It Is To Be Savored, Appreciated, And Enjoyed
Eating meat is not WRONG, but it is to be savored, appreciated, and enjoyed. Something died to make that steak appear on your plate, so having the grace to educate yourself about the animal itself is a gesture worthy of effort.
Thanksgiving Dinner Is One Of My Favorite Thing To Make
I enjoy cooking. I'm no master chef, but I'm think I'm pretty good at the small list of things I can make. One of my favorite things to make is Thanksgiving dinner.
Assuming people aren't just being nice, I've received good reviews on my turkeys. There's no secret to how I make it, I follow Alton Brown's recipe pretty much verbatim.
Thanksgiving isn't thanksgiving without mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes are my favorite food. I've spent years trying to perfect the recipes and a few years ago I found something that allows me to cheat. The Steam'N Mash by Westinghouse
Finally, I have started making home made turkey gray in the last few years. My favorite so far is generically called Turkey Neck Gravy. There's many variations of it, this website seems to have the basic recipe that I use. I only use the neck, the heart and gizzard go in the trash. Animal organs shouldn't be eaten as far as I'm concerned. I also like to add mushroom, then again I like to add mushrooms to everything.
I won't be making the main thanksgiving dinner this year. I will be making 15lbs turkey on Saturday.
The Gastrovac: Best Named Cooking Appliance Ever
From Popular Science Magazine:
Think of the Gastrovac as a crock pot, vacuum pump and heating plate in one. Suspend your food—pear slices, for example—in a basket above a flavorful liquid, such as wine broth. Seal the machine, and hit a button to turn the cooking chamber into a vacuum. The low-pressure environment pulls all the air out of the food, compressing it like a squished sponge. Near the end of their cooking, drop the pears into the broth and restore the pressure. The liquid rushes into the cells, infusing the fruit with an intense wine flavor. And no oxygen means no oxidation—so instead of turning brown, fruit comes out as brightly colored as it was when first sliced.
Charcoal Grilling
I love to grill, but not with the so called briquettes. Only solid hard wood lumps.
The more familiar pillow-shaped briquettes are made from charred granules that typically come from sawdust. These are mixed with anthracite coal, cornstarch, and borax. Nitrate is added to help the charcoal ignite more quickly, and lime to help it assume a white, ashy appearance that lets grillers know the coals are hot enough to begin cooking over.
Borax, by the way, is banned as a food additive in the US and makes a good fire retardant.
Extremely Low Calorie Diets Probably Not Worth It
A study by UCLA shows that restricting calories may increase your life span, but not significantly. You would may live somewhat more, but you had to suffer by not eating. Is it worth it?
Severely restricting calories over decades may add a few years to a human life span, but will not enable humans to live to 125 and beyond, as many have speculated, evolutionary biologists report. "Our message is that suffering years of misery to remain super-skinny is not going to have a big payoff in terms of a longer life," said UCLA evolutionary biologist John Phelan. "I once heard someone say caloric restriction may not make you live forever, but it sure would seem like it. Try to maintain a healthy body weight, but don't deprive yourself of all pleasure. Moderation appears to be a more sensible solution.
Low Carb Just A Fad
The low carb diet is officially a fad.
Atkins Nutritionals Inc., founded by the late diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins, filed for bankruptcy protection in New York as consumer interest in low-carbohydrate foods faded.
``The low-carb fad has gone,'' said Michael Steib, a consumer-goods analyst for Morgan Stanley in London. ``Dieting habits are very short-lived. It came very quickly and disappeared very quickly.'
The concept of low carb isn't a bad one, but dieting is. You must make a lifestyle change if you want to be healthy including exercise. Incorporating concepts of the low carb diet isn't a bad idea but you certainly couldn't live that way since you would be missing a lot of nutrition and other things the body needs.
Soda Main Source Of Calories In American Diet
From Science Blog, americans are drinking too much soda. The Soda companies will surely deny that there product contains any calories.
Tufts researchers recently reported that while the leading source of calories in the average American diet used to be from white bread, that may have changed. Now, according to preliminary research conducted by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Americans are drinking these calories instead. The research was presented in abstract form at the Experimental Biology Conference in April of this year and a more comprehensive paper is being developed.
Only The Fish You Should Eat
If you like fish you should be aware that not all fish are good to eat. Well, they may be tasty but they might also be over fished. For example, only wild Alaskan Salmon should be considered safe to eat.
Alaska salmon populations are healthy and abundant and their spawning streams are pristine and unobstructed by dams. Wild Alaskan salmon are caught using purse seines, gillnets and hook-and-line gear, all of which have minimal impact on seafloor habitats or the surrounding marine ecosystem. The Alaska salmon fishery is also well managed.
Farmed Salmon is bad.
The U.S. market is flooded with inexpensive farmed salmon from Chile, Canada and Norway. Salmon is also farmed to a limited extent in the United States. Raising salmon in net pens releases fish waste into the water and can spread disease and parasites to wild salmon. Also, domesticated Atlantic salmon that escape from farms in the Atlantic can breed with and compete for precious natural resources with endangered native wild salmon. These environmental concerns have led some sectors of the aquaculture industry to improve farming practices. Progress has been made at reducing the amount of waste generated per pound of fish, decreasing the use of antibiotics and pesticides, and building stronger pens to prevent escapes. Despite these improvements, the environmental impact of salmon farming is still increasing, because production of farmed salmon has risen more than 400% in the last decade. In the market, there is currently no way to tell which salmon are coming from more-sustainable farms.
Some farmed fish are good though, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has a extensive Seafood Watch website on what fish is good to buy and what fish are not.
Hot Dog, Bun Makers Sign Peace Treaty.
It's good to see no more blood will be shed.
Hot dogs and hot-dog buns are sold in different quantities, but that is going to change beginning today.
Vienna Beef and Alpha Baking Co., which manufactures S. Rosen's buns, promise to sell the buns and hot dogs in the same numbers.
According to a news release, the companies will sign a formal "piece" treaty, vowing to package hot dogs and buns in quantities of eight.
Hamdog, Makes Me Sick Just Looking At It
That's a hot dog wrapped by a beef patty that's deep fried, covered with chili, cheese and onions and served on a hoagie bun, topped with a fried egg and two fistfuls of fries.
I'm not putting the picture on my site, but looking at it reminds me of the equally wonderful stuff I've been coughing up for the last week.
Remote Ordering Fast Food
No, "Remote Ordering" is not where you call in your order ahead of time. You think calling tech support to get someone in India you can barely understand is bad, wait till it comes to the fast food squawk box.
Remote order-taking at drive-throughs, the latest trend in restaurant technology, is part of a broader effort by the industry to migrate some communication duