around death and rebirth.

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup plain M&M's
• 1 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat your oven to 375° F.
In a medium mixing bowl, combine your flour, baking soda and salt.

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in the M&M's, chocolate chips and walnuts. . Drop by rounded tablespoon onto parchment lined baking sheets.

Place the cookie sheets in the oven and bake between 9 and 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes and then remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Makes 4 dozen, give or take

Technorati Tags: Cookies, recipes, Toll House Cookies, M&M's

Ya gotta love this headline from the BBC: High IQ link to being vegetarian As if some vegetarians aren't already insufferable enough, now we have to deal with this? I kid, I kid. So let's look at the numbers here...

Men who were vegetarian had an IQ score of 106, compared with 101 for non-vegetarians; while female vegetarians averaged 104, compared with 99 for non-vegetarians.

That's a swing of a whole 5 points. That's probably just enough of a swing that allows a person to realize that choices in eating have long term ramifications. My guess? Becoming vegetarian doesn't make you more intelligent. Rather than being intelligent allows a person to make vegetarianism a lifestyle choice. In other words vegetarians were already intelligent even before becoming vegetarians. My favorite part of the article?

Twenty years after the IQ tests were carried out in 1970, 366 of the participants said they were vegetarian - although more than 100 reported eating either fish or chicken.

I guess this means that these 100 people who called themselves vegetarians yet still ate fish and/or chicken would be at the lower end of the IQ scale? Because apparently that swing of five IQ points wasn't enough of an uptick in their smarts to make them realize that eating chicken and fish makes a person an omnivore, not a vegetarian. Technorati Tags: Vegetarianism, vegetarians

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 6

By no means should this recipe be considered traditional. Instead, it's more of a novelty, what with the primary ingredient being melted ice cream.

Read the ingredients below carefully consider them for a moment. We have a cookie made primarily from melted ice cream, butter and flour. It's safe to say that this isn't a recipe to share at the Jenny Craig Christmas party.

• 1 pt. vanilla ice cream, thawed and melted
• 1 lb. butter
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 4 c. flour
• 1 cup of your favorite jelly
• powdered sugar, for dusting

In a large bowl, mix together the ice cream and butter. Add the eggs and sugar, and mix until the sugar dissolves. Then add the flour, one cup at a time. Mix until the dough becomes relatively smooth and the butter is thoroughly incorporated. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Roll out dough between 1/4" to 1/8" in thickness. Cut out into circles, placing a thumb imprint (or tablespoon imprint) in the center of the cookie. Spoon a teaspoon of jelly into the impression and place the filled cookies on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

Place the cookie sheet into the oven and bake between 17-20 minutes or until brown, whichever comes first. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 30 minutes before dusting with powdered sugar.

Makes approximately 3 dozen cookies

Technorati Tags: recipes, kolackys, cookies, cookie recipes

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 5

Things have been a tad bit hectic here in the Pacific Northwest. We had a wind storm here on Thursday night that knocked out power to over one million homes. At our home we lost a gutter to the 70 mph winds, which resulted in some rain water being misdirected into our basement. Which would be okay if it weren't for the pesky fact that my bedroom is in said basement.

Ah well. If anything can can improve my mood, it would be good brownies. The following recipe creates a brownie that I believe typifies was a brownie should be. This would include:

• a dense cake
• a glossy top
• nuts

Anything else seems...well...less than a brownie.

And yes, this is the recipe that kicked off the whole "Is a brownie a cookie or a cake" debate. My conclusion? Both cookies and brownies are subsets of the larger "cake" set.

• 10 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup dark cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup All Purpose Flour
• 2/3 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 324 degrees F.

In a medium sized metal bowl, blend together the butter, sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Beat together until the butter has softened and has been whipped together with the dry ingredients. Place a large skillet filled with water over medium heat.

When the water starts to simmer, place the metal bowl into the water, and whisk the batter until smooth. This should take between 10-15 minutes, depending upon how well your bowl conducts heat.

Once the batter is smooth, add in the vanilla and stir in thoroughly. Add each egg, one at a time, also mixing in thoroughly before adding the second egg. Once the batter becomes shiny, stir in the flour and mix until all of it has been incorporated into the batter. Stir in the nuts and pour into a lined 8" x 8" pan. (Typically, I line my brownie pan with aluminum foil, one sheet placed horizontal, another vertically. This way I can pull the brownies out with the foil, rather than with a spatula).

Place in the oven and bake for 25 minutes. Allow to cool for 30 minutes. Remove from the pan and cut into 16 pieces.

Serves 16

As it turns out, when your friends and family read your blog, and then come to your house, you start to think maybe you ought do a little more than make sure you dig out all the local take-out menus from your junk drawer.

I realized this when when my mother-in-law -- who reads my blog -- came to visit us recently, and I figured if I spend so much of my time writing about the foods I cook and eat, it seems only right that I should cook something special for her... but what? Seeing as I'd just read Julia Child's My Life in France, with its loving descriptions of even the simplest French foods, and with my mother-in-law as our guest, who lived in France for a while when my husband was a toddler, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to try putting together a simple French meal.

Now, to put it kindly, I'm somewhat picky about Doing Things Just Right Or Not Doing Them At All. For instance: I will scrap a grocery list and start fresh if I find I've misspelled "mostaccioli" on it. Somewhat picky, unhealthily compulsive... to-may-to, to-mah-to. Anyway. That's how I am and I was intent on doing a French meal right.

Read more! »

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 4

Sugar cookies are the foundation of Holiday cookies. This is for several good reasons.

1)It's a basic recipe. Quick to make and easy to bake.

2)The cookies lend themselves for decorating.

3)They're TASTY!!

Additionally, the craft of decorating cookies (which I have yet to master) also lends itself to an activity with the kids. That's the reason that this is the perfect holiday cookie.

• 1 3/4 cup All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg, large
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a small bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg and the vanilla. Add the flour mixture and combine. Knead together the dough until smooth.

Wrap the dough in plastic film and place in the refrigerator for at least one hour.

When ready to use, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Roll out dough to 1/4" thickness. Cut out into your favorite shapes and place on a parchment-paper lined cookie sheet. Place the cookie sheet into the oven and bake between 8-10 minutes.

Remove and allow to cool for 20 minutes before icing.

Makes 2 dozen cookies or so, depending on the size of the cookies you create.

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 3

Part of the allure of Holiday Cookies is the idea of providing favorite treats to loved ones. In the case of these oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, it was Tara who requested these cookies, even though it was done under the guise of requesting the cookies for someone else.

I find it's best when making holiday cookiesnot be tied to the holiday motif with every cookie you make. Through in your best peanut butter cookies or snickerdoodles. I'm of the belief that the season calls for the best cookies, not just the ones that remind us of Christmas.

• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup light brown sugar, firmly paked
• 3/4 cup butter, at room temperature
• 2 eggs, large
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups rolled oats, uncooked
• 3/4 cup chocolate chip

Pre heat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt.

In a large bowl, beat together the sugar and butter until the mixture appears whipped. At that point, mix in the eggs and vanilla until thoroughly incorporated.

Add the flour mixture into the butter, mixing well. Stir in the oats and chocolate chips until the chips are evenly distributed.

Spoon out dough onto greased cookie sheets, about a tablespoon apiece. Place cookies into the oven and bake between 10 to 12 minutes. Remove and allow to cool.

Makes 2 - 3 dozen

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 2

To me, the mirage of Christmas Cookies are the Gingerbread men. In my youth, did not make gingerbread or gingerbread men, and I'm sure we didn't know of anyone who did. In the Polish and Italian neighborhoods where we grew up, it was kolackys and pizelles. Gingerbread men were an unknown entity.

So my question is thus: is there anyone out there who did make gingerbread men on a regular basis? Or are these bitter/sweet cakes part of the same Christmas traditions that everyone is aware of, but few take part. Can we put gingerbread men into the same category as fruitcakes and wassail?

• 3/4 cup unsulphured molasses
• 3/4 cup butter (room temperature)
• 3 2/3 cups All Purpose Flour (sifted)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon cardomom
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 egg, large

Pour the molasses into a medium sized sauce pan that has been placed over low heat. Add the butter and stir slowly, allowing the butter to melt completely, but without bringing the molasses to a boil. Once the butter is melted, remove from heat and allow to cool.

In a large glass bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, ginger, cardomom, cinnamon and brown sugar. Mix well and slowly add the cooled molasses. Beat until thoroughly incorporated. Add the egg, mixing it in as well.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour.

After the dough is chilled, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Roll out the dough until 1/4" thick. Cut out the gingerbread men using the appropriate cookie cutter, and place on a cookie sheet that has been lined with parchment paper.

Place in the oven and bake for 13-15 minutes.

Makes 12-18 gingerbread men

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Holiday Recipes, Gingerbread man, gingerbread

12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 1

Out of all of the cookies that I have eaten during the Holidays, the no-bake cookies are the ones that first come to mind. I'm sure part of it had to do with the four siblings, each of us competing for our favorite cookies. Part of me believes that my passion for no-bakes is due to the fact that if I had a no-bake, it meant one less for my brother and sisters. Such was the fun of sibling rivalry during Christmas time.

So when choosing cookies for the "12 days of Christmas Cookies" this was the first cookie that what I wanted to make. Because nothing say "Holidays" like the cherished memories of passive-aggressive behavior.

• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

In a sauce pan placed over medium heat, combine the butter, milk and sugar. Stir well until the butter is melted and bring to a light boil.

Add the chocolate chips and rolled oats. Mix until the chocolate chips melt, combine with the sugar and coat the oats. Add the vanilla and stir.

Using a tablespoon, scoop up some of the batter and drop onto wax or parchment paper. Allow to cool. You can refrigerate to speed up the solidification.

Makes 2 1/2 to 3 dozen cookies

Your favourite Social Bookmark codes go here.

I've read some fairly amazing stories about food whilst perusing the Internet. Some of them hairbrained and based in idle speculation, others well researched and well documented. Can you guess which category this article about soy from the conservative site WorldNetDaily falls into?

Here's a clue, in the form of a snippet from the post:

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products.

So let me see if I understand their premise -

Soy...

...causes homosexuality.

Ooooohhhhhhhh!! That explains everything!! I'm glad they could set the record straight.

As fresh peas and dried peas handle differently, I'm going to divide the tips up accordingly.

Dried Peas

• One pound of dried peas equals 2 1/4 cups. When cooked, this 2 1/4 cups of dried peas equates to 5 cups after cooked.
• Dried peas come from several varieties of field peas, and are a different variety from fresh peas or those found in the frozen food section.
• Dried peas can be stored in an airtight container for up to one year at room temperature. They can be stored indefinitely if frozen.
• Discard any discolored or shriveled peas, as they indicate immature growth.
• Split peas do not require soaking prior to use.
• Whole dried peas do require soaking and may be done overnight with the peas placed in a large bowl and at least three inches of cold water.
• To Quick soak the peas, put the peas in a large pan, cover with water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and allow to sit for 2 hours. Drain the water and use as needed.
• Refrain from using salted water for cooking the peas, as it toughens their skin. Salt the peas after they are done cooking.
• Remove the peas from the hot water once the cooking is complete.

Fresh Peas

• Peas season runs from early spring to the first few weeks of summer.
• Choose medium sized pea pods. Larger peas will be too starchy, while the smaller peas may be underdeveloped.
• Choose fresh peas that are firm and plump. The colors should be bright, consistent and unblemished.
• The pea that is more recently picked will have higher sugar content (and thus will taste sweeter). Once picked, peas will convert this sugar to starch, which will affect its flavor.
• One pound of peas in their pod equates to roughly one cup of peas shelled.
• Fresh peas can be refrigerated, unwashed, for up to two days
• Shell peas immediately prior to use, to prevent sugar loss.
• For a quick vegetable broth, use the pea pods and cook them in 4 cups of water (or previously made chicken or veggie stock) for one hour.
• Prevent overcooking your peas. When done, they should still be crisp on the outside, but tender on the insider. They should have lost little to none of their color.
• Acidic foods will leach the color from peas.
• Frozen peas do not need to be cooked prior to use in other dishes. It is acceptable to add the frozen peas directly to the dish 2 to 3 minutes before the cooking time of the dish has completed cooking.
• Frozen peas are one of the few vegetables whose taste is not excessively diminished by the freezing process, and are a decent substitute for when fresh peas are unavailable.
• One 10 ounce package of frozen peas equates to 1 1/1 lbs od unshelled peas.

Technorati Tags: Food Tips, Peas,

Two big events kick off today -

First, Pim's Menu for Hope III, the now annual charity auction, gets started. For a chance to give money to the UN World Food Program, head over there and buy your raffle tickets.

Secondly, the Food Blog Awards start taking nomination over at the Well Fed Network. The Food Blog Awards were started on this site, and migrated to the Well Fed Network last winter.

They've come from a farm in Southern California that supplies produce to Ready Pac (which I nodded at slightly yesterday).

The scallions suspected in the E. coli outbreak linked to Taco Bell came from a southern California grower, an official with the company that washed, chopped and packed them for the restaurant chain said yesterday.

Ready Pac Produce, the sole supplier of green onions to Taco Bell restaurants in the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia areas, stopped all production of scallions at its Florence, N.J., plant, which federal food inspectors visited Wednesday.

Technorati Tags: E.Coli, Taco+Bell

I made this while up in Canada, and wanted to add it to the recipe archive. It's a bit of a savory dish, perfect for a winter's day.

• 8 pieces of chicken (any combination of thighs, breasts, drumsticks and wings will suffice)
• 1 cup flour
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 3 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, minced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup white wine, dry (I used an oakey Chardonney)
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1/2 cup kalamata olives, seeded and sliced
• 1 lb dried pasta (I used penne)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Pat dry the chicken pieces, and then dredge in the flour that has been lightly seasoned with salt and pepper. Place the floured pieces in a lightly-oiled medium sized roasting pan. Drizzle the chicken with olive oil, and sprinkle with the rosemary and garlic. Place the pan in the oven and bake for 30 - 40 minutes, until the chicken is lightly browned.

Remove the pan from the oven and add the wine, stock and olives. Return to the oven, cooking for another 20 minutes, turning the pieces of chicken over every 4 minutes.

It is at this point that you will want to start cooking whatever pasta you wish to use in this dish.

After the 20 minutes, remove from the chicken from the oven, and place the chicken under an aluminum foil tent to keep warm. Scrape the bottom of the roasting pan thoroughly and pour all of the contents (stock and fronds) into a large skillet that has been placed over high heat. Cook the stock until reduce by half, approximately 4-5 minutes.

Pour the sauce over individual servings of the pasta, along with one or two pieces of the chicken. Garnish with any remaining rosemary.

Serves 6-8

Technorati Tags: recipes, Chicken, pasta,

This L.A. Times article about the Taco Bell/E.Coli outbreak gives some interesting pieces of information:

New Jersey food safety regulators and the FDA are investigating two suppliers: McLane Foodservice and a Florence, N.J., facility operated by Irwindale-based Ready Pac Foods Inc.

McLane is the sole distributor of ingredients for Taco Bell restaurants in New Jersey, New York's Long Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Ready Pac Produce processes lettuce, tomatoes and onions.

Green onions are processed exclusively for Taco Bell in one section of the Ready Pac plant.

Ready Pac? Where have I heard that name recently?

Oh yeah....in the Spinach/E.Coli outbreak news from September. They were one of the many companies that distributed the spinach grown by the ironicially named Natural Selection Foods.

Technorati Tags: Green Onions, E.Coli, Taco Bell

O n the way home from Canada I put forth the following question to Tara: Is the delicious chocolate brownie that we all know and love a cookie or a cake?

What followed that question was a half hour discussion on what constitutes a cookie, a cake and even a bar. Like many of our discussions surrounding food, nothing was fully resolved, aside from the fact that we both have fairly strong opinions on fairly trivial matters.

However, we've both done some canvassing of various co-workers and friends via e-mail and conversations. Here are some of the comments.

• "Cake! It's definitely not a cookie.... I'm pretty strict about what is called a cookie vs. what isn't - a cookie is a shape, not the ingredients that make the shape. So if it's not in the shape of a cookie - it ain't a cookie."
• "It's a cake isn't it? I mean, it doesn't have icing and it's denser than a cake, but it's still a cake. It's cake-ish."
• "Now that is a perplexing questions re the brownie’s. I think they are pretty much something to put ice cream on and as a result in a category all their own."
• "I don't think brownies are a cake. But I can see why some people think that they can be. But I don't think they're cookies either, but I can also see why other people believe that they are. They are offered on cookie tables at Christmas after all".
• "A brownie is not a cookie, nor would I say it is a cake. My Midwest upbringing classifies brownies, rice krispie treats, and related ilk as bars. Are bars not a common culinary-accepted term or 'genre?' So rigid. If forced to choose, to me, a cookie is more 'wafer-ish,' as in thin, therefore a brownie in particular would be more cake than cookie – it is not thin, but has 'loft' and a cakey texture (and frosting)."

My response to the "A brownie is a bar" argument...aren't bars a cookie variant? It's is socially acceptable to have more than one bar in one sitting, much like it's socially acceptable to eat more than one cookie at one sitting. But it's socially unacceptable to have more than one slice of cake at one sitting.

Additionally, aren't Fig Newtons bar-like? Aren't they considered cookies? Or are fig newtons the 'missing link' between cookies and bars?

Feel free to add your opinion to this completely trivial matter in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: Brownies, Cookies, Cakes

Word on the street (well, not the street, but rather USA Today), has it that Taco Bell has pulled green onions from all of their U.S. locations.

What was once a regional issue has now gone national.

Technorati Tags: Taco Bell, Onions, E.Coli

Parke, over at U.S. Food Policy hits the nail on the head regarding the trans fat bans :

Even so, I must admit to fearing that this ban might overreach. Many products in the marketplace are bad for us. Only those products with the highest risks and no redeeming features should be banned. For those products that merely increase risks and have some merits, well-informed consumers can weigh the risk for themselves.

Trans fats may be a borderline case. In your own reflection, ask yourself why trans fats should be banned in restaurants but not barbecue pork ribs? Why ban trans fats in restaurants but not butter-drenched baked treats?

Technorati Tags: Trans Fat, Trans Fat Ban

via Slate.

The Interesting part?

The ban contains some exceptions; for instance, it would allow restaurants to serve foods that come in the manufacturer’s original packaging.

That means a restaurant, let's say a burger joint, can't make french fries with hydrogenated oils, but they can sell Potato Chips made by another company.

Can you say 'Double-Standard'?

Technorati Tags: Trans+Fat

It's probably not a great idea to eat at Taco Bell in the Long Island/new Jersey area. Meanwhile, Taco Bell executives will re-open any closed locations later today, having the stores "thoroughly cleaned and all food replaced". This, even though no one knows what caused the outbreak, including the fact that it may not be the individual restaurants at fault but the food distributors that supply the sites. Unless the distributors have thoroughly cleaned their sites and replaced all the food there's still the chance that the tainted food is still in the pipeline.

But if you're hankering for chicken burritos, buying poultry at the supermarket seems like a bad idea as well.

*sigh*

Technorati Tags: E.Coli, Taco Bell, Chicken

There are some soups which can stand on their own. Others work best when pared with another dish, be it something as straightforward as a sandwich or as complex as a paella. As an example, when I think about chicken soup I typically think about the soup alone. When I think of Tomato soup, inevitably I also think about grilled cheese sandwiches. Why? Because Tomato soup is best served with grilled cheese sandwiches.

This soup falls into the later category. By itself, it's okay, but with some other food at it's side it becomes manna from heaven. Which leads me to believe that there's a new culinary law I can add to Kate's Laws. Let's call it "Kate's Law of the exponential taste increase of soup". This law states that one can improve the taste of most soups simply by serving a tasty sandwich.

The corollary to this law is that the crunchier the crust of the sandwich bread, the more effective the sandwich will be in improving the taste of the soup.

• 1 Tbsp sunflower oil
• 1 large yellow onion, sliced
• 1/4 lb pancetta, diced
• 1 Tbsp ginger, minced
• 1 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and ground
• 2 star anise
• 4 bay leaves
• 2 tsp tumeric
• 4 cups water
• 1 cup split yellow peas, dried
• 6 cups chicken stock
• 1 medium butter nut squash, peeled and diced
• salt and pepper, to taste
• Sour cream and chives (to garnish, and thus - optional)

Place a large stock pot over medium heat. Add the oil, onion, pancetta, ginger, star anise and cumin. Cook the onions until they start to caramelize.

Add the bay leaves, tumeric, water and peas. Lower the heat to a simmer (185 degrees F)and cook until the peas are soft, about 90 minutes give or take 15 minutes.

Add the chicken stock and diced squash. Raise the heat until the soup comes to a light boil (210 - 212 degrees F) and cook for 20 minutes. At this point, remove the bay leaves and star anise. Puree the soup either through a wand or a blender. Return to heat and allow to simmer for another 30 minutes.

Top with sour cream and chives and serve.

Serves 4-6

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Soup, Peas, Butternut Squash

Canadian School to Ronald McDonald : Don't let the door hit ya' where the good lord split ya'.

Education officials say Ronald McDonald, the clown mascot for fast-food giant McDonald's, sends contradictory and confusing messages during his appearances in elementary schools to promote fitness and healthy eating.

The department has sent a memo to all school districts advising them that the McDonald's clown is inconsistent with the fitness goals and objectives of the province's school system.

Amen. Out of the many dispicible things Fast Food has done, I think how they've insinuated themselves into classrooms is the worst. I have no problems with them selling their wares. I have no problem with the calorie content of their food. I have many problems with them getting free advertising in school and/or supplying the kids with lunches, and then trying to deflect any criticism thrown at them by providing "educational" classes about nutrition and exercise. Can you say "Mixed messages"? I knew that you could.

Technorati Tags: Fast Food, McDonald's

We were having breakfast with a couple of our friends. The restaurant we had chosen was one of those places that pop up in the more trendier of the Seattle neighborhoods and serve all-natural, organic foods. Whole grain toasts, mushroom omelettes made with fungus found recently in the Pacific Northwest, and freshly squeezed orange juice all peppered the menu written in chalk upon the wall.

It's the orange juice which caused the most consternation within the staff. When the juicer was on it whirred and whizzed so loudly that the patrons of this restaurant had to speak notably louder in order to be heard. Additionally, the amount of oranges required to fill a single order ensured that the juicer would be on for minutes at a time. When a group of people ordered orange juice, it meant that the juicer could run as long as six minutes.

So it should come to no surprise that when people order orange juice in this restaurant, the workers behind the counter can be heard to mutter "Ah, hell", from time to time.

This isn't a post on customer service, but rather a simple nod to the fact that whether you choose to participatein whatever food movement floats your boat, that choice comes with a benefit and a cost. For those folks behind the counter making the fresh orange juice, the benefit was the ability to call themselves a "all-natural, made-fresh restaurant" and all of the other benefits that those types of labels infer. The cost? The cost is that making fresh orange juice can be a pain in the tuckus.

Okay, don't tell anyone (so I can at least try to uphold my façade of snarky rudeness a little longer) but in truth, I am a big ol' soft-hearted sap. So, when I was recently researching sourdough starter, I came across the Carl Griffith Sourdough Page I had to know more... once I stopped being all choked up over it.

Born in 1919, Carl Griffith wrote that his interest in making sourdough bread started when he was "10 years old and learned to make bread in a dutch oven in a hole in the ground," using the sourdough starter his family brought with them when they emigrated west along the Oregon Trail in 1847. According to his friends, before the advent of the internet, Carl would gladly share his family's starter with anyone who asked, but the earliest record of Carl offering his starter to anyone online, is the following post by Carl, made on July 28, 1994 to the Usenet group rec.food.sourdough:

I have dried and will mail out a bit of the starter that my family brought west on an Oregon Trail wagontrain in 1847 along with instructions to revive it and a few recipes if anyone is interested ???? Carl.

Carl sent his starter to anyone who sent him a self-addressed stamped envelope for the next number of years, until he suffered a stroke in early March of 2000 and died a few weeks thereafter, at the age of 80.

I talked to Charles Perry and Darrell Greenwood to find out more about how the 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Preservation Society -- or "Carl's Friends" for short -- and its website came into being after Carl's death.

"It all started as a memorial to Carl," said Charles, while Darrell remarked that "[fellow Usenet member] Dick Adams came up with the idea and made it happen, including getting the website up and running." Charles continued: "We wanted to continue his tradition. There are probably as many reasons or more why we continue as there are participants in the project. Personally, I prefer to live in a world where people are willing to share information or something useful, such as starter, with a stranger who asks."

And that's pretty much what Carl's Friends have been doing for the past six years. Because they're scattered throughout the US, they keep a central post office box, at which a volunteer bundles the requests and forwards them to another volunteer who is then responsible for growing, packaging, and mailing the starter in the provided self-addressed stamped envelopes -- at a rate of up to 50 a week during the winter baking season.

When I asked Charles what was the most distant request they'd received, he replied with the following:

I have not kept track of all the individual countries where we have sent [sourdough starter], but we have mailed to every continent on the globe except Antarctica. In addition to individuals wanting sourdough for their own personal use, we get requests from teachers, county extension agents, and museums to use in demonstrations or exhibits. We have had correspondence from a leader of an Australian commune who was interested in the back-to-nature spiritual aspect of sourdough, from an Asian chef who was having some difficulty with his starter because of the high temperature in his location, and an Austrian food writer who sent us some Hungarian paprika in exchange for the starter.

And now, chances are, somewhere on Earth tomorrow morning, someone will make a loaf of bread (or pancakes or biscuits or coffee cake) with a sourdough starter brought west over the Oregon Trail in 1847 -- all thanks to just one guy, puttering around on Usenet back in some of the earliest days of the user-friendly Internet, wondering if any fellow sourdough bakers wanted to try out his family's very old sourdough starter.

[I just... I got something in my eye, okay? Don't look at me for a couple minutes.]

If you want to try Carl's starter, simply send a self-addressed stamped envelope (or $1US) to the address listed on the Carl's Friends site.

(Photo courtesy of LeJeune Whitney)

When visiting Canada, and you ask the waiter/waitress/grocery clerk for some Canadian Bacon, they will generally respond in one of two ways.

1. So...what part of the States are you from?
2. BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!

For the record, in Canada, it's called 'Back Bacon', a center cut of meat from the loin of the pig found on the...let's say it together...back. American Bacon (or streaky Bacon) comes from the belly cut, where there's a tad more fat to be found.

This has been a pubic service reminder designed to promote goodwill and joy between the Great White North and their American Neighbor.

Jones Soda, found right in the heart of my hometown, is trumpeting their release of 12 ounce canned soda sweetened with Pure Cane Sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

The stupid thing said was uttered by Peter van Stolk.

Converting from HFCS to Pure Cane Sugar with our new our 12 ounce can line truly differentiates Jones and provides the consumer with a healthier alternative.

For a bit of context, let me make the following statement: Hitting your thumb with a hammer eleven times is healthier than hitting your thumb a dozen times.

Mr. van Stolk, while I'm a fan of your company and applaud you for going for the better tasting cane sugar in place of the government subsidized corn syrup, you are in fact still selling sugar laden soda and not a vitamin-enriched weight loss supplement that also cures the flu. There isn't anything healthy about Jones soda.

But thanks for providing me a decent laugh this morning.

UPDATE: Mr. van Stolk mentions in the comments (no, really) that

...what I said was "pure cane sugar is a healthier alternative to HFCS". If you think that is stupid, I am ok with that.

Upon reflection his quote is not stupid per se, but perhaps a bit presumptuous. And for the record, I had made the same presumption. But the fact remains that there has been no scientific study that has said that cane sugar is better for a person than HFCS. Lord knows I've tried to find one.

Marion Nestle, the food nutritionist and writer of such books as "Food Politics" and "What to eat" has stated that she could draw no distinction between cane sugar and HFCS. In her eyes, a sugar is a sugar, and neither items was one worth indulging in excessively.

The New York Times hands down an article detailing the difficulties in defining what constitutes an "Organic" Fish. From the article:

The issue comes down largely to what a fish eats, and whether the fish can be fed an organic diet. There is broad agreement that the organic label is no problem for fish that are primarily vegetarians, like catfish and tilapia, because organic feed is available (though expensive).

Fish that are carnivores — salmon, for instance — are a different matter because they eat other fish, which cannot now be labeled organic.

Actually, the issue is far larger than "What does a fish eat?" The basic ideals behind the organic movement included several basic premises.

• Produce food that allows for future sustainability for the product being raised.
• Produce food in a manner that leaves as small of an imprint upon the environment as possible.
• If animals are involved, treat them in a manner which is respectful and is as close to their natural environment as is practical.

To be sure, I've oversimplified the premises, and they have since been evolved and codified to a point where these standards can be applied on a larger scale, but I think the basic points are there.

Now when applying the above to typical farm animals such as cows, chickens and pigs, these ideals can work in concert with one another. It is not a stretch to think of raising cattle and yet still be true to the concepts listed above.

But these ideals contradict one another when you apply them to an animal less domesticated than your average cow. Salmon is a great example of this. It could be argued that an interest of an individual salmon is best served if that fish was allowed to be wild. However, for sustainability of the species as a whole, it may be best for the fish if salmon farms were allow to propagate as long as they were run in such a way that it did not adversely affect various eco-systems (always an iffy proposition where fish farms are concerned).

In other words, the basic ideals of the organic movement would seem to be at odds with one another, at least where raising fish is concerned.

I know this would never happen, because greed has now become a variable in what defines 'organic', but perhaps it would be best if there were types of food where an 'organic' label would simply be inappropriate to use. To me, the idea of 'organic fish' is equal to 'organic venison'. The problem is that no one can tell whether either 'organic fish' or 'organic venison' is a contradiction or a redundancy.

Thanks Jack

Here I am in the midst of my annual December vacation, high amongst the mountains of Whistler, British Columbia. It is beautiful and relaxing, far removed from the stresses and strains of my regular life. My hope was that I could sneak away, hoping that no silliness would go on in the food world.

Enter Alan Gerson, a New York City Councilman who is planning on introducing yet another "anti Foie Gras" bill.

Like Michael Ruhlman, I feel as if this topic is tiresome, for a whole bevy of reasons. But this is how political movements operate - keep working the issue until you either convert or subvert the electorate.

While there are many ways to refute the claims of 'cruelty' to the ducks and geese who are being watched out for, there is a larger issue here. A group of individuals are trying to have governments tell me what I can and cannot eat, something which I (and others) have stated time and time again.

Let's boil this down to the core issue - These types of bills aren't about foie gras as much as they are about animal cruelty. The questions that arise from this are as follows:

1. What standards are we going to use to define what constitutes animal cruelty when it comes to food production?
2. Will these standards be applied to every food product that has animal ingredients, or will it apply to only a subset of these food products? If it's only to a subset, how are we to differentiate one from another?
3. Will these standards apply to every food producer? Or will allowances be made between larger food producers and artisinal production?

One of the many problems with the anti-foie gras advocates is that none of the above questions are being addressed. Instead we get a handful of people saying that "gavage is bad" based off of their response to videotapes made out of context and a carefully selected group of veterinarians.

I, for one, would like to see the above questions addressed, because they would require us to actually consider how we get our food as well as force us to recognize what being an omnivore entails.

Sadly, I believe that's not going to happen.

UPDATE: As Tana noted in the comments, Councilman Gerson has agreed to table his talk of the foie gras ban...for now.

It is officially the time of year for cookies.

I know, I know...one is entitled to make cookies any time they damn well please. But it seems to me that during the period of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas day, a person could make cookies every day of the week and not get stares from co-workers and the like.

This year, I have been bitten by the cookie bug, and I think that I will be making more than my fair share of the little treats, much to the joy of Tara's coworkers and mine, and much to the consternation of myself. Consternation, because deep inside of me, I have this fear that I'm going to become one of those women who wear sweaters with Christmas trees embroidered on the front, beaming with pride without any trace of irony. Making an excess amount of cookies, I believe, can be the first step down that road.

This recipe is adapted from a "Holiday Cookies" periodical.

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons milk
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla
• 3 cups APF Flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup maraschino cherries, drained and chopped
• 1/8 cup maraschino cherry 'juice'
• 2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 2 teaspoons shortening

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixer, combine the sugar and butter and mix at a low to medium speed, until creamy. Add the egg, milk and vanilla and mix until thoroughly incorporated. At a low speed and the Flour and baking powder. Allow to mix together between 2-3 minutes.

Add the cherries and knead into the dough by hand. Pour in the maraschino cherry 'juice' and knead in slowly, only to the point where the dough looks marbled (some of the dough pink, the other basic cookie dough color).

Drop onto cookie sheets with a teaspoon. Place the cookie sheet into the oven (one at a time) and bake between 9 - 11 minutes. Allow to cool for 30 minutes after removing from the oven.

Meanwhile place chocolate chips and shortening into a small sauce pan and place over medium low heat. Allow to melt and stir until smooth. Drizzle the chocolate over the cooled cookies.

Makes 6 dozen cookies

Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!

Yeah, I know anyone who's written anything in the last two weeks about this year's Beaujolais Nouveau has titled their post Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! but it's just so fun to say. (You do it. Put some real guttural hork into the "arrivé"... see? Wicked fun.)

So, for those you who aren’t oenophiles, the third Thursday of November -- which was November 16th this year -- is la fête du Beaujolais, although here in the US we generally get by with just calling it Beaujolais Day. It’s the first official day Beaujolais Nouveau wine can legally be sold under French law and some people -- both French and not (but yeah, mostly the French) -- wait all year for this wine to arrive, to drink immediately and/or have with their Thanksgiving dinner.

However, despite my affection for (and for saying) la fête du Beaujolais, I know pretty much nothing about wine. Like, at all. So, rather than embarrass myself in my first big Accidental Hedonist post by picking some clunker of a wine, I figured I should do some online research.

I started with the only bit of information I knew already: the #1 selling brand of Beaujolais Nouveau is Georges Duboeuf. So, I started with his Beaujolais Nouveau site.

First, a quick science lesson, because I'm nerdy and I like science:

Unlike other wines, Beaujolais Nouveau is made from uncrushed grapes. Instead, they pile all the grapes up and let them ferment in their skins. (The process is known as semi-carbonic maceration. Drop that into your next wine tasting party conversation and you'll totally get laid.) Some of the grapes at the bottom get crushed a little (hence the semi-), just because they've got all the other grapes on top of them, but because most of the grapes aren't crushed, the wine ends up low in tannins -- the stuff that makes your mouth go all puckery -- and makes the wine taste fruitier. The downside is, low tannins means it's not going to age well, so drink it now.

But how's it taste? Rather than try to get an assessment of all the various Nouveaus out there, I tracked down what people had to say just about the 2006 Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau.

Good Wine Under $20 found it had "some soft tannins, with silky strawberry and nutmeg flavors." PhilaFoodie wrote, "The nose and palate show strawberries, raspberries and cherries" and "has a respectable balance between the fruitiness and the acidity." And Benito's Wine Reviews said "we get the classic whiff of bananas on the nose with a little cherry behind it... with characteristic light tannins and a short finish."

Uh, that sounds good, right? Not wanting to feel even more intimidated by reading more reviews, I popped open my own bottle (from Cabrini Wines, 831 W181st, NYC) and poured a glass.

And how did I, an admitted wine dork, find it? Did it live up to all the anticipation? Was it worth making my husband go to three different liquor stores on a Friday night when he could have been home watching Battlestar Galactica?

Well, it was... okay.

It was tasty: fruity, which I expected, and it also had some sourish tannins to it, which I didn't really expect. (Honestly, I still don't really know if that tannin thing is supposed to be good or bad.) It wasn't overwhelming; it was kind of a nice balance with the fruity flavor. Overall, it was good. I think.

Y'know, maybe I like saying Beaujolais Nouveau more than I actually like drinking it.

I worked for the past three weeks on what will hopefully be the next version of Accidental Hedonist. Things my still change quite a bit but it is ready for a little poking and prodding by more than just a handful of people.

The test site is here if you're interested. Whatcha think?

Our second of the two new writers is none other than the proprietor of gezellig girl, one Kristen Bonardi Rapp. I'll let her introduce herself to y'all.

At officially 32 years old, I’m playing a little fast and loose with the word “girl” but who doesn’t love some good alliteration? I live in New York City with a husband, a kid, and two cats. I’m a full-time, all-day, all-night parenting machine by trade. When I’m not preparing, cooking, shopping for, or writing about food, I’m probably watching TV or knitting or something.

Please welcome Kristen with open arms, as she'll be the Saturday writer for the near future.

Clearly they've learned how profitable three dollar lattes are, and are now trying to slice into the Starbucks pie. Their business's shtick? That they are more 'green' than the Mermaid.

As expected, the anti-Coke crowd has chimed in, stating that Coke is intentionally meeting only the barest of standards in order to take credit for being green.

Jennifer Wright, founder of Green Shift, which pioneered the biodegradable coffee cup now found in over 150 Toronto businesses, isn't impressed. "They don't have enough to brag about. They are basically appeasing people with the bare minimum,'' she says.

Which surprises her how?

To be honest, if the anti-Coke crowd wishes to stain the reputation of Far Coast's new venture, simply keep reminding people that it's owned by Coca-Cola. Telling consumers that Far Coast is only slightly more ethical than Starbucks isn't going to do anything. Coca-Cola, as a brand name, is far more shadier and disreputable.

Thanks Jack!

No, it had nothing to do with puritans or even what was to become present Day New England. According to the fine folks over at Historical Text Archives, it took place in April of 1598 close to what is now El Paso Texas.

On April 21, 1598, the exhausted expedition reached the banks of the Río Bravo where they set up camp near the present day San Elizario, Texas. They soon found their scouts who had arrived several days earlier, and because they’d had time to rest, Oñate sent them out to find a place where the expedition could ford the Río Bravo and cross into Nuevo Mexico. They traveled upriver to present day El Paso where they found a village of Indians they named “Mansos” and who they befriended with gifts of clothing. The Mansos showed the scouts where to ford the river and four of them accompanied the scouts back to the main expedition. The Mansos repaid the scouts’ gifts of clothing by presenting them with fish netted from the river.

Safe and grateful for the expedition’s deliverance from the extreme hardships of the journey, Oñate ordered that the travelers construct a church with a nave large enough to hold the entire camp. Inside the church, on April 30, 1598, the first Thanksgiving celebration of European colonists in the New World was held.

Hmmmm...I could get down with a Thanksgiving Holiday in April.

via Food Museum Blog

Technorati Tags: Food History, Thanksgiving

In what is now becoming a tradition...I offer you several Haikus about T-giving (in lieu of a well-thought-out post, or a new recipe that I've tried).

O' Tangy Berry
So tart yet sweet in my mind
Makes a great Jelly

Oh please. Tofurkey?
Is it really that tasty?
True envy of meat

Traditions with Food
Are quite worth celebrating
Pass me the gravy

Turkey in Oven?
Get Jiblets out of the neck
My cook's tip for you

Even if bad meal
Remember to give real thanks
to the ones you love

Add your own Haikus in the comments. Meanwhile, I'll be back on Friday.

Technorati Tags: Haiku, Thanksgiving

There's a deleted scene in Almost Famous, where the lead guitarist for the band Stillwater talks about why he loves music. I'm paraphrasing here, but the jist of the monologue was that it was the tiniest of imperfections of an otherwise perfect song that made rock and roll such a joy to behold.

I have the same feeling towards restaurants.

Don't get me wrong...I have a great deal of respect to the chefs, owners and staffs of the various three and four star restaurants I've been to in my life. I've enjoyed food that I couldn't recreate in my lifetime, and I've been the recipient of customer service so precise that I would have sworn that there was a Marine drill sergeant masquarading as a floor manager. In my mind, I equate these places to classical music - highly talented artisans and craftsmans working in concert to provide the consumer the most technically proficient product that can be had.

But my heart? My heart belongs to the rock and rollers of the food world. These are the people who know only three or four chords, and only know how to keep tempo in 4/4 time, yet can bring thousands of people to their feet, light their lighters, bang their heads and get their asses out on the dance floor or into a mosh pit.

These are the folks who make Philly Cheesesteaks, bowls of Tex-Mex Chili, and Barbeque in it's many iterations. These are people who wouldn't know mirepoix from soffritto, and don't give a damn about this gap in their knowledge. It's the folks who run the pho houses, teriyaki joints, and Indian buffets that get their followings by word of mouth. It's the restaurants that I go to on a regular basis as opposed to the restaurants I go to on special occaissions.

Or to put it another way, I recognize the artistry and influence of the Haydens, Bachs and Copelands of the world, and even click on them in my iPod from time to time. But when push comes to shove, I'm more likely to listen to The Clash, Husker Du, or The Who.

So when I see things such as chefs trying to make a foie gras hot dog, or sell haute hamburgers, I chuckle a bit inside. To me, this sounds as odd as Yo-Yo Ma covering The Killers. Yeah it may sound interesting, and certainly they'll be a proficiency to it which cannot be denied, but it's still not rock and roll.

Technorati Tags: Food,

It's been a while since I've made an Italian dish that didn't contain tomatoes and/or capers within it's ingredient list. When it comes to Italian cooking at home, I've learned to play to the crowd.

That being said, when I decided to research peas, this was the first recipe on my list. The primary reason has more to do with the name than the dish's reputation. This is the way my mind works at times, where I'm drawn to a recipe based on it's name more than what the recipe actually entails.

When approaching Risi e bisi, the basic image that should be in your head is thus - A soupy risotto. Not overly soupy mind you, but it should be far more "wet" than your typical Italian rice dish.

As with most Italian recipes, this is not the defining recipe for risi e bisi, as it lends itself to many interpretations. For example, if I were to make this again, I'd probably add a touch of saffron, or go a bit heavier on the ground pepper. But this recipe below is a good starting point.

One last point...For the peas- Frozen peas are okay I suppose, but fresh peas from the pod is where it's at. As an added bonus, the pea pods can be thrown into a veggie stock which you can use in the risi e bisi.

If you believe you can make a decent dish with canned peas, then you are the walking definition of the word "optimist".

• 2 Tablespoons olive oil or butter
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 3 cloves garlic
• 3 ounces pancetta, diced
• 1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
• 6 cups vegetable stock
• 1 1/2 cups peas
• 1/2 cup parsley, minced
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, shredded
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Green onions, for garnish

Place a large skillet over medium heat, and place in the oil, onions, garlic and pancetta. Cook until the onion starts to turn tranlucent, between 8-10 minutes.

Add the rice and 1 cup of the veggie stock. Allow the stock to come to a boil and then be absorbed by the rice. Once absorbed, add one ladle of stock. Repeat this process until you get the consistency you wish, noting that it's likely that you won't use all of the veggie stock.

When the risi e bisi finally gets to the consistency you wish, complete the dish by adding the parmesan cheese and butter.

Serves 6 - 8

Technorati Tags: Recipe, Rice, peas, risi e bisiItalian Food

When the rice is half done, add the peas with the minced parsley.

This is an unexplainable and crippling phenomenon that happens whenever going out to restaurants. Here is how it usually plays out, you spend minutes pouring over your menu asking your dining partner what he/she is having,what they think you should get and trying to decide what sounds the most appetizing. So many options! After sending the waitress away two or three times you think you have finally decided on your fare for the evening. You place your order first and spend the rest of the time glancing at your menu making sure you ordered exactly what you wanted. Then you hear your dining partner doing the unthinkable - changing their order from what they had told you they were going to get. The nerve! You think frantically about your order making sure once again that it is what you REALLY want, wondering how bad the waitress will hurt you if you decide to change your order.

Too embarrassed to interrupt the waitress to tell her you have changed your mind you leave your order as is and secretly hope that it is better than then other person's meal. When you finally get your food you realize your intuition was right, you should have stopped the waitress and had her change your order. Your partner's food looks so much better than your own. You find yourself salivating at every bite they pick up and place into their mouth, silently cursing yourself all the while. You are leaning in, staring as they eat and are hearing only every third word in the conversation, concentrating only on their food. Some people are mean too. They know they have the better meal and make a point to close their eyes, sigh "Mmmmmmm..." and lick their lips. Every bite is watched in slow motion from cutting to placing in the mouth, chewing and finally swallowing. All of this while you are on the other side of the table drooling like one of Pavlov's dogs.Oh man are they cruel, why are you even friends with someone like this?

You spend the rest of the meal disgusted or at the very least disappointed by your failure to choose the better meal. You are secretly hoping that they will have to get up and go to the bathroom so you can steal a bite of their fare without them knowing. While in the restroom you can plan the next scam. You can try to tell them that their dinner looks absolutely fabulous and could you pretty please with sugar on top have a bite? Another option is to hope they leave leftovers when you can inconspicuously tip the waitress to change your doggie bag for theirs. You have to be sneaky with some people. All is fair in love and food.

Several weeks ago, I put a call out for writers. The intent was to provide new writers with a larger audience, as well as to provide a bit of content on the weekends.

My initial plan was to have one writer, but the level of interest was high and the amount of entertaining writing that came into my inbox was equally great. So I've instead offered positions to two writers, the first of whom is Jen Kaiser.

I am a 24 yr old hailing from the mitten state (Michigan for those not up on their geography). I have been living in the same small town for a total of 21 almost consecutive years. The best thing about Michigan would have to be the fact that if you are a “down stater” (live in the Lower Peninsula) you can use your left hand as a map. If you run into someone not familiar with above said small town you can whip out your hand and point to the small freckle in the middle of your hand and people will know exactly where you live.

I live with three living and breathing vacuum cleaners, first off is the husband. We have been married 3 years and are enjoying our first home together. He has been known to devour a pile of sweets in a single sitting, thinks beer goes with everything (including breakfast) and drinks wine from the bottle – that heathen! The next one is our cat (who has never been named – cruel I know) who came along as a package deal when my hubby married me and has a penchant for chicken. And last but certainly not least is our puppy Boddington who is named after the hubby’s favorite beer. He is the best vacuum, he will eat anything put in front of him or that happens to fall to the floor but his favorite food is by far Coldstone Creamery ice cream.

I have been into cooking and baking since I was young, helping my mom in the kitchen for as far back as I can remember. I have always had a sweet tooth so I prefer to bake goodies over general cooking. Although I do have a soft spot for the southern cooking my grandmother used to make for us.

Jen will often post on Sundays. Let's all give her a warm welcome.

In your mind's eye, paint the following picture - it's a cold, November day. The sky is a dark gray, and rain is spitting against the window of your home.

Inside, the lights are on, even though it's three o'clock in the afternoon. The heater turns on for what seems like the first time in months, a light whrrrrrrrrrrrr emanating from deep within itself.

On a day like this, there is no better meal to make than a New England Clam Chowder....which is exactly what I did.

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 medium white onion, sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/3 lb salt pork, finely diced
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 2 Tablespoons All Purpose Flour
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup half and half
• 1 pound red skin potatoes, diced
• 2 cups fish stock
• 1 1/2 cup clam meat, chopped
• 16 ounces clam juice
• 1 whole bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 Tablespoon chopped dill

In a large skillet over medium heat, melt the butter and add the garlic and onions. When the onions get soft, but before theystart to become translucent, add the salt pork. Cook until the salt pork is crisp. Remove from heat. Spoon off any excess fat beyond the two tablespoons intially used.

Place the onions/pork and oil into a soup pot that has also been placed over medium heat.Allow to sit for 1 minute and then stir in the flour. Add the cream and half and half, stirring them together. Add the fish stock, clam juice, clams, bay leaf and potatoes. Lower the heat to a simmer and allow to cook until potatoes are soft (for 30 minutes approx). Add the pepper and dill. Cook for another 10 minutes and then serve.

Serves 6-8

Technorati Tags: Food, Recipes, New England Clam Chowder

From the newswire:

The government said Tuesday it is moving closer to approving meat and milk from cloned animals, drawing protests from consumer groups.

The Bush administration is currently reviewing Food and Drug Administration plans to regulate cloned animals and food derived from them, the agency said in a statement. A draft of the plans should be released by the end of the year, FDA said.

I have no idea on whether this is a good idea or not. As always, the trick is to ensure the safety of any product...and that means to the environment as well as to the consumer who eats the stuff. The problem is that testing is often one of the primary aspects of product development that is cut in order to save money (all you have to do is look at Monsanto for proof of that).

Technorati Tags: Food Science, Cloning

There's a bakery in my neighborhood called Sugar run by Stephanie Crocker and her husband John. They're a mere four blocks from my residence, and can be seen from time to time at the farmers market in my neighborhood.

In reading their website, one can easily see that they are the types of people who make being involved in food worth while.

Her husband has been diagnosed with cancer, and being the kind of folks who pursued their dreams with the risk of no health insurance, they now need help in paying the medical bills.

There are two ways you can help!

If you live in Seattle, you can help out by taking part of their fundraiser called Pies Like Us. For a twenty dollar pledge, you get your choice of either pumpkin or apple strudel pie, apparently made with love, although I presume they are also made with pumpkin and apple, respectively.

The only caveat is that you will have to drive to West Seattle to pick up the pies that you have ordered.

If you do not live in Seattle, you can help out by donating directly to their PayPal account (click on the graphic link on the left side of the screen).

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

It looks as if this "A burrito is not a sandwich" decision hit Panera Bread company pretty hard today, and they are scrambling for answers. I received this in my inbox this morning, but I wouldn't swear to it's validity (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

To: Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke

From: The Legal Brain Trust of the Panera Bread Co. bakery-and-cafe chain

Your Honor,

Thank you for your recent decision regarding the question of whether the burrito is a sandwich. While we don't agree with your interpretation, we will abide by it.

Meanwhile, we have other lawsuits in the works, as we wish to prevent any competition with other restaurants within a 1/2 mile of any of our locations. As such, we were hoping to get your legal council on whether our actions against the restaurants below have any merit.

• The Athenian Cafe: The gyros they serve - are they sandwiches, or Greek burritos?
• The Jade Dragon: Point of contention - Spring rolls and Hum Bows.
• Lenny's Bagels: While Lenny only serves bagels and cream cheese, we think that the potenitiality of sandwiches based off of the boiled-then-baked bun is enough to cause us financial harm.
• The International House of Pancakes: Their Pigs in a Blanket (sausage links in a rolled pancake) screams 'sandwich'.
• Fontana's Pizzeria: Not only for their calzones, but also because their customers have been spotted folding their slices in the middle of the crust, giving a sandwich-like experience.
• Lobardi's Italian Cuisine: What is lasagna but an Italian version of a club sandwich, with pasta (which is boiled slices of bread) in place of toast.
• Rothchild's: They serve Turkey with stuffing, and what is that if not an 'inverted sandwhich'?
• Lastly...any place that sells pie.

Your response on the above questions would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

The Greedy Bastards at Panera Bread.

Technorati Tags: Panera Bread, Sandwich

Thank whatever higher beings that we've finally resolved THAT issue.

Panera has a clause in its lease that prevents the White City Shopping Center in Shrewsbury from renting to another sandwich shop. Panera tried to invoke that clause to stop the opening of an Qdoba Mexican Grill.

But Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke cited Webster's Dictionary as well as testimony from a chef and a former high-ranking federal agriculture official in ruling that Qdoba's burritos and other offerings are not sandwiches.

Now if we can only get a judge to rule that cheese powder isn't actually cheese.

via bb

I admit it...I have a soft spot in my memory for White Castle. Most of it is due to that period of my life when I was trying to prove that I was the love child of Terrence McKenna and the St. Pauli Girl.

In addition, I've seen several restaurants place their interpretations of "sliders" on their own appetizer menus. What other fast food restaurant recieves that sort of homage?

So when a publicist sent me this recipe, I realized I wanted to show them a little bit of love. Yes, the recipe is a novelty, something which the person who sent me this will never likely admit on record. But hey, it's the start of the holiday season...and I'm feeling a bit generous.

Meanwhile, White Castle has also published a recipe book, "By the Sackful: A Scrapbook with Recipes from 85 Years of Craving" which is also available online at www.whitecastle.com. Proceeds from the sale of the book are donated to the non-profit group Turkeys4America, Inc. The cook book is stuffed with quality recipes submitted by White Castle fans in contests over the past 14 years.

• 10 White Castle hamburgers, no pickles
• 1 ½ tsp. ground sage
• 1 ½ cups celery, diced
• ¾ tsp. coarse ground black pepper
• 1 ¼ tsp. ground thyme
• ¼ cup chicken broth

In a large mixing bowl, tear the burgers into pieces and add diced celery and seasonings. Toss and add chicken broth. Stuff cavity of turkey just before roasting. Recipe makes about 9 cups (enough for a 10 to 12 pound turkey) Note: Allow one (1) hamburger for each pound of turkey, which is the equivalent of ¾ cup of stuffing per pound.

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Novelty Recipe, White Castle

What I find so bleesedly amusing about this recent article in the NY Times, is that you have Big Food complaining about standards that they had no hand in developing.

A brief overview for those not inclined to click on the link - Hannaford Brothers, a grocery store chain in New England, developed a system called Guiding Stars that rated the nutritional value of nearly all the food and drinks at its stores from zero to three stars. Out of all of the products they sell, only 23% received any stars at all. Left out of the star ratings included such notable products as, well nearly everything sold nuder the brand names of Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice. Also absent were most breakfast cereals that had been touting their "Heart Smart" and "Low-Sodium" labels that had been generously applied to their nutrional labels.

My favorite quote from the piece is thus:

“We don’t like the idea that there are good and bad foods out there, and these sort of arbitrary rating systems,” said John Faulkner, director of brand communication at the Campbell Soup Company. The Healthy Request line of soup, he said, was “aligned with the government definition of what healthy is.”

What Mr. Faulkner doesn't want you to know is that there are actually three definitions the FDA uses to determine what is "healthy".

1. There's the definition that defines the relationship between a food and it's ability in reducing risk of a disease or health-related condition. For example: Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include 25 grams of soy protein a day may reduce the risk of heart disease.
2. There's the definition that defines a relationship between the nutritional content of food or food product when compared against similar products, or they describe the level of a nutrient or dietary substance in the product.Think "Diet Coke" or "Lean Cuisine", and you'll have a good idea on what they're getting at.
3. Finally, there's the definition of Healthy that describe the role of a nutrient ingredient and how it affects normal structure or function of the human body. 'Calcium builds strong bones' 'fiber maintains bowel regularity' are both fine examples of this definition.

The fact that there is several interpretations of 'healthy' is what allows companies such as Campbells Soup and ConAgra to muddy the waters of just how healthy their products are. A statement such as 'Kellogg's Frosted Flakes are part of a balanced breakfast' is a perfect example of this. What Kellogg's is essentially saying is that Frosted Flakes is part of a healthy diet...as long as you eat other items that supply nutrients that Tony the Tiger missed and, oh yeah, don't go eating eighteen bowls of the stuff per day, 'cause that'd be really bad. Replace Healthy Choice or Lean Cuisine for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and you'll see how they get to say they are 'healthy'

The next quote from the article made me laugh:

a spokeswoman for ConAgra Foods, Stephanie Childs, said that her company would like to know how Hannaford concluded that many items in its Healthy Choice line did not merit any stars.

“This is surprising to us,” Ms. Childs said. Healthy Choice, which offers a range of items from frozen meals to pasta sauces and deli meats, “has to use F.D.A.’s very stringent requirements for what is healthy.”

Again, which definition of 'healthy' is Ms. Child's talking about? Is she claiming that Healthy Choice Mesquite Grill Chicken helps maintains cell integrity in a consumer's body, or that their Salsibury Steak helps prevent the gout? Or is she saying that having one serving of their product is reasonable if they don't go overboard?

What it sounds like Hannaford Brothers has done with their rating system is to give more 'stars' to foods that meet the first and third definitions of healthy mentioned above, while giving no stars for the second definition. In essence, what they're saying is that food companies don't get a bonus credit for leaving out an excess of salt, sugar or fat, because it's something they should be doing anyway. Or to put it another way, just because you choose to refrain from shooting a gun doesn't mean you're a pacifist.

Technorati Tags: Food Politics, Healthy, Labels

Very few foods get the same level of caché that peas get when discussing their place in history. What other food can lay claim to their use in the discovery of modern genetics? Could you imagine how different our world would be if Mendel used asparagus rather than peas? There's a alternative fiction book by Harry Turtledove that you'll never see.

Peas, in the form of field peas, were very likely one of the first crops developed by man. Archeologists have found evidence of peas at sites in Iraq dating back to 7000 BCE. It is guessed (and quite frankly, when it comes to foods of the ancient eras, there's a fair amount of guessing), that peas originated in what is today modern northwest India and Afghanistan. But the peas back then weren't the bright green garden variety we think of today. Instead they were most likely a smaller, darker version, cultivated more for it's longevity (when dried) than it's taste.

It was these dried peas that were common in ancient Greece and Rome. Roman Apicius, one of the first cookbook author in history, published no less than nine recipes for dried peas, indicating that the food was known, and used most often when fresh foods were unavailable. In other words, peas were likely a food of second or third choice.

It is unknown when peas hit China, although it's probably safe to assume that they arrived in China before they arrived in Ancient Rome. It is said that the peas were called hu tou, which roughly translates to "foreign bean". There are some folk who feel that it was the Chinese who cultivated peas to be eaten fresh, as well as eaten within the entire pod.

By the time the Middle Ages were in full swing, dried peas were commonplace and often perceived to be food of the poor. Fresh peas, not surprisingly, were seen as a delicacy and were something of a requirement on the dinner tables of the rich and noble. Several dozen varieties were noted with botanists of the era noting peas seeds that were large or small; white, yellow, gray or green seed colors; and smooth, pitted or wrinkled seeds. By the 1800s The Vegetable Garden, an encyclopedia of cultivated vegetable plants published in France, devoted 50 pages to the different varieties of cultivated peas, only some of which still are grown today.

The pea that first comes to most American minds is called the "garden pea" which did not arrive on the scene until the late 1700's. The popularity of the pea was such that when canning methods were developed for commercial production, it was the little pea that was the first legume to get put into the can. The same for the frozen food industry.

So we're going to take a look at peas over the coming weeks, with a few articles devoted to them, as well as a few recipes. If you have a favorite pea dish, let me know in the comments and I'll see if I can't dig up a decent recipe for it

Technorati Tags: peas, food history

My household is chock full o' non-Southerners, and sweet potato pie was a dessert that was rarely, if ever, on their radar. In fact, when I mentioned the idea of sweet potato pie, the term "blech" was liberally applied.

I had to remind this non-believer that she had never had sweet potato pie, and by passing judgement before actually trying the dish is a grievous sin in the eyes of most every fan of food.

The said sinner acknowledged their sin, and waited to pass judgement.

If you've never had sweet potato pie, the best way I can think of to explain it is to think of a pumpkin pie, but lighter on the palate. It's still as rich as a pumpkin pie, but not as 'hearty'.

When served to the aforementioned sinner, they recinded their terms of 'blech' and gave it a thumbs up.

• 2 cups sweet potatoes (peeled, cooked and mashed)
• 4 ounces unsalted butter
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 5 oz. evaporated milk
• 3 Tablespoons maple syrup
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 prepared pie shells, unbaked

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a glass bowl, mix together the sweet potatoes, butter and sugar until the butter and sugar are well incorporated. Add the evaporated milk, maple syrup, eggs and vanilla extract. Mix in the spices and pour the batter into the pie shells.

Place the pies into the oven and bake for 1 hour.

Technorati Tags: recipe, pie, sweet potato pie

If you are a regular surfer of blogs and live in the United States, you are going to hear this a handful of times -

GO VOTE!

Food writer Alan Richman takes on New Orleans, and proceeds to insult an entire city. Some choice quotes:

The citizens of New Orleans might not be the most energetic Americans—I believe their morning exercise regimen consists of stumbling out of bars—but they are joyful, expressive eaters.

and

I know we are supposed to salvage what’s left of the city, but what exactly is it that we’re trying to cherish and preserve? I hope it’s not the French Quarter, which has evolved into a illogical mix of characterless housing, elegant antiques stores, and scuzzy bars, a destination for tourists seeking the worst possible experience. The entertainment values are only marginally superior to those of Tijuana, Mexico.

The response to his piece has been vitriolic, with Pim likening Richman to a jackass, Robert, over at Appetites, calling him a penis, and no less than the New Orleans Times-Picayune inferring that applying the label of "journalist" to Richman would only be correct if it's definition included the use of wisecracks, sweeping generalizations and out and out inaccuracies.

I realize that this isn't really food-news worthy per se. But Alan Richman is one of the bigger names in food writing, and it's noteworthy when someone of his stature pens something like this:

During my time in New Orleans, I sought to keep some perspective. For example, when the sommelier at August brought me an incorrect vintage of the wine I’d ordered, I tried not to be too distressed, knowing that somewhere in the Lower Ninth Ward a house was sitting atop a car.

This is quite possibly the worst food writing I've ever seen. It has all of the worst traits of criticism - entitlement, arrogance, and comparing the frustration of receiving the wrong vintage of wine to that of someone who LOST THEIR HOUSE!

Oxfam, a non-profit group dedicated to working with others to overcome poverty and the suffering that comes along with it, has accused Starbucks of forcing an agreement upon Ethiopia that benefits Starbucks rather than Ethiopia. It started after the following occurred:

Last year the Ethiopian government filed applications to trademark its most famous coffee names, Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe. Securing the rights to these names would enable Ethiopia to capture more value from the trade, by controlling their use in the market and thereby enabling farmers to receive a greater share of the retail price. Ethiopia’s coffee industry and farmers could earn an estimated $88 million (USD) extra per year.

Ethiopia has even gone as far as to consult with intellectual property experts and legal counsel, and has asked Starbucks to sign an agreement that acknowledges Ethiopia’s ownership of its coffee names.

Oxfam then claims that Starbucks asked the National Coffee Association (NCA) to block the country's bid to trademark the three types of coffee bean in the US.

Starbucks says this is nonsense.They also state that:

Starbucks has never filed an opposition to the Ethiopian government’s trademark application, nor claimed ownership to any regional names used to describe the origin of our coffees.

Which is true. Starbucks has never filed an opposition to the trademark application. That honor goes to the National Coffee Association and their Government Affairs division....which happens to be chaired by
Dub Hay, who in his spare time works for...say it with me...the Starbucks Coffee Company.

Can you say "conflict of interest"?

The solution here is simple...If Starbucks "supports the recognition of the source of our coffees and have a deep appreciation for the farmers that grow them", then they should ask the NCA to discontinue their opposition to the trademark.

The odds of them doing that? Little to none.

Technorati Tags: Starbucks, Ethiopia, Coffee, trademark

Compare and contrast the following two stories:

KFC bans trans fat vs. New York looking to ban trans fat

What's the difference here? One is a corporation reacting to market forces, the other is a government institution legislating diet and menus in restaurants. Which is the best solution in reducing trans fat intake in our citizenry?

It's a question to which I don't have an easy answer. My preference is for the former, but I understand that there are times that there is a need for the latter.

But first, some information - while the majority of trans fat nowadays are created by the processed food industry, it's important to note that there are some trans fats that occur naturally, specifically amongst the milk and fat of ruminants (ie. cows, sheep, goats, etc). That means butter, milk and cheese from these ruminants all have some measure of trans fat, called Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA). I don't believe that anyone wants to go down the path that leads to the banning of milk, butter or cheese in restaurants.

What I believe the intent of the ban is to reduce or restrict items made with partially hydrogenated unsaturated plant fats (oils)...think margarine or Crisco, although there are many other products in this vein, including industrial agri-products that most food consumers likely have never come across, as they are added to things like Oreos, Fritos and Twinkies a long time prior to ending up at the supermarket.

So in reality, what people should be talking about is a ban on partially hydrogenated unsaturated plant fats and NOT a ban on trans fats, because the former is only a subset of the latter. Because of this misuse of language and misunderstanding of fat definitions, it's already strike one against any governmental ban.

The second strike comes from my own philosophy and biases: Supply the people with enough information and they can make decisions for themselves. Can a restaurant provide me with the information needed to make informed decisions? Absolutely. In fact, KFC did just that with their press release.

It should be noted that KFC has the resources to provide such press releases. My favorite teriyaki place down the street from me most assuredly does not have the funds or pull to get that kind of press. However, it is not impossible for said teriyaki restaurant to communicate what fats and oils are used in the back room.

Is not possible for all restaurants to keep a list (available upon request) that states the
fats used in each dish? Perhaps the restaurant owners out there could give me an idea on how feasible something like that could be.

I'm of the mind that for any industry that allows for a transparency in their business practices, the government should try to refrain from imposing it's will upon them. The restaurant industry, where production techniques are nominally known and ingredients can be easily communicated; I can't for the life of me see why we should ban foods. Contrast this against the production techniques and processes of the industrial farms I alluded to yesterday, which are hardly known.

What it boils down to for me is whether I want the ability to make the decision of what foods I eat (based off of the best possible information), or whether I want to have the government make that decision for me.

Technorati Tags: Trans Fats, Food Bans

Yes, according to the Center for Disease Control, there's an outbreak of Salmonella. This outbreak has shown up in no less than 19 states and has involved 171 cases of infection since September 1st of this year.

This is nominally important news by itself. From a public health concern, it's good that people are aware of it, but it doesn't seem to be as troublesome as the recent E.Coli outbreak, as Salmonella is not as "vigorous" of a disease as E.Coli. To put it another way, there's less of a chance of death from Salmonella than there is with E.Coli.

No, what makes this a truly big story is thus: The bacteria may have spread through some form of produce, possibly tomatoes.

First, the usual caveats. The CDC has NOT specified that this is the case, but have not discounted it either. It is speculation and one should be careful to keep that in mind. Add to that the fact that salmonella outbreaks 'go through the system' (so to speak) rather quickly, and it's quite probable that this report of the outbreak is too late to have an affect upon short-term prevention.

If produce of any sort is the culprit, then the larger story here is how a disease that's typically transferred through fecal matter of animals once again ended up in our fruits and/or vegetables. With the Spinach/E.Coli debacle, it was easy to simply state that the way bagged spinach is procured and produced is anomalous when compared against the processes of other fruits and vegetables bound for market. If the rumors surrounding the salmonella outbreak are true, then it becomes less of a 'problem with spinach production' and more of a 'problem with the entire produce industry'.

Let me put this in a way that I believe to be obvious, but needs to be said anyways: When food borne illnesses typically associated with meat become regularly associated with fruits and vegetables, it's a failure of the produce industries AND the meat industries. The companies who had to pull their products off the shelf are not the only problem.

via U.S. Food Policy

Technorati Tags: Food Safety, Salmonella

So the cause of the E.Coli outbreak in September was...wild pigs?

For an area of farmland that has been suspected in no less than twenty outbreaks of the disease over the past ten years or so, it is highly improbable for rampant, wild pigs to be the root cause. Think of the statistical likelihood of a pig being exposed to the disease from a local cattle farm, and then trotting to a nearby spinach farm to lay waste (no pun) to the produce field. Now factor the probablity that this happened, not once, but twenty times.

Sorry...It doesn't strike me as credible.

Meanwhile, in a move that anyone with a smattering of public relations knowledge could have predicted - Growers respond to E. coli outbreak with mandatory guidelines.

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

Speaking about foods that are bad for you, how about a candy that is made primarily of sugar and butter? Take that Deep Fried Coke!

If you are planning to make toffee, it's almost a necessity that you get a candy thermometer. To get the toffee to the point where it reaches the "hard crack" stage, you have to raise the temperature of the mixture to 302° F. However, you run the risk of ruining the toffee if you go over 320° F. Unless you can eyeball this kind of thing (and I recognize that there are people out there who can), a thermometer is the only way to go.

Oh, and as for the "English" version of toffee - English Toffee is a variant in which chocolate and almonds are added to the top of the toffee whilst it cools.

For those of you keeping track at home, this is the last of the 'butter' recipes.

• 1 cup Butter
• 1 1/2 cup Sugar
• 3 Tbs. Light corn syrup
• 3 Tbs. Water
• 8 oz. chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cups raw almonds, chopped

Place a sauce pan over medium heat and add the butter, sugar, corn syrup and water. Stir consistently as the temperature of the mix raises. When the temperature reaches 305° F, remove from heat and pour onto a buttered 9"x13" cookie tray. Spread the toffee evenly.

While the toffee is cooking, melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler. Once you have spread the toffee on the cookie sheet, spead the melted chocolate on to the toffee. Sprinkle with the almonds and allow to cool.

Serves 8-10

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Toffee

I know, I know. I've knocked down fair food before. But I'll let you in on a secret - there's a part of me, deep within the nether regions of my id, that loves the idea of deep fried fair foods. This is also the same region of my brain that revels in the fantasy of eating turkey drumsticks with my bare hands, while shouting "Off with their heads!" in some sort of bizarre amalgamation of King Henry the VIII and Queen Victoria. My brain - it's both my asset and my curse.

It is this decadent part of my brain that is keeping me at odds against the folks who keep telling me how outrageous this story is...that someone dared come up with a concoction that involves Deep Frying Coca-Cola Syrup. Or, more specifically:

...a batter mix (is) made with Coca-Cola syrup, a drizzle of strawberry syrup, and some strawberries.

Balls of the batter are then deep-fried, ending up like ping-pong ball sized doughnuts which are then served in a cup, topped with Coca-Cola syrup, whipped cream, cinnamon sugar and a cherry on the top.

This sounds absolutely, positively decadent! I so want to try one!

I'm sure there are several folks who read this site on a regular basis whose jaw just thumped upon their desk. But I'm curious to the negative responses to this story (which has been making it's way around the food world for about two months now). Is it the fact that the dessert is unhealthy? Is it because it's gratuitous? One could make those claims at number of desserts sold at 4 star restaurants across the country. What makes an dark chocolate sponge cake topped with meringue, spiced almonds with a dusting of cinnamon and cayenne pepper okay, but deep fried batter made with cola syrup and strawberries is looked upon (by some) with disdain?

The title of the above linked article was entitled "Because we don't already have enough fried foods..", giving the impression that this dessert is unnecessary. Blogging Stocks mentions "Fried Coke underscores how far from healthy Coca-Cola is". NPR reports on the dessert under the title "From the Annals of Bad Eating: Deep-Fried Coca-Cola". From all of these stories, it sounds like Deep-Fried Coke is a ticking time bomb upon our health, and a culinary disaster to boot.

Nonsense, I say. Of course it's unhealthy...name me a dessert found at most restaurants that isn't. It's not exponentially worse than the crème brulee or the tiramisu being sold at the upper-scale restaurant down the street.

Personally, I have no idea if it's a good idea, from a taste perspective, because, y'know, I haven't actually tried the dessert. I'll refrain from giving an opinion upon it's taste to when I have eaten Deep-Fried Coke.

Technorati Tags: Deep Fried Coke, Fair Food

As I've received several e-mails asking about it, I thought it best to get this out in the open now.

Toward the end of the 2005 Food Blog Awards, I migrated them from what was technically my property, to that of the Well Fed Network. When the Well Fed Network left my hands in July, the Food Blog Awards went with them.

In other words, I ain't doin' them this year and I have no idea if the fine folks over at the Network are.

(Warning: idle gossip ahead)

If you're laying odds that it's not prosciutto and figs, you're on the right track:

The first time she (the First Lady's social secretary Lea Berman) met (White House chef Walter) Scheib she told him that she wanted the White House kitchen to produce meals like those her husband had enjoyed at one of Marco Pierre White’s restaurants in London. Mr. White, who once had three Michelin stars, has served everything from braised pigs’ trotters to truffled parsley soup with poached eggs.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m not sure the president is going to be big on that,’ ” said Mr. Scheib, who had made many an enchilada and grilled-cheese sandwich on white bread with Kraft singles for President Bush.

There's also a great bit on how the Ms. Berman would send Chef "marked recipes from cookbooks and magazines, like Martha Stewart Living, along with instructions that he “make it look just like the picture.” "

As you can tell, I'm having a slow news day.

Technorati Tags: Gossip, George W. Bush, White House, Chefs

Yeah, not so much.

I think Mr. Levine hits the nail on the head:

So maybe it's time to move on and let Rachael be Rachael. If she's not for you, that's okay. She clearly taps into something primal in her audience's psyche, and that is clearly good enough for Rachael and her millions of fans. And you've got to give her credit for not trying to be something she's not. There's not an ounce of pretension in her shredded cheese bag.

She's not the cultural food antichrist. There are plenty of famous, successful people in our culture who are far more deserving of our scorn and derision. Like, say, Paris Hilton.

You could almost say this about nearly 'Food Personality' on television. Rocco DiSpirito, Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, all have their detractors. But they do have their fans and if these folks get their fans to think about food and its context, who's to complain? There's very few food folks on television who don't deserve some measure of recognition.

Except for Sandra Lee. Next to Ms. Lee, Rachel Ray is James Beard.

Technorati Tags: Food Network, Food Television

I know that Whole Foods gets a fair amount of criticism (sometimes rightly so) but can anyone point me to any other supermarket chain that does things like this:

Whole Foods Market is preparing to roll out a line of meat that will carry labels saying animal compassionate, indicating the animals were raised in a humane manner until they were slaughtered.

The grocery chains decision to use the new labels comes as a growing number of retailers are making similar animal-welfare claims on meat and egg packaging, including free farmed, certified humane, cage free and free range.

It's a solution that allows the animal right folks to educate the masses, yet does so without banning anything.

Let's hope that these labels actually have some weight to them, unlike the nearly meaningless phrase "Free Range Chickens" found on your egg carton.

Thanks Jack!

Technorati Tags: Whole Foods, Animal Welfare

Ah, fish stew. Not just fish stew but Italian-American fish stew (although there's some mention that it may be Portugese in origin). It's wonderul dish on a crisp October afternoon. Spicy and savory made exponentially better by a slice or two from a fresh baguette.

• 5 cloves garlic
• 1/2 jalapeno, deseeded and minced
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 white onion, diced
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 8 anchovy fillets
• 1/8 teaspoon saffron
• 1 cup red wine
• 4 cups fish stock(although chicken stock can be used in its place)
• 1 cup clam juice
• 28 oz. canned diced tomatoes
• 4 oz. tomato paste
• 4 Tbl Worcestershire sauce
• 3 Tbl Tobasco Sauce
• 1 lb raw shrimp, de-veined and peeled
• 1 lb cod, diced into 1" pieces
• 1/2 lb crab meat
• 1/2 lb calamari
• 1/2 lb sea scallops
• 1 lb mussels

Grind three cloves of garlic and the jalapeno with a mortar and pestle into a paste. Place into a bowl and whisk in the egg yolk. Drizzle all but two tablespoons of the olive oil into the egg and whisk into an emulsification. Cover and place in the refrigerator until later.

Place the remaining olive oil into the bottom of a soup pot placed over medium heat. Add the remaining garlic as well as the onions, peppers, and celery. Cook until the onions are translucent and then add the anchovies, Using a spatula, grind the anchovies into a paste, mixing well into the onions and peppers. Add the saffron, and pepper to taste.

Pour in the red wine, fish stock, clam juice and diced tomatoes. Cover the soup pot, and allow to stew for 40-50 minutes. Add the tomato paste.

Remove a tablespoon or two of the stew and temper it into the egg/olive oil emulsion. Then, in turn, add the emulsion back to the stew and mix in well. Add the Worcestershire suace, tobasco and the red wine vinegar. Add the fish, crab, shrimp and calamari and cook for 10 minutes. Add the shell fish and lower the heat to medium low. Allow the stew to simmer for another 10 minutes.

Serve with bread and top with parsley and/or croutons.

Serves 6-8

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Fish Stew, Cioppino

I have various search terms logged into various blog readers, and sometimes it comes back with peculiar stories and ideas that need to be said. That is how I came across the following items.

Item one:

The writer of Dethroner, Joel, had recently talked about trying to lose weight, and gave advice along the lines of "Buy pre-packaged foods" and "Eat less than 1,500 calories worth a day". A commenter, by the name of Grady, followed up by saying "You’ve lectured about how there are things you have to admit to yourself if you want to be successful losing weight. You’re going to have to admit to yourself that you must eat fresh, minimally processed food regularly if you want to be healthy."

To which Joel responded with the following:

Some of us have lives, jobs, stresses, and realities we face every day that make switching from our unhealthy lifestyles—and we know they’re unhealthy; our bodies testify—straight away into a wholly organic, hand-prepared, completely healthy lifestyle. The thought of purchasing and preparing every last bit of food that goes into our bodies is daunting and serves as a bulwark in which we can hunker down with our insecurities to inaction, stocked as it is with cheeseburgers, chocolate milk, and the echoing rejoinders of self-righteous, preening princes like you.

Item two:

There's a recent Metafilter discussion about the benefits and challenges for eating local, including the following comment:

I can't keep up anymore...

Are we all supposed to move to the large urban centers because there won't be enough oil for everyone to have cars and drive all over everywhere?

Or should we all move out to the country because there won't be enough oil to ship all the food all the way to the urban centers?

Or, should Topeka or Des Moines become the new NYC?

Should I never eat bananas because I don't live within 100 miles of where they are produced? I'm 500 miles landlocked no matter which direction you go... should seafood be forbidden in the country's interior?

Instead of expecting the entire world's population to return to an agrarian lifestyle, finding more efficient ways of transport and cheaper/renewal fuels MIGHT be a tad more productive. These neo-agrarian dreams are just that... dreams.

Item three:
From an article in Adage entitled Organics Fail to Yield Cash Crop for Food Giants:

It's been enthusiastically embraced by marketers, blessed by Wal-Mart and touted as the holy grail of growth for an industry desperately in need of it. But after a stupendous start, organic foods are looking suspiciously like a sensation sizzling out.

All of these items have a current theme in them which bears looking at. In essence, if advocates of Slow Food, Organic Food or any of the other food movements which have popped up wish to have their movements evolve into the mainstreams consciousness, they're going to have to answer a question that will be asked of them repeatedly. To wit, "What's in it for me?"

Before the advocates shrug off the query as insensitive and too chock full o' self-interest, it's best to re-examine it and understand that it is a fair question to ask. There are many reasons for people's food decisions, but chief among them are the effect of the purchase on two valuable components of the purchaser's resources - time and money.

That "organic food is better for you" or "eating local is better for the environment" and the plethora of societal-improvements that may or may not occur if these ideals moved into the mainstream are certainly compelling reasons for some - Enough so that it allows these movements to get to where they are today.

However, mainstream society often doesn't work towards societal-improvements. They work towards what's best for themselves. That often means that they'll spend three dollars on industrial ground beef instead of 5 dollars per pound of grass fed ground beef, saving themselves two dollars to use elsewhere. It means that they'll eat a Budget Gourmet for dinner in place of making it themselves in order to allocate the 30 minutes they have saved on a more enjoyable task.

If your food ideals are such that they require a sacrifice of time and/or money, how do you convince an individual with limited time and/or money that those sacrifices are worth making?

Technorati Tags: Food Politics

If butter is made from cream, then why is it "unofficially" improper to add cream to a buerre blanc?

Just curious.

I now have a greater appreciation for the Italian liquor industry. It's clear by the products available that there's not only a fair amount of tradition, but a fair amount of stories to go along with the tradition (which, I suppose, is how traditions are created).

Off the top of my head there's Amaretto, Nocello, Frangelico, Lemoncello, Campari, Fernet-Branca - that, my friends, is a very decent collection for a bar. As a measure of comparison, the English have gin and...well, you could say they have whiskey, but the Scotch and the Irish would be a little peeved at that.

Liquore Strega is an 80 proof herbal concoction, with a reputed 70 ingredients. Amongst those ingredients include mint, saffron and fennel. Strega is now the second liquor I've found with saffron, with Fernet-Branca being the first.

The story behind Strega is interesting as well. In 1860, Giuseppe Alberti found monks from Benevento, Campania who made this liquor. Promising to do nothing but good with the recipe, and coaxed the secret recipe from them. At first he sold it as a medical elixer (as many liquors were). Sales were poor. Smart businessman that he was, he decided to sell it as a liquor instead. He renamed it to Liquore Strega, which roughly translates to liquor of the witch. From there, the sales took off.

Strega is best served alone, either straight up or on the rocks.

Eyes:Strega is a bright yellow, nearly fluorescent yellow. It is saffron that gives it this color. Swirling the liquor in a glass shows it to be a nearly viscous syrup.

Nose: Strong, very medicinal.

Taste: Let it be said that Strega is a very complex drink. It starts sweet from the sugar, but then it becomes very bitter from the herbal components. Not herbal in an Absinthe sense, but more in a robituseen sans-codeine sense. The tail end of drink finishes with a strong liquorice flavor, most likely coming from the fennel.

Overall: Not my favorite drink, being too herbal in it's nature. With me being an American, my tastes tend towards the sweeter drinks.

Technorati Tags: Spirits, Liquore Strega, Review,

I'm personally have yet to decide where I fall on a trans-fat ban. The libertarian in me is abhors the idea of the state inflicting food bans. The pragmatist in me sees this as only one in a plethora of changes that must be made in food behaviors. The sadist in me loves to see Kraft, Conagra and other notorious food-corps squirm.

At any rate, Denmark banned the stuff two years ago. Here's a bit on what the food world is like over there today. It's an anecdotal account, but still worth a look.

UPDATED: I was caught by the grammar police going sixty in a twenty-five mph zone.

Technorati Tags: Trans Fat

From the New York Time Magazine:

But there’s nothing sentimental about local food — indeed, the reasons to support local food economies could not be any more hardheaded or pragmatic. Our highly centralized food economy is a dangerously precarious system, vulnerable to accidental — and deliberate — contamination. This is something the government understands better than most of us eaters. When Tommy Thompson retired from the Department of Health and Human Services in 2004, he said something chilling at his farewell news conference: “For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do.” The reason it is so easy to do was laid out in a 2003 G.A.O. report to Congress on bioterrorism. “The high concentration of our livestock industry and the centralized nature of our food-processing industry” make them “vulnerable to terrorist attack.” Today 80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company. Keeping local food economies healthy — and at the moment they are thriving — is a matter not of sentiment but of critical importance to the national security and the public health, as well as to reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy.

I could easily have printed any paragraph out of the article, as there is much information there to be digested. The entire article is worth your read.

I choose the above paragraph as I wanted statistics to illustrate the lack of diversity and competition within the food industry. It is this lack of competition that puts the American Conusmers at risk, it is this lack of competition which was grossly on display with the Spinach /E Coli outbreak. It's also only one variable of a list of about a half-dozen or so which allowed this to happen.

From the top of my head, here are other issues that allowed the E.Coli outbreak - Feedlot Cattle; Cattle CAFFA's in close proximity to produce farms; questionable water source and water practices; no checks or balances to catch 'dirty' product; questionable washing processes;an underfunded FDA to adequately an follow up on outbreaks in a quick manner. Every one of these issues added to the outbreak. As the cliche goes "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". Any argument that states that the aforemention issues helped rather than hindered the food safety issue surrounding the spinach outbreak better be ready to support such claims.

- - - - - - - -
As a side note, I do not think it's hyperbole to equate Mr. Pollan with Rachel Carson, nor to compare The Ominvore's Dillema with Silent Spring. I don't make this statement lightly. If you haven't read The Ominvore's Dillema, you really should.

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli, Michael Pollan

Here's a bit about butter. Use or disuse as desired.

• Refrigerate salted butter for up to 1 month.
• Refrigerate unsalted butter for up to 2 weeks.
• If you refrigerate your butter, avoid the butter compartment as it's too warm. Store in the back of the refrigerator if possible.
• As butter can absorb flavors from nearby products, it should be wrapped airtight.
• Salted and unsalted butter can be frozen in freezer-proof wrapping for up to 6 months.
• Unsalted butter allows for better control of the final flavor of a dish.
• Unsalted butter is better for greasing pans than salted, as salted butter can make baked goods stick to pans.
• To cleanly cut cold butter, wrap your knife in cling wrap, or heat a butter knife with hot water and dry off the water.
• To measure butter trhat does not have a wrapper, partially fill a measuring cup with water, then add butter until it reaches the amount you need. For example, fill a cup with 1/2 cup with water. If you need 1/2 cup of butter, add butter to the water until the water line reaches 1 cup.
• Soften butter by placing it in a microwave oven for 30 seconds at half power.
• Another way to soften butter is by slicing or grating butter and letting stand for about 10 minutes.
• Butter has a narrow melting range, 82.4?°F to 96.8?°F, so it will melt quickly even at low temperatures. To avoid burning, melt butter on low temperature settings.
• To prevent scorching when using butter as an oil, replace 1/4 of the butter with olive oil.
• Scorched and/or burnt butter is unrecoverable. If looking to cook with butter at high heat, it's best to use clarified butter.
• Do not use whipped butter for anything other than spread, or oiling pans. Whipped butter is incorporated with air and/or nitrogen which can adversely affect the taste of baked recipes.
• To cut butter into flour without a pstry cutter or food processor, grate frozen butter into the flour, periodically the flour together to prevent sticking.
• To make clarified butter,take need about 1 1/4 lbs. of unsalted butter. Melt butter over moderate heat but do not allow to boil, stirring often, but gently. The butter will separate into three distinct layers - foam on top, clarified butter in the middle and milk solids on the bottom. As the butter continues to warm, skim the froth from the surface and toss. When the froth is gone, pour off clear, melted clarified butter into another container, but leave the solids on the butter on the bottom.

As always, feel free to add your own tips and hints in the comments.

...according to Mark Morford.

One example: Stonyfield Farm's organic yogurt. As BusinessWeek points out, the stuff is made not on an idyllic working farm like the one on the label but rather in a giant industrial factory. They get their milk trucked in from a whole range of suppliers and it's possible they will soon begin to import some of their organic ingredients -- in dried, powdered form -- from New Zealand, so as to meet national demand, delivering it all over the country via pollutive trucking companies.

This is the harsh reality, the real cost of mainstream organic. There apparently aren't enough happy small, Earth-conscious local farms around to produce this stuff in sufficient quantities to feed the entire Wal-Mart nation. Massive compromises have been made. And those compromises mean "organic" is a shell of its former self.

What Mr. Morford writes about is true, to a point. However, one should not discount what the organic movement has taught a fair amount of our population.Reading the labels, knowing where the food comes from, understanding the effect farming (and more to the point, industrial farming) has upon the environment - all of these are now a large part of many people's purchasing habits. My guess, without any evidence to support my claim, is that it's a larger portion of the public doing that than, say, 10 - 15 years ago.

Being engaged in how companies develop their products means that it's more likely that consumers are going to call bullshit on bullshit practices. The best example of that? The issues surrounding Horizon Milk is the first bit that comes to mind, but I could think of others who have sold out the ideals in the name of big business.

And let's not forget that even if the organic standards are watered-down, they're still better than what was in place 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, the organic movement that we've come to love and respect has evolved into several other food movements. Organic hasn't died, it's simply changed addresses after agri-business moved into the neighborhood.

Weekend food for thought...so to speak.

Technorati Tags: Organic Food

E. Coli Strain Linked to Cattle Ranch.

All this proves is that two farms within a mile of one another, carried the same E. Coli strain. The next piece of evidence that needs to be uncovered is how the E. Coli arrived at each location. While it's probable that a cattle farm with the E. Coli is the root cause of the strain found on the Spinach farm, there is yet no evidence to substantiate that theory. How the strain arrived at the Spinach location is the one of the keys to preventing future outbreaks.

Expect more movement on this within a week or so.

IRONY ALERT: Mexico recently banned American imports of lettuce, based off the latest recall (whihc in turn was based off of the latest E. Coli fears).

Tom Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Assn. lobbying firm in Washington was none to pleased, stating "This is an outrageous step that has no basis at all in science or food safety..."

Which, ironically, could easily be said about whatever process that allowed a bacteria from a cow's intestine to land upon spinach farmland.

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

What happens when you get two of the world's largest food corporations, both with histories of unethical behavior (Coca-Cola and Nestlé) working together? A drink that burns calories.

Enviga, which will be on sale in the US next month, will be available in Britain next year.

The makers claim that a combination of extracts from green tea and caffeine speeds up the drinker’s metabolic rate, which helps the body to burn calories.

I think it's safe to say that the energy-drink industry is truly getting out of hand. Their claims of drinking 3 bottles of Enviga will burn an average of 106 calories is cynical in their marketing. As Andrew Prentice, professor of international nutrition at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, mentioned in the article "The implicit claim to the consumer is that [Enviga] will make them lose weight."

Coke denies that this is their motivation, speaking through their chief Scientist Rhoma Applebaum,"We want to make clear that this is not a magic bullet to lose weight".

If one were to believe Coke's position, then answer the following question - Do you think that they are thrilled or abhorred at the press that their drink is getting?

As Calorielab pointed out - "...you could save the four bucks a day ($1,460 a year) that would cost and go for a walk instead."

Technorati Tags: Coca-Cola, Enviga

At the 1866 Paris World Exhibition, Emperor Louis Napoleon III of France offered to sponsor research to develop a cheap replacement for butter. He had his reasons. Some will say that it was his attempt to help the lower classes get their recommended allotment of fat into their diet, and his concern for the poor (most notably documented in his book Extinction du paupérisme'). But don't discount the high costs of butter that accrued when trying to feed his army. Like many emperors, he was keen on proving France's military might, but armies don't run on willpower. Any money saved in butter was a money that could be spend on guns.

The French food chemist Hippolyte Mège-MouriésMege-Mouiries responded to the challenge and invented oleomargarine. He did so by combining the extracted liquid of beef suet with milk. The result? A spreadable (and notably gray) fat.

As quickly as the spread took off world-wide, it still managed to upset both governments and established food industries. Laws were created to prevent margarine makers from adding yellow food coloring. The Dairy Industry helped shape a tax upon the spread that kept its price artificially high. Rumors of despicable production practices and reports of its harm to people's health made the rounds. In short, it was treated in the same way that many other industrial food products are treated today. I'll leave it up to you on whether that's a good thing or not.

When the Depression occurred, butter prices rose and stayed high throughout World War II. It was only then that the margarine tax, and other related regulations were recinded ('twas about that time that margarine started becoming yellow).

At some point, beef fat was replaced by vegetable oil, most likely oil from soybeans. The process of converting soy oil to margarine was/is so profitable that it's difficult to find a margarine not made with soy.Which means the term "soy margarine" is, at best, a redundancy, and at worst, playing off of consumer's ignorance.

It's the social response to margarine's introduction which I find so interesting. If I were to pick one food that brought us into the industrial age of food, I would pick margarine, both for its production as well as the response to it.

*The title of this post should not be taken too seriously. I simply find it ironic that it was the proud French, with their rich culinary tradition (of which there is ample evidence) who brought forth this product that has been so reviled by some.

Kathy writes in looking for help:

I have been searching the net for a particular filling for pierogis for several days - unsuccessfully. My ancestry is Austrian and we call these kroppah. They are about 4x larger than pierogis. But, to my question....

My grandmother used to make a filling that used apples and graham crackers that, of course, she didn't have a written recipe for. And, since she passed away about 30 years ago, it's impossible to ask her. We're putting together a family recipe book with 4 generations contributing and I'm the one coordinating it. None of the aunts can remember how she made the
apple/graham cracker filling.

Have you ever run across an apple/graham cracker filling? Thanks for reading this. Back to my searching.

I am unaware of no such recipes, but if anyone else out there knows an apple/graham cracker filling for pierogies, Kathy will be much appreciative.

Technorati Tags: pierogies, filling, stuffing

This weeks recipe makes me wonder how the heck the French have less of a problem with heart attacks than the United States. Beurre Blanc is a butter sauce made with a lot of butter. One pound to be precise. Sure there's a bit of a white wine/shallot reduction, but that's simply a distraction from the main ingredient.

Butter.

Did I mention that there's a lot of butter in this dish?

Much like a great many recipes, there's a decent story on how Beurre Blanc was discovered. About.com gives the details:

The story takes place around the turn of the century in the kitches of château of the Marquis de Goulaine. His kitchen staff was preparing for an important dinner under the direction of his head cuisinière Madame Clémence Lefeuvre. She was very busy preparing the pike and asked an assistant to make a bérnaise sauce, which she liked to serve with the fish. The assistant forgot to add the tarragon and the egg yolks but there was no time to start over, so Clémence decided to serve the sauce as it was. After the meal, the Marquis asked Clémence to come into the dining room where of course she expected to be reprimanded. Instead, he praised her new preparation and gave it the name of "beurre blanc". Clémence soon took her new creation and opened her own auberge. Although they can't agree on the actual birthplace of the sauce, both will tell you that the inclusion of cream is not an "authentic" beurre blanc.

As for what kind of white wine to use, I'd use a sweeter wine, to contrast nicely against the tart of the vinegar. Anything too oakey might be a tad odd to the taste.

• 4 oz shallots, minced
• 1/2 cup white wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1 lb unsalted butter, chilled and chopped into 1" cubes
• Salt and (white) pepper to taste

Place the shallots, vinegar and white wine in a sauce pan over medium heat. Reduce the wine/vinegar concoction to somewhere between 75-90% of its initial volume.

Turn the heat to high and add the butter all at once. Continously whisk the sauce until all the butter has melted. Be careful here as there is a point of no return where if you heat the sauce too long it will break down into a sort of "infused" clarified butter. Once you get the point where the sauce is creamy in consistency yet still opaque, remove it from the heat.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve over your favorite fish.

Technorati Tags: Recipes, sauce, Beurre Blanc

From CBS News:

A popular brand of lettuce grown in California's Salinas Valley, the region at the center of a nationwide spinach scare, has been recalled over concerns about E. coli contamination.

The lettuce does not appear to have caused any illnesses, according to the Salinas-based Nunes Co. Inc.

Executives ordered the recall Sunday after learning that irrigation water may have been contaminated with E. coli, Tom Nunes said.

And if you are to believe retired soil scientist Frank Pecarich over at California Progress Report, much of it might be related to the fact that Monterey County (the epicenter of the E.Coli outbreak) has been irrigating 12,000 acres of edible food crops with "tertiary treated sewage effluent water" since at least 1998. This project underwhich this process was introduced was called the "Castroville Seawater Intrusion Project" As the Monterey County website admits "The use of highly treated wastewater to irrigate landscaping has been practiced for years, yet for food crops, it is relatively new." So new, in fact, that it's only one of two irrigation systems in the world where sewage water is treated and then used for irrigation purposes at produce farms.

As Mr. Pecarich discovered, if one were to wonder what the USDA has learned about this sort of process, one need not look further than their 2005 Report on Groundwater Recharge and Wastewater Irrigation to Protect Crops and Groundwater, item 5:

Microbiological work in the earlier projects included a laboratory study to assess the survival and re-growth potential of bacteria present in tertiary-treated effluent as it passed through a model distribution system. The results demonstrated that population numbers of indicator bacterial organisms increased by three to four orders of magnitude over the 11-day length of the experiment. This research established that although the reclaimed water met EPA standards for irrigation at the treatment plant, there is great potential for bacterial re-growth during transport that could place the water out of compliance at the point of intended use. This work illustrated the critical need to understand the environmental fate of microorganisms and the potential for bacterial re-growth in reclaimed water used for crop irrigation so that future problems of food and groundwater contamination via wastewater irrigation can be prevented.

Let's be clear here. I'm not saying that this is a cause. But it should at least be considered when talking about an industry that has produced 21 outbreaks of E.Coli over the past decade.

As the FBI gets involed in the case, it indicates that the government is looking beyond civil liability into the realm of criminal liability, and it's dreadfully important that every avenue is explored in order to determine what went wrong. My fear, with the FBI involvement, is that they're more interested in finding a scapegoat than they are the root cause.

Technorati Tags: Lettuce, E.Coli

He's tasteless, transparent and too large of a dose of him can make a person ill. I don't know what other people are saying, but I think Donald Trump is the perfect person to have a vodka named after them. Technorati Tags: Vodka, Donald Trump

The cuisine that best represents America, in my opinion, is any food that's delivered to my front door. Whether it's pizza, chinese, burritos, it doesn't matter. If they can deliver it to my door within an hour of a phone call, they're then as American as apple pie (which, for you long time readers of AH know, is actually British in its origin).

There are moods I get into at times where I am adamant about not cooking and yet cannot be bothered to head out of my abode to a decent restaurant. I then go against the hunt and gather instincts of my ancestors, and look for someone else to do the hunting and gathering. I recognize these times as 'opportunities'. Most others would recognize it as simply 'laziness'.

When I lived in the Suburbs of Washington DC, the delivery world was large and diverse. Not only could I order Pizza and pasta places, but also Indian, Greek and Japanese restaurants. There was even an Afghani restaurant that delivered for a bit. I could choose from several pizza places, basing my phone call on my moods and desires. If I was in the mood for a garlicky pizza, I could call place A. If I was desirous of a more traditional pie, I could call place B. I was in delivery heaven.

When I moved to Seattle, my delivery options changed. Out here, food delivery is nearly an afterthought. Sure there are the pizza joints, but beyond that, the options are quite limited. My household was thrilled when we finally discovered a Chinese restaurant that delivered to our home.

It was this lack of delivery options that made me realized that I had two separate sets of standards for restaurants. The places that I visited I hold to a higher standard than those who deliver their wares to my doorstep. This is by no means a great revelation unless compared against the larger picture. I believe that a large majority of American Food culture doesn't place ethics or quality as their number one priority when shopping to feed themselves or their family. For many folks, it's convenience that is one of the top two motivating factors in determining purchases (cost being the other).

The change of American cuisine from pre-World War II to post-World War II had little, if nothing to do with regional traditions. It had everything to do homogeneity, mass-production, and the ability to provide the consumer more time away from the kitchen but with more money in their wallet; i.e. Convenience and cost.

Don't get me wrong, the ethics behind food production and distribution has made leaps and bounds over the past dozen years or so. Not only are talking about organics, but locality, fair trade and several other ethically-based philosophies have made headway into the American consciousness. This is undoubtedly a good thing.

However, unless a proper means of distribution develops for these ethically-based types of food, they will fall out of our consciousness just as easily as they entered it. And while some may equate convenience with laziness, to ignore either when trying to change the way America eats is a mistake on a large scale.

Updated for spelling errors.

Telling people what they should and shouldn't eat is cultural imperialism -- and deeply disturbing. That a group of people could say, "You know, how you eat and how you've been eating for hundreds, if not thousands, of years -- traditional Jewish cuisine, Western European food since Roman times -- that is wrong and should not be allowed." I find that offensive. Ethnically insensitive, jingoistic, xenophobic, anti-human and disrespectful of the diversity of cultures on this planet, and for human history. But that's just the kind of law that has passed -- in Chicago, our second city, no less. It's a win for the forces of darkness, willful ignorance and intolerance.

I've not much more to add to that. Read the entire article on Salon for a full accounting.

Via Megnut

Technorati Tags: Foie Gras

For those who have never tried this drink, this post will mean very little. But Tara and I (as well as several other readers to this site) are quite fond of this liqueur, so I thought it relevant.

From the comments:

I just heard that Whidbey's Loganberry Liqueur is no longer produced.

Is this true? I now live in Connecticut and Had sent a friend to buy more and send
it to me. I guest my last bottle was just that.

Any comments about how to buy more would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Mike xxxxxx
mxxxxxxx0627@yahoo.com

I have called Chateau Ste. Michelle to verify if this is true, and they have confirmed that they are ceasing production of this Liqueur. The only way to get more is to stock up on any remaining bottles currently available at your state liquor store. No more orders are being filled, and back stock is probably limited if there is any at all.

If you live in the Seattle area, Chateau Ste. Michelle's gift shop still has a few bottles remaining, but you have to pick up the bottles in person.

Double Drat. This liqueur mixed quite well with dark teas.

Technorati Tags: Loganberry Liqueur, Chateau Ste. Michelle Liqueur,

From the Guardian:

Supermarkets are putting pressure on organic food watchdogs to lower standards so they can fully exploit a billion-pound industry which is growing by 30% a year, according to leading figures in the movement.

Fears that organic farming is falling victim to commercial pressures to abandon key principles have led to disputes in the Soil Association, the gold standard of the groups that certify "green" products.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The increase in demand of organic food is a free market indictment of the current food distribution system. Even if current organic standards are watered down, people will not stop looking for more ethical ways of getting food onto their table.

Of course this shouldn't stop anyone from preventing such watering down from occuring.

Technorati Tags: Organics, Food+Politics

...well, first off, one shouldn't boil the egg, at least to Hervé This (pronounced Tees), one of the group of people involved in molecular gastronomy. Molecular gastronomy is the application of science to the making of food.

When approaching cooking as science, perfection can be qualified. So what does a perfect hard boiled look like? When you cut the egg open, the hardened yolk should be centered. The egg yolk should not have the green sulfur on the cooked outside. And the whites, when cooked, should be soft and tender. But how to get to that state of perfection?

The idea is to cook the eggs slowly. As This notes in his book, "Molecular Gastronomy - Exploring the Science of Flavor":

How do eggs cook in the first place? The white consists of about 10% proteins (amino acid chains folded upon themselves in the shape of a ball) and 90% water. During cooking the proteins partially unfold (They are said to be "denatured") and bind with each other, forming a lattice that traps water - in other words, a gel.

The tenderness of the cooked egg white depends on the quantity of water trapped (the loss of a part of this water is what makes overcooked fried eggs rubbery and overcooked egg yolks sandy) and on the number of proteins making up its lattices (more lattices mean that more water is trapped, rigidifying the entire system)...

...When an egg is cooked in boiling water, at a temperature of 100° C (212°F), not only does its mass progressively diminish as water is eliminated from the gell that forms, but many kinds of protein coagulate as well.

By cooking the eggs at a temperature of 154° F (68° C), water loss of the egg is prevented. As long as there is no water loss

As for keeping the cooked yolk in the center of the egg? Prevent it from rising within the shell by rolling it continually.

Technorati Tags: Molecular Gastronomy, Hervé This, Eggs

To me, the discussion over "local versus national distribution" or "organic versus agri-business farming practices" are secondary discussions in the post Spinach/E.Coli outbreak.

The big question on my mind is thus:

Why is it that the FDA felt they had to ban our country's entire crop of Spinach when it is clear now that the outbreak came from one source (Natural Selection Foods LLC of San Juan Bautista, California)?

Why is it that spinach growers in Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and any other farm not located in San Juan Bautista have to face an economic hardship in light of this outbreak? The FDA's response to this outbreak was a direct result of the ignorance foisted upon themselves by their own lack of regulation and oversight.

From the article:

The swiftness with which their spinach businesses were turned upside-down has startled growers. Perry Bowen, who farms about 180 acres of Savoy spinach at River Farm in Virginia's King George County, was having dinner in Pennsylvania with Verdelli and other growers on the night the spinach warning came down from the FDA.

"We were having a great time," Bowen said. "We were talking about having a good fall crop. We were bucking each other up."

Bowen had left his cellphone in his car. When he finished dinner, he walked across the street, got in his car, and saw he had eight voice-mail messages from family members, business associates and friends -- asking if he had heard the news.

"You talk about going from the top of the world to the bottom in 100 feet of asphalt," he said, adding: "I've got a house under construction. I bought my neighbor's farm. My whole world is built around this business, and because of something that happened in California it is all disappearing."

This story should resonate upon anyone who farms outside of the the mega-agri-businesses. There's little to no process in place to protect farms that have nothing to do with disease outbreaks.

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

Assemblyman Panter gets his day in the sun:

Assemblyman Michael Panter said he plans to introduce the bill next week because the production of foie gras is a "barbaric practice that has no place in any civilized society." The legislation also would prohibit the distribution of the fattened fowl livers from New Jersey or into the state.

"Barbaric practice that has no place in civilized society"? Apparently Mr. Panter has been taking hyperbole lessons.

Technorati Tags: Foie+Gras

Well, in actuality, this is Vanilla Neoclassic buttercream icing, at least according to Rose Levy Beranbaum, authos of the rightfully lauded Cake Bible. The difference between classic and neo-classic is that the neo has corn syrup, whilst the classic recipe uses water.

Icing is one of those foodstuffs that remind me of childhood, what with the ritual of "The Licking of the Spoon" after my mom had completed the icing recipe. However, unlike the childhood cliche of the smiling kid enjoying this rare treat, whomever recieved the icing spoon at our house was looked upon with suspicion and malice. Post-Icing, the household broke down into a scene out of "The Call of the Wild".

At any rate, I'm a huge fan of butter cream icing, enjoying them more than your typical Whipped cream icing that you see in use at Supermarket bakeries. However, if you use this icing, use a light hand when applying it to your cake. Too much icing will overwhlem the taste of the cake.

• 6 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar (The iner the grain, the better)
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 2 cups unsalted butter, softened and at room temperature
• 3 Tablespoons Vanilla extract

In a large glass bowl, place the egg yolks. Whisk together thoroughly.

Place a small sauce pan over medium heat, and pour in the sugar and the corn syrup. Stir constantly until the sugar is incorporated and the syrup comes to a rolling boil. Remove from heat and immediately pour into a small glass bowl in order to prevent any further cooking of the syrup.

Pour the syrup into the egg yolks, beating the egg yolks all the while. This is a task that an electric better (or better yet, a stand up mixer) excels.

Once the syrup is mixed into the egg yolks, beat in the softened butter and the vanilla until thick and fluffy.

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Icing, Buttercream Icing

My hosting company upgraded a database of some sort on their mail servers. The end result is that e-mails I have been saving for later correspondence are now kaput. If you have sent me an e-mail in the last week and have not gotten a response, please send again.

We now return to our regularly scheduled kvetching about food.

Redux Beverages, based out of Las Vegas, makes an energy drink called "Cocaine".

Technorati Tags: Energy Drinks

If this rumor about foie gras is true then I have the following question:

Is Michael Panter...

a) an idiot?
b) clueless?
c) looking to score 'easy' political points?

According to Anthony Bourdain, freshmand New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Panter (who happens to be a vegetarian) will introduce a bill making production and sale of foie gras in that state a crime. Mr. Bourdain explains that "D'Artagnan, the premier supplier of foie gras and foie-gras related products for New York tri state area restaurants and retail would be forced to go out of business or move elsewhere".

Look, I've mentioned this before. This isn't so much an issue about foie gras as it as about having a government dictate choices based on morality...a morality, by the way, that not everyone shares. Imagine if an assemblyman wanted to ban veal or horsemeat. Oh wait, too late for that one.

I would like to point out that many New Jersey farms were dealt a serious financial blow with the latest Spinach/E. Coli outbreak. They paid a financial penalty for a problem in which they were not the cause. I would love to hear how much attention Assemblyman Panter is giving that issue, and whether that issue is more or less important than the foie gras one. I, for one, would be thrilled to know how Panter would like to prevent tainted spinach from other parts of the country reach his constituents' tables, and how much effort and work he is putting in to reach those ends.

Technorati Tags: Food Politics, Foie Gras

Sometimes, I just gotta stuff something.

I know, I know, it sounds a little dirty, but I find stuffed foods to be a little more extravagent than your "steamed broccoli" or "sauteed spinach". Everyone deserves a little extravagence in their lives.

After making this, both Tara and I determined that this would make a great side dish, probably served with a nice piece of prime rib.

• 5 oz. dried wild mushrooms
• 3 oz. rum
• 6 oz. water
• 4 tomatoes
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 red skin potato, peeled and diced
• 1 red onion, diced
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 4fl oz double cream
• 3/4 cup of bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, shredded
• drizzle of olive oil
• drizzle of balsamic vinegar
• fresh oregano (garnish)

Place the mushrooms in a small bowl. Add the rum and water, allowing the mushrooms to reconstitute, approximately 1 hour.

After the one hour, rre-heat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Remove the top of the tomatoes. Spoon out the pulp inside and discard, leaving a shell.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a medium skillet pan. Add the the potatoes and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, allowing them to to become slightly brown. Add the onions and cook until they become translucent.

Dice the mushrooms, and add them to the potato/onion melange. Stir in the vinegar, cream and a splash of water and simmer gently for 10-12 minutes to reduce. Add the breadcrumbs and cheese, and mix well. Cook for 1 - 2 minutes and remove from heat.

Remove the stuffing from the heat and spoon the mixture into the tomatoes. Place in a glass baking dish, and drizzle with olive oil.

Bake in the oven for 6-7 minutes. Remove from oven and drizzle a little balsamic over each tomato. Garnish with oregano and serve.

Serves 4

Technorati Tags: Recipe, Tomato, Stuffed Tomato

From komo-news:

Pacific Coast Fruit Company is recalling salad and pizza that may have been made with spinach supplied by Natural Selections Foods, and that was distributed in Alaska, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

The salad bears a "use-by" date of Sept. 20, and the pizza products have a "use-by" date of Sept. 23, according to the USDA

Odd that Natural Selections Foods name keeps popping up. Okay, maybe not that odd.

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

One of the things I tried with Well Fed was to provide a larger audience for up and coming food and beverage writers, and give them the opportunity to improve and promote their chosen craft.

Well Fed and I have since parted company (amicably), but I still wish to accomplish those original goals. To that end, I'm going to take some of these ideas and apply them right here at Accidental Hedonist.

I have several ideas that I wish to implement, but rather than do them all at once, I'm going to implement them piece by piece over the course of the next year or so.

The first idea is that I wish to add a paid writing position to this site. My preferences for a new writer will be as follows:

• Provide at least 10 posts/month.
• There should be one post made every weekend.

What the writer gets in return -

• The ability to have their article read by an audience of 8,000 - 9,000 people per day.
• A small, but respectable monthly payment.

The tone, tenor and quality of posts are up for discussion.

The position be on a month by month basis, for no longer than a period of six months. After the six months, if I deem this successful, I will open the position to a different person.

The idea here is to promote relationships between the readers and the writers. Once the 6 month period is complete, it is hoped that the readers will search out the writers on other venues, including the writers own blogs.

If you are interested, let me know by sending me an e-mail at kate AT accidentalhedonist DOT com. I will accept these e-mails until midnight of October 3rd, Pacific Standard Time. I will follow up on your e-mails by asking a few questions , but feel free to ask questions of your own.

Meeting new people is a chore for me. It’s not that I don’t wish to create new friendships and develop social networks; it’s that I’m so bad at it.

I make this admission, not only to provide you a bit of insight into my own psyche, but to explain why I don’t talk about the Food Network all that much on this site.

At the times when I do find myself at social events, I’ve found myself introduced as a ‘food blogger’, which is only interesting to about 1 tenth of one percent of the people to whom I’ve been introduced . In discussing food blogging, most people gravitate to the word “food” and inevitably ask the following question:

“So, do you watch the Food Network?”

I answer honestly…I don’t.

Cue awkward silence, as the only knot that tied together our conversation has been slowly unraveled. I then imagine my talking partner thinking “what kind of food expert doesn’t watch the Food Network” whilst at the same time my thought go something along the lines of “Doesn’t this person know that the Food Network is more about promoting an unattainable lifestyle than it is about promoting food?”

The conversation then dies a lonely death and each of us goes our separate way.

I blame the Food Network for all of this.

It’s not that I dislike the network. Truth be told, I rarely put forth any time even thinking about the channel. I like Alton Brown well enough, and I had a healthy respect for Sara Moulton, David Rosengarten and even Mario Batali. It wasn’t that they were necessarily entertaining (although most were). Rather, it was because after watching them, I felt as if I learned something. Whether it was learning the molecular composition of honey, or that it’s okay to serve beer with an alarming amount of “gourmet” dishes, I often felt enriched at the end of each respective program..

Once that feeling started going away, the less interested I became in the Food Network. If you followed the history of the network, you can probably figure out when that happened. Bill Buford knows about the Food Network, and spells it out quite plainly in his most recent New Yorker article about the Food Network:

(Judy) Girard became president in 2001. When I met her, the following year, she was fifty-six, with blond hair, a slight build, an easy manner, and nothing to hide; frank but not theatrical, calm to the point of seeming tranquillized, no flash or fast-talking speech about “a vision thing,” which I now suspect was because her job had been so simply defined: make the bottom line work. She wasn’t interested in James Beard Awards or good reviews; the only press that mattered was in the financial pages, because her allegiance was unwaveringly to “her community”—the investors.

It was roughly that time that I started to notice changes in the shows I saw. I was no longer being talked to, I was being talked at. Soft lighting started showing up, as well bagged vegetables and pre-made sauces. The food became sanitized, and the Martha Stewart lifestyle became the focus. The network was no longer about making good food and understanding it, it became about using food to impress other people. Whether it was getting a meal out in 30 minutes, or making the perfect thanksgiving feast, the shows seemed to sell the idea of "having" food knowledge, without actually having any.

Even Buford noted the sanitization:

I found myself taking stock not of what I’d seen during the preceding seventy-two hours but of what I hadn’t. I couldn’t recall very many potatoes with dirt on them, or beets with ragged greens, or carrots with soil in their creases, or pieces of meat remotely reminiscent of the animals they were butchered from—hardly anything, it seemed, from the planet Earth. There were hamburgers and bacon, but scarcely any other red animal tissue except skirt steak, probably, it occurs to me now, because of its two unique qualities: its texture and its name.

Food is not sanitized. Food can be dirty and bloody.

And more to the point, unsanitized, dirty and bloody food does not make for good television.

Let's get straight to the issue here - the majority of American television networks are not designed with entertaining, education, or providing news reports. They are designed to make money. If the Food Network couldn't make money through providing "food education" they had to find another way to do so. There's nothing wrong with that. My own preference was for the former and when they moved away from it, I moved away from them.

I do give the Food Network kudos for at least keeping food in the national discourse. But just as one cannot understand the intricacies and nuances television or movies by reading Entertainment Weekly, one cannot understand the intricacies and nuances of food by watching the Food Network.

Technorati Tags: Bill Buford, Food Network

Here are the answers to this post.

1. The Transportation Security Administration - 6.223 billion dollar budget
2. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - 3.681 billion dollar budget
3. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute - 2.901 billion dollar budget
4. Emergency Spending for AIDS relief - 2.894 billion dollar budget
5. Military Spending for Israel - 2.34 billion dollar budget
6. The cost of one Virginia Class Submarine - 1.775 billion dollar budget
7. Food and Drug Administration - 1.545 billion dollar budget
8. Embassy Security, Construction and Maintenance - 1.540 billion dollar budget

That's right. We live in a world where one submarine costs more than the entire budget of the agency that provides oversight to the food and pharmaceutical industries.

Technorati Tags: Food Politics

Another bag of spinach found contaminated with E. Coli, this time in Utah. It too was a bag of Dole Baby Spinach, which also had been processed at a Natural Selection plant. It had a use-by date of Aug. 30.

Meanwhile, the FDA has changed the stance on their ban, rewording it to state:

Consumers are advised not to purchase or consume fresh spinach if they cannot verify that it was grown in areas other than the three California counties (Monterey, San Benito and Santa Clara) implicated in the outbreak. Other produce grown in these counties is not implicated in this outbreak. Processed spinach (e.g., frozen and canned spinach) is also not implicated in this outbreak

And if you can determine the counties in which your spinach was grown, you're doing better than a great majority of American consumers.

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

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Has anyone else noticed the timing of these two stories?

• Starbucks gives the okay for the "create-your-own" latte (previously called the 'ghetto latte').
• Starbucks decides to raise prices by a nickel.

One probably has nothing to do with the other, but it's certainly weird timing of both of these news releases.

Technorati Tags: Starbucks

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I've been looking over a very interesting graph over at The Budget Graph. This graph gives a really handy visual representation of how large of a budget various government departments get in relation to one other.

I have a bit of homework for those who are interested. I want you to find the icon representing the FDA, the agency given oversight to the majority of our food supply. Then I want you to find the following answers:

Is the FDA budgeted more or less money than the following federal programs:

• Military Spending for Israel
• National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
• Emergency Spending for AIDS relief
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• The cost of one Virginia Class Submarine
• Embassy Security, Construction and Maintenance
• The Transportation Security Administration

Don't worry, I'll give the answers on Monday.

Technorati Tags: Food Politics, FDA

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One of my favorite supermarkets to frequent is Uwajimaya, a specialty supermarket that specializes in imported food from various regions of Asia. This is the type of market where I am just as likely to find dried shrimp eggs as a can of Campbells soup. It's there I can find all manner of products unfamiliar and untried.

It's there that I picked up this can of Coco Rico, a Puerto Rican coconut soda. It's your typical soda made with cane and corn sugar as well as coconut extract. Never one to be fearful of the unknown, I picked up the can and brought it home.

Aroma: I could easily smell the sweetness of the drink. So much so, that it overwhelmed the subtle aroma of the coconut.

Taste: A very sweetened club soda, with the taste of coconut milk. The end result of this is that if one likes the taste of coconut milk (an admittedly acquired taste), then there is a chance of liking this soda. If one does not like the taste of coconut milk, then the chances of liking this soda are slim.

Having grown up on the overly sweetened yet subtlety savory colas and Dr. Peppers, I find this soda lacking. In my opinion, it's an unremarkable soda. In looking over the internet, I find that some like this soda, while others feel that this soda is not what it used to be.

Despite my disappointment in this soda, I am not jaded. I am looking forward to my next trip to Uwajimaya and the unknown bounty that awaits.

Technorati Tags: Coconut Soda, Food Review

Congratulations to both Canlis and Cafe Juanita, two very fine Seattle-area eating establishments, for being named in Gourmet's list of top 50 restaurants.

Technorati Tags: Gourmet Magazine, Top 50 Restaurants, Seattle Restaurants

Here's an informative news article on how spinach was found to be the culprit in the outbreak:

...on Sept. 8, Wisconsin officials signed on to a password-protected federal database called PulseNet and filed reports of what they had.

Coordinated by the CDC, PulseNet is a network that was created following a 1993 E. coli outbreak. It includes a database now stocked with some 32,000 images of E. coli samples. An Internet chat room enables officials to share observations.

"A message goes out, alerting others to this uptick, so there is heightened attention," CDC spokeswoman Jennifer Morcone explained Wednesday.

This is a little "behind the scenes" look at how they're tracking this outbreak, using initial circumstansial evidence, until they are able to compare "fingerprints" of the any sampled bacterial DNA.

Side note: If there's anyone who should get a kudos in all of this, it's Melissa Plantenga, a special-studies coordinator with the Oregon Department of Human Services, who figured out something was going on on September 12th.

That's a state agency, by the way, not a federal one. How's that National Uniformity for Food Act looking now?

Technorati Tags: Food Safety, Spinach, E.Coli

I find the whole Spinach/E.Coli event telling and yet at the same time, utterly frustrating. In my opinion, the series of events surrounding the outbreak are a perfect microcosm of the larger food industry.

You have a crop coming from an industry which has been suspected in 20 outbreaks over the last decade. For whatever reason, there's little to no national press coverage surrounding these outbreaks - most likely because the number of people affected is not statistically significant. As a result of these 20 outbreaks, the FDA shows concerns and offers suggestions, and little else.

When the most recent outbreak get national attention, there's little traceability in place to determine where (and how) the outbreak occurred. The end result is that the FDA doesn't just shut down the culpable farms, but shuts down the entire Spinach industry.

One of two basic scenarios that are going to play out in the coming weeks. Either:

1) The FDA and other State officials will find one farm or processing facility the root cause of this outbreak.

or

2) The FDA and other State officials will find several farms and/or processing facilities as distributors of this outbreak.

Neither result should leave us feeling comfortable. If it's the first option, then we have a food safety process in place that requires the shut down of an entire industry in order to prevent roughly 200 people (out of a population 296,000,000) from getting sick and/or dying.

If it's the second option, then the some members of the leafy-vegetable agribusiness farming considers the twice yearly E.Coli outbreaks as "acceptable risks".

About a dozen or so years ago, Midas Mufflers had the a commercial where a mechanic looked at the camera and said "You can pay me now." At this point he would pause and turn to a garbage heap of a car that had been towed into his garage, and then turned solemnly back towards the camera and finished his point by saying "- or you can pay me later". The message was clear. Invest a little money now, and you'll save yourself a larger bill later on down the road.

Someone, somewhere, didn't make the proper investment in safety. I can promise you, that investment is a fraction of the cost that's being paid today.

Technorati Tags: Food Safety, Spinach, E.Coli

From ABC News:

Spinach found in the refrigerator of a person sickened by E. coli was contaminated with the bacteria, providing a break Wednesday for investigators seeking the origin of the outbreak.

Federal and state investigators, meanwhile, narrowed their hunt to to three California counties in the greater Salinas Valley Monterey, San Benito and Santa Clara, said Dr. David Acheson of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

For the record, it was a bag of Dole Baby Spinach.

Technorati Tags: Food, Spinach, E.Coli

My knowledge of Indian cuisine is fairly minimal, so forgive me if my ignorance shows with this recipe. In looking over various recipes, I've noticed a distinct lack of butter in most butter chicken recipes. Oh there's some, to be sure, but only a tablespoon or two. I've remedied that below.

As with most stew-type recipe, this isn't the end-all be-all recipe for butter chicken. There are many ways to alter this for your own taste - less tomatoes, more spices, etc., etc.

Also, you can use strictly white meat if you wish, but I'm fond of dark meat, and it works well here. Serve with basmati rice.

Marinade

• 1 1/2 lb. boneless, skinless chicken, cut into pieces
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1 1/2 tsp. Chili Powder
• 1 1/2 tsp. garam masala
• 1 tsp Coriander Powder
• 1 Tbl. garlic paste
• 1 Tbl. ginger paste
• juice from one lemon
• 1 tsp. salt

Gravy

• 4 Tbls. butter
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 Tbls. ginger paste
• 1 Tbls. garlic paste
• 2 cups tomato puree
• 1/4 cup cream
• 1 tsp. garam masala
• 1 tsp. Coriander Powder
• 1 tsp Red Chilli Powder
• 4 tsp. clover honey (optional)

In a large glass bowl, mix in the yogurt, chili powder, garam masala, coriander, garlic paste, ginger paste, lemon and salt. Add the chicken to the yogurt melange, coating thoroughly. Cover the glass bowl with saran wrap and place in the refrigerator. Allow the chicken to marinate for a minimum of 3 hours.

Pre heat oven to 300 degrees. Place marinated chicken in a glass baking dish and place in oven for 15 minutes.

Place large skillet over medium heat. Melt the butter. Sautee the onions until translucent. Add the ginger and onion paste and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add the tomato puree and cream. Add the masal, coriander and chilli powder. Add the chicken, and allow to cook for 10-12 minutes. At this point, add the honey if you're so inclined.

Serve over rice.

Serves 4

UPDATE: LT from the comments stated "Tried this out last night. While I wouldn't have called it butter chicken, it was quite good. A little more Tikka Masala like than Butter Chicken like. Also, after the 15 minutes in the oven and then the 10-12 minutes on the stove, the chicken was not cooked through and required another 10 minutes on the stove."

Technorati Tags: recipes, Indian Cuisine, Butter Chicken, Chicken

This is the kind of information that makes me upset on so many levels. From the San Fran Chronicle:

In November 2005, the FDA sent a letter to growers, packers, processors and shippers warning them to improve produce safety.

"In view of continuing outbreaks," the agency wrote, "we encourage firms to consider modifying their operations accordingly to ensure that they are taking the appropriate measures to provide a safe product to the consumer."

This makes me angry for two distinct reasons:

1. Had the warning been heeded, it could have prevented people getting ill (not to mention prevented the economic losses).
2. It shows how little authority the FDA has in regard to food safety. When confronted with Foodborne illnesses, the best they can do is offer suggestions. Talk about your toothless agencies. What a joke.

We're on day 6 of this mess, and I think it's safe to say that it's been mishandled every step of the way, from the farm(s) responsible for the outbreak to government's response.

Thanks to Marc

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

I found an interesting statistic in this very worthwhile Daytona Beach News-Journal article:

Natural Selection Foods, the nation's largest organic-food producer, pushes close to 14 million servings of bagged salad a week through its San Juan Bautista plant.

Let's do some basic math here - Natural Selection has recalled six weeks of spinach (from August 17, 2006 through October 1, 2006). That makes for 84 million servings of spinach. As of this morning, there have been 114 reported cases of E. Coli reported. 114 over 84000000 converts roughly to .00013 of one percent.

Even if we presume that only one case out of ten has been reported, that still only raises the odds to roughly .0001 of one percent, if my math is correct (which is always a big 'if').

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

From their site:

FDA advises consumers not to eat fresh spinach or fresh spinach-containing products until further notice.

Meaning that this has moved beyond bagged spinach and bagged salads into all spinach except frozen and canned.

This is bad on so many levels.

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

From ABC News ABC News:

Meanwhile, a Northern California company linked to contaminated spinach says its organic spinach is not the source of deadly E. coli.

Natural Selection Foods says it has been cleared by federal and state health inspectors after they checked manufacturing codes from packages of spinach that infected patients had turned over.

UPDATE: Well, maybe not so much.

The story that is now the linked site seems to be different from the one I read this morning. From the new article:

Bro also dismissed a claim by Natural Selection Foods LLC, the country's largest grower of organic produce, that its organic spinach products had been cleared of suspicion. "The FDA has not cleared any products from the list and continues to recommend consumers avoid eating fresh spinach products," Bro said."

Thanks Jasmin and Pim!

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

So, What's going on with Spinach and E.Coli? It seems as if some agribusiness farms in Salinas, California have distributed Spinach tainted with the E.Coli bacteria.

Which farms? Well, none of the farms have actually come out and admitted that it was their product which were tainted, but Natural Selection Foods and River Ranch Fresh Foods have both voluntarily initiated recalls.

So I only have to worry about the Natural Selection and River Ranch Brands? No. Natural Selection supplies spinach to other companies, including Dole, O Organics, and about 30 other companies. River Ranch, in addition to getting their spinach from Natural Selection, also have recalled the Farmers Market, Hy Vee, and Fresh and Easy brands.

UPDATE: Additionally, Natural Selection has been cleared of culpability. Bah. No one has been cleared by the FDA.

Is it safe to eat Fresh Spinach? The FDA has not given any warning against fresh, unbagged spinach. However, rumor has it that Whole Foods has pulled not only bagged spinach, but fresh spinach as well.

Is it safe to eat Frozen Spinach? The FDA has not given any warning against frozen spinach and is presumed safe.

Is safe to eat spinach served at restaurants? That's a tough question to answer. The FDA has recommended to avoid eating spinach at restaurants, but only because of a handful of businesses who used bagged spinach.

As the coverage of the spinach outbreak reaches into the panic phase, good businessfolk are unlikely to place spinach on their menus, not because the spinach is bad, but because the spinach won't move.

Couldn't I just cook any bagged spinach? Sure, but bacterial transfer can occur with a simple touch. Picking up tainted spinach with your bare hands can put you at risk. Likewise placing tainted spinach on counter tops, sinks, bowls, etc., will put you at risk.

What are the odds of me getting E. Coli if I've had spinach? Very, very low. There have been 109 of E.Coli cases reported in the past week or so. Divide that number into the amount of people who likely have eaten bagged spinach in the last week or so, and you'll have your odds of getting E. Coli. Even if you triple or quadruple the amount of cases, you'll still have low odds.

How did spinach get E.Coli? No one knows of yet, but the best guesses are from the fertilizer or the water in which the spinach was washed.

What are the medical ramifications of the spinach outbreak? Realistically, this is a small outbreak. The young, the elderly and the infirm are at severe risk. Everyone else is at less of a risk.

This outbreak has garnered press because it is nationwide outbreak. There are typically 60 deaths a year due to E. Coli., but rarely do we hear much about those. One of the questions that should be asked after this outbreak passes is "Why was this outbreak given so much coverage?"

What are the legal ramfications? It's difficult to say at this point without knowing how this outbreak occured. But the best guess is that very few, if any laws were broken as there are very few, if any, laws to be broken. Any legal questions will likely be brought in civil lawsuits against any brand of bagged spinach that can proven to have contained the E. Coli bacteria that led to a consumers death and/or illness.

What are the economic ramifications? If you buy stocks, I'd short any company that sells spinach. Not only are their lost profits from 2 months worth of product being destroyed, but also the investment costs (amount of money used to buy everything from spinach seeds to the labor used) are incurred. Additionally, according to CBS news last night, some produce companies are buying back the spinach they sold to restaurants.

When can we buy bagged spinach? Unknown at this time. It is simply not enough to remove at risk product from the shelves. Companies have to know how their products became
at-risk" as to prevent it from happening again.

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli, Food Safety

Look, I'm all for the appropriate amount of regulation surrounding food production. But any talk about adding FDA oversight to agri-business as a response to the Spinach/E.Coli outbreak is only asking for further problems.

As long as the FDA is underfunded and overextended, any added regulation and industry for them to oversee is a waste of money.

Technorati Tags: Food+Safety, Spinach, E.Coli

It appears as if they buy their spinach from Natural Selection.

From the L.A. Times:

The company (River Ranch Fresh Foods) buys in bulk from Natural Selection Foods, one of the nation's largest producers of organic produce. Since last week, Natural Selection has been the primary focus of the investigation into the source of the outbreak, because many of those sickened apparently ate its packaged spinach. However E. coli has not been found in the company's bags of spinach, and health officials have said others could be implicated. Natural Selection issued its own recall of 31 brand names.

HOWEVER - FDA officials stressed that the bacteria had not been isolated in products sold by Natural Selection Foods. They're doing a voluntary recall of all of its products that contain spinach in all the brands they pack with “Best if Used by Dates” of August 17, 2006 through October 1, 2006.

Here's Natural Selection Foods press release on the matter. They supply spinach to the followinng brands:

• Natural Selection Foods
• Pride of San Juan
• Earthbound Farm
• Bellissima
• Dole
• Rave Spinach
• Emeril
• Sysco
• O Organic
• Fresh Point
• River Ranch
• Superior
• Nature’s Basket
• Pro-Mark
• Compliments
• Trader Joe’s
• Ready Pac
• Jansal Valley
• Cheney Brothers
• Coastline
• D’Arrigo Brothers
• Green Harvest
• Mann
• Mills Family Farm
• Pro*Act
• Premium Fresh
• Snoboy
• The Farmer’s Market
• Tanimura & Antle
• President’s Choice
• Cross Valley
• Riverside Farms

More later.

One of the more frustrating things about the bagged spinach/E.Coli outbreak is that there's very little specific data out there at the moment. When there's very little specific data, it sets up an environment of fear, ignorance and speculation. In other words - a panic.

Let's set up what we know and see if we can gain some modicum of perspective.

As of 6:00 AM PST, on Sept 15th, all that the 750+ news stories on Google can tell us is this:

- The FDA has issued an alert to consumers about an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in multiple states that may be associated with the consumption of produce. To date, preliminary epidemiological evidence suggests that bagged fresh spinach may be a possible cause of this outbreak (the FDA's press release).

Note the phrase "may". It means that there's no hard evidence (yet) that it is spinach, just evidence that points it in bagged spinach's direction. It's a fine point to be sure, but an important one. It's one thing to say "it might be due to bagged spinach", it's quite another to say "it is due to bagged spinach."

But presuming the preliminary evidence show to be correct, what else can we suss out? The FDA press release also states "At this time, the investigation is ongoing and states that have reported illnesses to date include: Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin." The first thing we can probably get out of this is that it's a national brand of some sort, with literally a nationwide reach (from Connecticut to Oregon).

Certainly Dole fits this circumstantial evidence, and they have a track record with E. Coli in their products. In fact, they were sued yesterday by Gwyn Wellborn, a Salem, Oregon woman who claims to have gotten sick off of a Dole bagged spinach.

Earthbound Farms also has a national distribution chain, as does Chiquita's Fresh Express. So does Ready Pac. I imagine things are a little tense at all four of these companies today, as all of them are experiencing product and sales loss today and through the weekend, probably longer. There are other candidates to be sure, but these are the Big Four of pre-packaged salads, and the odds are good that it's one of them.

E.Coli, or more distinctly - Escherichia coli O157:H7, is a nasty thing. According to the Center for Disease Control, an estimated 73,000 cases occur each year, leading to 61 deaths. It is caused by fecal transmission, and in the case of vegetables, most likely due to not cleaning the products efficiently. People here in the State of Washington get antsy about E. Coli. Back in 1993, three Washington children died and 600 others were sickened due to poisoning from E. coli O157:H7 served in undercooked Jack In The Box hamburgers. This happened due to Jack in the Box avoiding safety rules in cooking beef.

Here's where lettuce and beef part ways (not to mention the difference between state and federal approaches to food safety) - Washington State regulations required hamburgers be cooked to an internal temperature of 155 degrees. In not doing so, Jack in the Box broke the law, and people died.

For prepackaged lettuce, there are no laws or regulations, only guidelines - guidelines created by the lettuce industry. Guidelines are suggestions, not requirements. In short, there's no weight of law if some company decides not to follow them.

My suggestion if you have plans for spinach this weekend? Buy fresh. Short of that - buy local. Sure, the chance of you getting E.Coli is small, even if you do buy a nationally distributed brand. But why would you give your business to anyone who plays fast and loose with food safety in order to save money?

Technorati Tags: Spinach, E.Coli

There's an extensive e.coli breakout in bagged spinach, nationwide. Just an FYI. More later.

What is it about raw milk that makes Big Dairy's stomach turn?

What is it about? Money - Money disguised as health concerns.

First off, let's be clear - there are health issues surrounding unpasteurized milk. The question I have us thus - if unpasteurized milk is treated with proper diligence (proper shelf life is kept, temperature kept below 40 fegrees F), is Raw milk any more dangerouse than eggs or shellfish? No one can seem to answer that.

But back to the money - Here's why Raw milk is not considered a viable product for the industrial dairy industry.

• The smaller the shelf life of any product, the more tenuous the profit margin of that product.
• To ensure the safety of the milk, it would cost money to implement both processes and equipment.
• It would cost money to add liability insurance to cover any health episode that might occur.

I could list several other reasons, but I think the point is made.

The next question I have is this - is it in industrial dairy's interest to keep raw milk from becoming a viable alternative? Not at the moment. The raw milk movement is unorganized and fights many laws and perceptions that are both valid and invalid.

Via Megnut

Technorati Tags: milk, raw+milk, dairy

There are several different ways to produce butter. Yesterday, I could have named two. Today, after reading up on the subject, I can name a few more. My appreciation of Harold McGee grows by the day.

These are types of butter production, rather than a complete list of butter products. That's why I haven't listed Brown butter, or clarified butter. I'll get to these types of butter at a later time.

• Raw Cream Butter - Alas, it is unlikely that you will ever have this kind of butter, especially here in the United States. The reason? It's made from unpasteurized milk. Well, that and it has a shelf life of only ten days. This type of butter is said to taste more of cream and less of the salty fat that we're used to here in the States.
• Sweet Cream Butter - Often called "unsalted butter" here in the States, it's the kind I buy most often (There was has been as much as three pounds in my refrigerator at one time). Good butter is typically white with a slight yellow palor, as well has having a higher fat content. Without the salt added, there's a purer taste of butter.
• Salted Sweet Cream Butter - This is also typically what is found in the grocer's dairy section. This is Sweet Cream butter made from pasteurized cream with salt added. The salt was initially added because it helped fight off bacteria when folks would leave the butter out. But now that we typically keep our butter cold (at least here in America), it's there because we believe it should be there. When I realized that salted butter is to be avoided when baking at home, and that salted butter scorches in the frying pan more readily than unsalted butter, I fuond myself purchasing less and less of the stuff.
• Cultured Cream Butter - This is butter that has had a fermenting agent added, most likely lactic acid. The fermentation adds a more discernable (some would say 'tangy') butter flavor. This is very much a European style of butter that is now gaining popularity over here.
• European-Style Butter - A butter that has a lower moisture percentage and higher butterfat content than the typical sweet-cream butter (which is about 20% water, if I recall correctly). Due to the lower moisture content, it makes this the butter of choice for pastries and sauces. Plugra is the brand most often recognized as "European-Style".
• Whipped Butter - Butter made to be spread. It is aerated with nitrogen gas, giving the butter a more maleable and smoother texture. This type of butter should be avoided for almost all functions except for topping foods and spreading on toast and muffins.
• Beurre Cuisinier, Beurre Pâtissier, Beurre Concentré - These are specialty butters with even less moisture and/or more butterfat. These are also typically unavailable for the common consumer, and are most often found in bakeries and patisseries.

Technorati Tags: Food, Butter

I recieved the following news articles about vodka from no less than three seperate people. In it, the article discusses the European Union members which raw materials should be allowed should be allowed in vodka.

EU member states are currently quarrelling over what raw materials should be allowed, with some countries saying any agricultural produce is acceptable and others arguing that real vodka is made only from grain or potato. (Emphasis is the BBC's)

First, let's be clear here. This isn't about terroir or vodka purity. This is about adding entry restrictions to a billion dollar industry. The Scandinavian and Baltic states would like to keep the industries (and income) they have, while other countries would like to get a piece of that action.

Second, Vodka is a weird beast in that the better it is, the less it actually tastes of anything. In the perfect world, vodka is at least 40% pure C₂H₆O with the rest being pure H₂O. Any flavor discerned in vodka comes from either the mineral elements found in the water and/or the distillation process itself. The amount of vodka "flavor" comes from the raw ingredient is so minimal as to be nearly irrelevant.

Or to put it another way, It's possible that I can take a a bottle of scotch and a bottle of brandy, filter them both to the nth degree, and end up with vodka that is nearly indistinguishable from the other. A simplification to be sure, but I think it get's my point across.

I can appreciate folks trying to protect their business. But to say that vodka can only come from grains or potatoes is akin to saying that sugar can only come from sugar beets or sugar cane.

Technorati Tags: Vodka, European Union (and money)

Belly Dujour goes in search of all of the foods at the Minnesota State Fair that can be found "on a stick".

The one that perplexed me? Spaghetti on a Stick.

We Americans will deep fry anything.

They say (whomever they are) that banana bread is a quick bread. But let's be honest - it's a cake. A tasty, scrumptious cake made in loaf pan and served in slices, but a cake nonetheless.

This is a good baseline recipe from which one could improve upon with additional spices(cinnamon) or other pieces of fruits (raisins).

• 1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs (room temperature)
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Set aside.

In a smaller mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Add to the dry ingedients and mix together. Whisk in the eggs until the batter has the consistency of wet sand.

Add the bananas and walnuts and mix in thoroughly. Pour batter into a greased 8 1/2" by 4 1/2" (or 6 cup) loaf pan.

Place the pan in the oven and bake for 50-55 minutes. Remove from the oven to cool for 10 minutes. Remove from loaf pan and serve.

Serves 8 - 10

A Ghetto (or Poor Man's) Latte is an iced Americano, with no water and half ice which is then takens to the condiments bar where the milk or half and half is then added.

The question put forth to Starbuck's Gossip was "Is it fair/right for a customer to order what we, at my store, call a "ghetto-latte"?

My own take? It doesn't matter as the milk at the condiment bar is not free (it's already figured into the cost of the menued products). Corporate business being what it is, the ...ahem... bean counters here in Seattle have already figured that there's a few folks who will game the system.

As a side question - has anyone actually ever used the vanilla powder found at the condiments bar?

Technorati Tags: Coffee, Starbucks

Welcome back Viv - We've missed you!

Sometimes my complacency with living in the 21st century makes me forget certain facts that were somewhat important back in the day. Butter provides an excellant example of this. I buy butter, I take butter home, I place said butter in the refrigerator for later use.

Back in the time before refrigerators, butter was a product that had to be used sooner than later, as it tends to turn rancid after a set period of time. Because of this, butter, as we know it, never really took off in areas of Mediterranean Europe. This, even though the butter making process had been known since as far back as perhaps 8000 or 9000 BCE. Butter did take off in areas of the world where either...

1. ...had a cooler climate which prohibited butter from become rancid at an advanced rate, or...
2. ...developed a process/technology that removed the water content from butter, essentially removing any risk of spoilage.

This simple difference in climate and technologies helped shaped a great many food cultures we take for granted today. Southern Italian, Greek and Mexican cuisines get their fats from places other than butter. German, Northern French, and a great majority of Indian cuisines (in the form of Ghee) have a great many dishes where the fats come from butter. I love this kind of "cuisine etymology", where the type of food one eats is dependant upon such a minute variable as the ability to store butter for an extended period of time.

Speaking of Ghee (and how many times have you heard THAT segue? None, I bet), when talking about butter in history, ghee has to be mentioned. It was recognized early as a very important component of life in what is now present day India and Pakistan. So much so, that it made it into various religious rituals. Sound familiar? That's because the Catholics ascribed the same level of significance to olive oil. You can say a lot about human nature, but one thing is for certain - We humans love our fats.

Expect more on butter (including a few select recipes) over the next few weeks.

Technorati Tags: Butter

Pizza Hut's Sicilian Lasanga Pizza is neither Sicilian nor Lasagna. Discuss.

(Bonus Reading - The Gurgling Cod - who calls bullshit on Pizza Hut's marketing folks).

via Haverchuck

Technorati Tags: Pizza Hut, Fast Food, Marketing

There's something wrong with hospitals allowing fast food restaurants to set up shop in their buildings. I appreciate the need for the money that these franchises can bring, but it does give contrary messages to what many doctors speak.

One of the plethora of problems surrounding fast food restaurants selling themselves as a 'healthy alternative' is that they get to say the following (presumably with a straight face):

"McDonald's has a long history of leadership in providing wholesome food made from quality ingredients," said Bill Whitman, a McDonald's representative. "We take great pride in providing our customers with a wide variety of menu choices that can fit into any nutritional requirement or dietary needs."

Sorry Mr. Whitman. Fast Food is many things, but healthy isn't one of them. No amount of spin can change that. Setting up shop in hospitals is opportunistic and classless. Nothing more.

Technorati Tags: Fast Food, Hospitals

I received the Parmesan cheese that was offered by the Kraft Intern (as mentioned in this post). I realize that others have reviewed this product, but what they've written bears repeating.

In short, this product pictured to the right should be avoided.

I know, I know. My bias against Kraft is clearly showing, and by all means should be taken into account when you readers out there mull over my words. This is why I am trying my darndest from saying phrases such as "tastes like sawdust" or "Parmesan made with skim milk? What were they thinking?"

As taste can be subjective, I'm going to refrain from voicing my personal feelings towards the quality of the product (*cough* tasteless *cough*), and instead appeal to the more ecological and environmental impact of this grated cheese product.

The selling point of Grate-it-fresh is that a consumer can grate their own cheese, straight out of the package. The idea is that it's the act of grating the cheese that affects the quality of the product. As Adam the Intern wrote in that e-mail, "It's kind of like bringing that authentic Italian restaurant feeling home to the family."

Yeah, I know. I don't quite understand that either. Call me crazy, but what makes an 'authentic Italian restaurant feeling' is high quality food products prepared via simple methods with great care. But hey, that's me.

The travesty of the product comes when you read the package. None of grater is re-usable. Kraft doesn't recommend washing the grater in the dishwasher, nor do they recommend re-using the grater after all the cheese within the product has been used.

What this means is, after a consumer is done with the Kraft product, they end up with...not one, not two, but five separate pieces of plastic (pictured below) which must go into the garbage.

Compare the picture above with the one below.

This piece of parchment paper is all that remains behind after consuming a piece of parmesan cheese from the local Italian Deli I frequent.

This dichotomy is a wonderful representation of what is wrong with the mega-food corporations. Here they have taken a simplistic piece of parmesan cheese, and complicated it by adding an extensive non-reusable, plastic package. Kraft is clearly trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, and in doing so is adding to a well-established one.

Besides, an investment of fourteen bucks on Amazon can take care of your cheese grating needs for the next ten years.

My advice? If you see the product pictured below, walk on by.

Instead, maintain a tradition that has served us well for as long as anyone can remember.

Technorati Tags: Product Review, Kraft, Grate-it-Fresh

Kate and I tend to rekindle a debate every year when Autumn and Winter make their way across the equator and fare at farmers' markets begins to come from the Southern hemisphere. I like the eat local thang when convenient and usually when possible at all. So we go on about the better way of preserving foods during times when they may not be easily grown.

Freezing is one option and has many advantages. It is usually very easy to freeze food with modern, domestic refrigeration equipment and that equipment is somewhat inexpensive to those of us fortunate enough to live in countries like the United States, Italy, Japan, Brazil, or Australia. A little soak in vinegar, hot water, soy or teriyaki sauce, or treatment with ascorbic acid (vitamin C) may be needed, but usually:

	A few spare minutes
	Food
	Optional preparations
	Containment
+	Space in the freezer
	Frozen food

Freezing can be easy. Is it efficient? I mean that in several ways. Mainly, does freezing maintain taste, texture, and is it affordable to our wallets and our possible futures?

I don't like thinking about how many joules are used to keep packages of peas and ears of corn suspended in water ice from their point of freezing until they are cooked in a consumer's kitchen. How much of a drain is it on a town's power grid with such a packaging plant down the street? How much fuel is burned in transit just to keep frozen food cool? What do grocers pay in the way of their electric bills? How does all of that translate to local, state, national, and global economics? I won't pretend to understand how power companies and energy trading works but I wonder.

Leaving those crunchy worries aside, freezing is a change in matter states. Flesh that is frozen has a different structure than flesh sold fresh. Water within frozen flesh expands and then contracts when thawed. Cell walls pop. Most of you likely know the science so I won't insult or bore you with the molecular details. My point is that the texture of frozen foods will often be at least a little, if not noticeably, different. The taste and texture of what I stuff in my maw matter a lot to me.

The time involved in thawing can be another point against freezing food. Texture changes can sometimes be kept to a minimum when food is allowed to warm slowly within a refrigerator or when submersed in cool water. That sort of thing takes at least a few hours planning though. Not all of us are up to that every day of the week during the winter months. There are other options, but pulling chicken from the freezer and thawing it via a microwave not only guarantees that the texture will be off but also usually means portions of the chicken will be almost cooked while others remain cool when the microwave has done its thing. So time and forethought are all but required when thawing frozen food. Those can be precious commodities when everyone in a household works for a living or spends most of their day looking after young ones.

Most freezers are subject to available power. Ever have to sort through a half-thawed freezer a day or two after a power outage to find out what is still frozen and what isn't? It is disgusting work, especially when meats are involved. Yuuuuuuuuuuuk! Throwing uncooked food out is also something that makes me rather sad. Maybe that response is a product of guilt trips like, "Look. There are people homeless and starving just a few blocks away. I scraped to put that on your plate. Eat it." The sentiment remains, regardless.

Canning is the other option Kate and I usually discuss. I tend to like the idea of canned foods better. Cans or jars are easily stacked and can be stored almost anywhere in a home. The packaging is easily recyclable; especially since the recycling of aluminum and steel cans was one of the first widespread, modern home-waste recycling programs.

While cooking with frozen food (thawing, really) takes forethought and time a bit before the end product can be used, canning requires planning and research at the very beginning. Adjustments due to elevation must be made. Acidity must be judged. Different equipment and methods must be used. It can be complicated. But using canned goods to make a dinner when rushed? It couldn't be much easier. Pop a lid or crank a can-opener and I'm on my way in just a few seconds.

Texture of food isn't changed by the expansion and contraction of water crystals when canned. However, canning has a different change which counts against the process. Fruit and vegetable enzymes are suspended easily when frozen but not when canned. Heating the food becomes necessary for that purpose. So various fruits and vegetables can (heh) get fairly mushy in their little jars.

Blanching is the compromise. Squishy blanched and canned food still exists but usually only comes from the very bottom of a jar. Enzymes still do their thing too, though at a reduced rate. The end result is that the shelf life of blanched-then-canned foods isn't nearly so long as foods which are frozen or cooked and then canned.

There are other points to do with home canning and freezing that I haven't included and still others I likely haven't thought of at all. Then there are commercial canned and frozen foods. What local, national, or global companies reliably buy good stock from good people? Which labels do I trust when I'm out of options or time and want a can or frozen package of peas from the corner market?

This is what really sparked the debate again this year and, subsequently, this post. I bought a completely tasteless can of peas and don't want to repeat the experience. I thought of conducting a cute experiment; hypothesis, criteria, the works. My funds are a little too limited for that sort of thing though.

What are your thoughts, please? Do you tend to buy frozen or canned fruits and vegetables? What brands do you like or dislike? Do you freeze or can foods yourself? How do you preserve meats for you and/ or your family?

And the first person to mention a certain canned meat product, the name of which rhymes with lamb, will be taunted profusely. That stuff is nasty.

Sources for this post include Wikipedia, Home Canning dot com, and stuff left in my brain by my nurturing grandmother and several brave and inventive junior middle and high school general science, chemistry, and biology teachers. All rights reserved for making left turns. Spleen not included. Void where prohibited by common sense.

Lefty political magazine The Nation does an all food issue this week.

It's worth checking out.

Have a great labor day!

Michael Ruhlman sent me a note to let us know about a web event that some of you may be interested:

hi kate,

i don't know if it's germane to anything, but i'm speaking at cap and gown university convocation today at 4:30 or 4:40. It's going to be webcast at case.edu/convocation/webcast.html. I'm talking about food and cooking and broader things we might learn from doing so. some of
it comes directly from my blogging experience at megnut (i'd have
written to her but she's traveling). I have no idea if you think that might interest people who visit your site, but i had such good feedback from folks at megnut i just want to send it along fyi. i'm speaking to faculty and students, so it's likely to be humorless and painfully
didactic, but there is.

Keep up the great work on your site.

Michael Ruhlman

If you're a Michael Ruhlman fan, here's your chance to here him speak.

UPDATE: The time listed above would be Eastern Time.

Technorati Tags: Michael Ruhlman, Food Webcast

Today, being International Blog Day and all, is the day where we pimp other blog sites that we feel deserve a larger audience.

From the instructions:

BlogDay posting instructions:

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting

2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending on them on BlogDay 2005

3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a a link to the recommended Blogs

4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and

5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2006 and a link to BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

Here are the blogs I am reading that I think you out there may enjoy -

Medium Large: No other Web comic out there makes me laugh out loud than this one. If you follow comics at all, this one needs to be number one on your list.

Eggbeater: Out of the many food blogs out there, Shuna is the one who continually entertains and educates me.

U.S. Food Policy - I can count on Parke Wilde and his blog to provide me a piece of information on Food Politics that I either hadn't heard of before, or an opinion that I hadn't thought of before.

Megnut - I've promoted her newly minted food site before, with good reason. She's thorough, knowledgable, and also provides daily links worth reading.

By Ken Levine - This is not a food blog, but a blog about the entertainment industry from a writer's perspective. Mr. Levine has written for M*A*S*H and The Simpsons, and played a large part in the success of Cheers. Reading his site is like having DVD commentary on every sitcom you remember on your computer screen. If you like the behind the scenes looks at Hollywood, this is worth your time.

Technorati Tags: BlogDay2006

With all of the talk surrounding good and bad foods at the fast food restaurants, it's important to note why most of these places offer at least two or three items that could be called healthy.

Hint: It's not because they're looking out for their customers health.

Buried deep within this article of Guardian gives the real reason why lip service must be paid to the health conscious.

Burger King can't afford to ignore health-conscious vegetarians, for example, because it only takes one of them - in a family group that might also contain five hungry omnivores - to deprive the chain of six potential customers. "We call it the 'mother segment'," Wansink says. "The kids drive the initial desire to go to the restaurant, and then you have the apple and walnut salad, that mom can eat, so she doesn't have a good reason not to eat there."

Rule number one of business? Get the largest amount of profit from the smallest possible investment. It costs these places very little to put a salad on the menu. If that means that they can get an additional 5 sales on Soft Drinks and french fries per hour per restaurant, then that's what they're going to do.

Technorati Tags: Fast Food, Restaurants, Food Industry

I leave for work at six in the “what-in-god’s-name-am-I-doing-at-this-time-in-the” morning. It’s not a choice I make freely. If I wait any longer than that, my 35 minute commute expands exponentially as the morning drags on.

At the end of my drive, about a mile away from my workplace, sits an unobtrusive plaza, with an unobtrusive donut shop. The shop is so unobtrusive, that it took me several months to even notice it existed, and several more before I thought that it might be in my interest to see what wares they sell.

* * * * * *

Donuts and other related pastries such as apple fritters, bear claws and cruellers are odd beasts. Much like cheese, sausage and a plethora of other examples, the tradition and taste of donuts has been blasphemed by the likes of Hostess, the bakeries of Safeway, Kroger's and the countless other companies who feel the urge to wrap donuts in cellophane and allow them to sit in vending machines for months on end.

Located in a vending machine not 30 steps from my office is a package containing a "cinnamon roll". It has been there since the new vending machine was put in place in late April. I can tell you, without opening this package, how it will taste. The icing, with its solid stark white color, will be overly sweet, designed to cover-up the fact that the pastry portion of the roll will be dense, dry and taste of styrofoam. Each bite taken from the roll will be a chore, with it taking up to 3 or 4 minutes to fully masticate the pastry to the point where I can even get it down my throat. Afterwards, each bite will sit like a stone deep within the recess of my stomach, painfully reminding me for the rest of the day that I had made an unwise eating decision.

I can make this guess on how this pastry will taste because 99% of every donut, maple bar, cinnamon roll, crueller, bear claw, danish or apple fritter made to sit upon a shelf for a period longer than two days tastes this way. A dense, stale donut is a bad donut.

The donut has earned its place in pop culture history. It's iconic. Police are supposed to love them. Homer Simpson eats several a day. In the Route 66 of my imagination, I see one or two donut shops with 30 foot donuts placed above, alerting travelers on where to get their sugar buzz.

I have no evidence to prove this, but I think that this icon has seen better days. I don't see as many donut shops as I used to. Outside of a business meeting or two I don't hear of people eating donuts much anymore. Long ago, I can recall of special Saturday mornings where a dozen or so were brought home, now a donut is something that is purchased singluarly, along side the Caffè Latte.

Ah yes, coffee - the second reason of the donut's downfall. Twenty years ago, if a person wanted a good cup of coffee, the donut shop was seen as the keeper of the bean. If a trucker needed a caffeine fix, the 24-hour Dunkin' Donuts was the prime location.

Then Starbucks entered the equation. Starbucks, whose selection of scones, cakes and yes, even donuts can best be described with the phrase "(Sigh). Well...at least they tried". Here in Seattle, Starbucks provides one or two selections made by the dependable Top Pot doughnuts, where they get equal billing with the "too-dry" scones and the "what-were-they-thinking"? cinnamon sticks. Outside of Seattle? *shrugs* It's not a priority for them - at least not while they're pimping their Banana Coconut Frappuccino® Blended Coffee.

Banana and Coconut? In a coffee?

Heathens.

* * * * * *

I notice the sign above the entrance - "Sunrise Donuts". Clearly here was a shop who knew what was going on with their donuts. Their sign was telling the world when the best time was for picking up their product.

And here was I, at their doorstep at six thirty in the "what-in-god’s-name-am-I-doing-at-this-time-in-the" morning. I am a lucky person at times, because early morning is the best time to get great donuts. The reason? Early morning is when most donuts get made.

Krispy Kreme understands something that no one else seems to be able to grasp. Donuts (and bear claws, apple fritters and maple bars) are best within 30 minutes out of the oil. Their neon lights flashing "FRESH NOW" have clued people in world wide of the proper moment of donut bliss. Glazed or not glazed, a fresh donut from Krispy Kreme is a great donut. Too bad they don't know how to balance their checkbook.

I leave "Sunrise Donuts" with a white bag containing an apple fritter and a donut glazed so fine that I swear I could see my reflection in it. I scurry on towards my workplace and set up a makeshift breakfast nook upon my workdesk. Along with a simple cup of drip coffee (with a bit of cream), I indulge in the fresh pastries. The Apple fritter is first up, and it tears easily into my mouth. The pastry is light and fluffy, and the glaze gives it an almost imperceptible crunch as it sweetens the homemade apple filling. Beneath all of this is the subtle hint of oil, which reminds me that this is a treat and not an everyday indulgence.

While eating the glazed donut, my mind concocts various punishments for the atrocities that Hostess and Little Debbie have foisted upon us. I decide upon having to force their various board of directors watch people enjoy freshly made donuts while all they have is their meager products. Oh, and if they put down their donut, we get to chuck it at them. I believe that'd be proper penance.

Technorati Tags: Food, Donuts, Doughnuts

...aside from the looks of course.

When it comes to birds with clear white meat/dark meat distinctions, they have one thing in common - they're flightless birds. Chickens and turkeys use their wings for balance, quick escapes and not much more. The legs and thighs are used far more often. This difference in muscular activity means that these muscles have evolved differently. Breasts and wings are dominated by fast-contracting muscle tissue. Thighs and drumsticks are predominately slow-contracting muscles.

In recalling Biology 101, muscles require energy in order to operate. Energy for the fast-contracting muscles comes from glycogen, a carbohydrate in the form of glucose. The slow-contracting muscles fuel comes from fat.

This works differently in birds that can fly. When looking breast meat of ducks or geese, they often has a similar fat content as the legs or thighs.

So in short, dark meat is darker than white because it has more fat. This fat is used to supply energy to muscles that are used on a near continual basis.

Technorati Tags: Food, Chicken, , Dark Meat, White Meat

My guess is that Chicken Piccata comes from the Southern regions of Italy. Lemons and meat sounds an awful lot like a Greek tradition, and where did the Greeks have a great amount of influence in Italy? That'd be the southern parts.

This is an easily made dish, and takes nearly no time to set up.

• 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
• 4 Chicken Breasts, manually tenderized (i.e. by smacking it with a mallet until flatten)
• 1 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
• 1/3 onion, diced
• 2/3 cup chicken stock
• 1/3 cup white wine
• Salt and Pepper, to taste
• Juice from one Lemon
• 2 Tablespoons capers, drained
• 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter

Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees F. Place a baking dish of some sort within the oven.

Place a large skillet over medium - medium/high heat. Add the olive oil and butter, allowing them to swirl together.

Lightly coat each chicken breast with flour and place into the heated oil. Cook from 4-5 minutes on each side. Place the cooked chicken fillet in the baking dish in the oven.

Remove all but one tablespoon of any left over oil/fat within the skillet. Add the onions and cook for 2 minutes. Add the chicken stock and white wine and bring to a boil. Add the lemon juice and the capers. Boil the sauce until it's approximately 1/3rd it's initial volume. Remove from heat and immediately add the butter and whisk in.

Serve the chicken breasts and top with the sauce.

Serves 4

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Chicken+Piccata

The Molecular compound for Salt is NaCl.

The compound for table sugar is C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁.

Can anyone tell me what the compound for High Fructose Corn Syrup would be?

Many Thanks!

Ooof. Canada is starting to look like it has a real problem here.

That's the eighth case found in the Great White North.

Now let me ask rhetorical question here - What exactly is the probability that Canada has a higher rate of BSE over the United States?

Technorati Tags: BSE, Mad Cow

Accidental Hedonist will be offline for about half and hour between 22:00 tonight and 8:00 tomorrow, Eastern Time. 'Cause kernel updates are a good thing.

This came in from my ex-coworker Mike, now living it up in St. Louis:

Hey Kate,

Here's a question for you. We're getting a bumper crop of Habaneros so I've been trying various sauce and canning recipes: Peach/raisin, Mango/ginger and Habanero oil.

In the past three days, I've sliced and dice about 30 habbies, washed my hands 10 times and still have a deep warming sensation in my finger tips.

Do you know a good way of neutralizing hot pepper juices?

Mike

The best way to deal with the sting of capsaicin is by using the protein casein, commonly found in various dairy products. Or to put it another way, if you cut habeneros, washing your hands in milk or yogurt (non-flavored, please) should do the trick.

If your skeptical about the bacteria count within said dairy products, wash your hands in a solution of 1quart water mixed with 1 tablespoon of bleach.

If you get capsaicin in your eyes, rinse with a saline solution, or plain water.

And send me some of that Mango/Ginger sauce, will ya?

UPDATE: Or, as Tom has noted in the comments - Wear latex gloves. Although it should be noted that many folks don't have such items laying around their homes.

Technorati Tags: Food Hints, Capsaicin, Habenero Peppers

Some routing equipment used to connect the server hosting this web site will be switched around tonight. There will likely be a short time between 22:00 and 00:00 ET when this site will be down. With luck, the ethernet cable battles will be fun and no ninja IT peeps will be harmed during the process.

I've been saving this post for a bit, wanting to wait until there was a day that seemed appropriate to heave this tidbit of a post into the aether. As Chicago officially bans foie gras today, it seems that now is as good of a time as any.

Chicago seems to be ground zero in the recent food restrictions. Yes, there is their is the foie gras ban. On the other side of the same coin is their recent desire to ban restaurants from selling foods with trans fat. Although the names of the institutions involved may have changed in these debates, rest assured that they both are about the same thing: A government is putting into law what food products can be sold and purchased with the end result being less food choices for consumers.

Of course this is nothing new. As an example, In the name of public health many States ban or restrict the sale of unpasteurized milk. But let me ask a question here that has seemed to have alluded the many people who have sought out the public headlines: If a consumer has all the relevant information surrounding a food product, shouldn't it be up to the individual on whether they purchase (or not purchase) foie gras, french fries or a well made cheese?

Michael Ruhlman had it exactly right when he posted the following on Megnut:

In the end it's not about the foie... It's that it represents another way uninformed people are trying to legislate what I am or am not allowed to eat.

As an adult, I am allowed to make adult decisions, which include the choices of items I do or do not put into my body. To have a governing body make that decision for me is an excessive application of political power by these institutions, be they the Chicago city council, PETA or whomever.

What makes these Chicago perspectives so appalling is that they're not based on science, but on somebody else's moral compass. Although science is given lip service in the trans fat issue, little or no attention is being given to other obesity causes such as excessive sugar, untested synthetic ingredients or even serving size. Imagine the outrage that would occur if Alderman Burke sought to ban or restrict, not just trans fats, but sugars, salts and serving sizes. What makes talk about banning one cause of obesity okay, but talking about all of them, not so much? To put it another way, if you can't ban all of them, why ban any of them?

As silly as the trans fat discussion can be, the foie gras debate is equally reprehensible. PETA went after foie gras for several very specific reasons:

• It's a small industry with little or no way to respond to the PETA's interpretation of the production process
• It's a food often associated with the upper class, allowing the issue of class to be part of the subtext of the debate.
• The imagery of the gavage, shown by itself, is easy to misinterpret if one doesn't know the physiology of birds, nor is able to see the birds before and after feeding.

It was an easy win by a group that had more resources (financial and otherwise) at their disposal than food producers they were up against.

The most dangerous aspect about the foie gras ban is not in the ban itself (which is quite horrible), but in the precedant it sets. Do you think that PETA will stop at foie gras? Do you think that there are other groups out there that have political agendas that would love to see food bans instituted based on nothing more than a sense outrage?

Am I overselling the danger of this a bit? Possibly. But to me, it comes down to the following - Would I rather make decisions for myself, or have others make them for me?

Technorati Tags: Food Politics

The ban of foie gras in Chicago starts today.

Restaurant owners plan a lawsuit.

More Later.

The usually-dependable Ask Yahoo! gives a wrong answer today. When answering the question "What is the origin of the word 'sandwich'?", they give the following tidbit of trivia:

The food item has little to do with the town, but with John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. In fact, the first Earl of Sandwich (Edward Montagu) really wanted to call himself the Earl of Portsmouth, but for some reason, decided on Sandwich instead.

John Montagu didn't shrink from enjoying life. It's said that he was a corrupt, devil-worshiping sex fanatic who enjoyed gambling (he would have liked Vegas). The origin of the snack is attributed to his asking a waiter for meat between two slices of bread so he wouldn't have to put his hand of cards down. Was he lazy or smart? Probably a little of both.

In actuality, meat and/or cheese on bread has been around since ancient times. As pointed out in the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture - "In fact, Montague was not the inventor of the sandwich; rather, during his excursions in the Eastern Mediterranean, he saw filled pita breads and small canapes and sandwiches served by the Greeks and Turks during their mezes, and copied the concept for its obvious conveninece."

So why does the legend remain? Well for one, Montagu made it popular for the dish to be eaten by the upper class. From the gentleman's clubs the finger food migrated into genteel society events such as a supper food for late night balls or finger food at low tea.

Plus, the legend has a bit of rebellous romance to it, what with Montagu being so involved with gambling, that he couldn't be bothered to worry about a cooked meal.

But, officially? Montagu did NOT invent the sandwich. He merely popularized it amongst the upper crust - so to speak.

Technorati Tags: Food, , Food History, Sandwich

Fernet-Branca is one of those liqueurs that will surprise you at least once. For some people, it surprises them twice.

The first surprise is the initial taste. As mentioned in this San Francisco Weekly article, "If you can imagine getting punched squarely in the nose while sucking on a mentholated cough drop, you'll have an idea of Fernet-Branca's indelicate first impression".

Or, as Tara said, "change 'nose' to 'throat', and they've got it right".

It's a unique spirit, to be sure. An Italian liqueur, made in Milano since 1845. The Italians, when they immigrated across the world, they took this drink with them. It's why the drink is popular in San Francisco, Argentina and many other places throughout the world.

Much like many cult drinks, it has a vaunted secret recipe. It is reputed to have myrrh, rhubarb, chamomile, cardamom, aloe, and saffron, and a base of grape must. It is rumored to have codeine, mushrooms, fermented beets, coca leaf, gentian, rhubarb, wormwood, zedoary, cinchona, bay leaves, absinthe, orange peel, calumba, echinacea, quinine, ginseng, St. John's wort, sage, and peppermint oil. Most of these are likely urban legend, there may be some truth in one or two of the aforementioned.

With the legends surrounding the liqueur, it's common for some folks to use Fernet-Branca as both a spirit and a medicine.

My own opinion is that Fernet-Branca is that it's a very complex and yet also a harsh drink. It has a very strong menthol aroma and taste. There is also a very distinct licorice flavor. Beyond that, it's hard to pick out any other distinct ingredient.

It's also a difficult drink to mix if you don't know what you're doing. Fernet-Branca is a bitter drink, which means that sweet beverages are probably the first place you should look for mixers. The best way I've found to drink this alcohol is to mix it with a cola. This also happens to be the most popular way to enjoy this spirit in Argentina. I've also had success with mixing it with ginger ale and a bit of grenadine.

All in all, it's a good drink if you know how to handle it. It's what I consider to be the antithesis of vodka.

Technorati Tags: Liquor, Fernet Branca, Tasting Notes

But of course we've known that for some time now, right?

Finally, some folks in the food industry are starting to take notice and take action.

PCC Natural Markets will stop carrying milk products from the country's largest organic dairy company, Horizon Organic, next month because it doubts that the products meet organic standards.

PCC's biggest concern is that some cows are not receiving enough pasture time, "but there are a lot of other things that have been alleged that need to be investigated officially," said Goldie Caughlan, PCC's nutrition-education manager and a former member of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's organic standards board.

PCC is a Food Co-op here in the Seattle area. Their sales method is more akin to that of a supermarket. As far as reputations go, theirs is very well-respected. So when they say "Horizon isn't what we want", others in the industry will likely take notice.

Good for them, I say. Playing fast and loose with Organic Standards goes against the initial ideals that the organic movement was founded upon. To call out Horizon Dairy on their bullshit is exactly what is needed.

It's also the one of the first shots across the bow of the industrial organic companies from those who seek to hold to the movements initial ideals, at least in the financial sense. Yes, some people have talked a good game, but the only way to hold industrial organic accountable is in the one place where it counts -- their bottom line.

However, I would not be surprised if Horizon and their associated dairies retaliated in some way, probably legal. There's going to be a battle for the soul of the Organic Movement. And I think this was only the first out of many future skirmishes.

As you can tell from the picture, the previously requested recipe for Tuna Noodle Casserole (referred to as 'TNC' from here on out) was completed and eaten in all of it's glory. Here are some of the thoughts I had:

1. Cream of Mushroom Soup is a losing proposition. There's a better way to get a creamy texture without resorting to the Campbells soup travesty.
2. When it comes to TNC, I am a snob. As I was making the dish, I kept thinking that I was lowering my food standards. This is kind of unfair in my opinion, as I believe that there is a good recipe in here, hiding somewhere amongst the crushed potato chips and frozen peas.
3. No matter how you dress it up, if you use canned tuna in the recipe, it's gonna taste kinda less than you'd expect.

Overall, it was well received by the Birthday Girl. the TNC didn't look as she remembered it, but tasted almost exactly as she recalled.

Many thanks to Chris, Jennifer, Lisa, Stacey, Zazzy, Lorrie, Rebecca, Steve, Jessica, Yana, Maureen, Diana and
Sally. They all offered some hint or insight that I used. I didn't use one specific recipe, but took bits I liked from everyone. The results were pleasantly mediocre, which in my snobbish opinion, is as good as a TNC can get.
Noodles

• 16 oz. wide egg noodle
• 3 cans Tuna

Sauce

• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 8 oz. fresh button mushrooms, sliced
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 4 Tablespoons All Purpose Flour
• 20 0z. Whole Milk
• 6 oz Montery Jack cheese, shredded
• 2 cups frozen peas

Topping

• 4oz. Parmesan Cheese, shredded
• 8 oz. Potato Chips, slightly crushed

Pre heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cook Noodles as per instructions on package. When done, drain, and rinse with cold water. Place in a glass bowl and combine with the tuna fish. Pour noodles in a 3-Quart glass baking dish and set aside in the refrigerator.

Place a medium skillet over medium heat on the stove top. Place in the olive oil and onions, and cooking until the onions juuust start to look translucent. It's at this point that you should ad the mushrooms. Cook the onions and mushrooms until the onions start to turn brown or the mushrooms lose their "raw" look, whichever comes later. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a sauce pan, melt the butter over medium/medium-low heat. Whisk in the flour, one tablespoon at a time, until you have a roux. Whisk in the milk, 4 oz. at a time, ensuring the milk is fully incorporated before adding any more. This will create a thinner Béchamel Sauce (If you want an even thinner sauce, add more milk, 2 oz. at a time). To the sauce, add the shredded Jack cheese and allow to melt thoroughly. To this cheese sauce add the frozen peas and onions/mushroom mixture.

Pour cheese sauce over noodles in the baking dish. Stir in, if you wish, or simply allow to sauce to seep into the noodles. Top with the Parmesan cheese and crushed potato chips.

Cover baking dish with Aluminum foil. Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for 10-15 more minutes. Remove the casserole from the oven and allow to set for 10 minutes more.

Serves 8-12

Technorati Tags: Food, Recipes, Tuna Noodle Casserole

The Site has been given a new look and I'd be interested in hearing your opinions upon it. I'd like to focus on a comparison against the prior look of the site, but other criticisms will be welcome. Not all of it is complete, and there will be little updates over the course of the next week or so.

And yes, the captcha is coming back, just as soon as I can either figure out how to add it myself, or come up with a big enough bribe to get Tara to implement it. I hear that Pineapple Date bars work well. ;-)

Over at eGullet, there’s a lively discussion regarding profanity in food writing. While the forum thread was started as a question regarding the inclusion of the word “fucking” in a quote from a chef, it evolved into a larger discussion on the place of colorful language in the food world.

I see a larger discussion here that has yet to be touched upon; the elevation of food to a near poetic status and how it sometime dissuades views upon what I perceive to be the reality of food. We see this elevation everywhere, from magazines and books to even movies and blogs.

(Notably absent from the above list of media is television, which for some reason has a difficult time communicating the sublime nature of food. In television, the food technicians are exalted; the food rarely so).

There is absolutely nothing wrong with exalting food in this manner. I love to (ahem) consume these kinds of food media, and judging by the commercial and critical responses to the above, many of you do as well. What all of these types of media do well is apply a certain level of aesthetic to food, elevating it from a simple consumable product to one that either:

1. …is capable to delivering allegories or metaphors to the more romantic notions that are within many of us. (As an example, think of the stories out there that use the Thanksgiving dinners as a treatise on how swell family life can be).
2. …is capable of delivering what my friend Gwyn calls “brief instances of pure being, experience erasing thought and bringing (one) to a point of stillness”.

When done well, these types of art oftentimes exceed the pleasures of the foods they describe.

However, to use this perspective as the only frame of reference in dealing with food is completely missing out on several hard-core realities of the food world. Food is a dirty business. Animals die for it. Millions of people call the food industry their principle means of support. It is less an exaltation than a simple fact of life. For many, food is simply that…food. In the course of dealing with food people for almost three years now, I find that it’s clear that many people either forget or choose to ignore this fact. Oftentimes these are the same folks who don’t wish to be reminded that meat comes with a face attached to it.

And yes, at times, food is a vulgar business. Fungus, molds and decomposition are used in various aspects of its production. There are many recipes where blood is a critical ingredient.

Then there’s the people involved in food production. From the fishermen who are “full of testosterone, full of yourselves, straight off the "high seas," with all the bravado and machismo of Green Berets “ to the kitchen cooks that Anthony Bourdain likens to “pirates” and everyone in between and elsewhere, these are folks that are rarely seen in the cover stories of Bon Appetit.

Food isn’t just about the tribe of humanity, or that ever-nebulous sense of family. It’s also about death and rot. It’s as much about the guy who steals a bottle of Jack Daniels from the back stockroom as it is about Emeril. It’s about politics and romance, good steak and bad beer. It’s about caviar and hot dogs. Anyone who views food through the rose-colored glasses of “Good Housekeeping” or the poetry of MFK Fisher is missing out on a much larger and colorful world.

A world, by the way, that happens to include a fair amount of vulgarity.

Technorati Tags: Food,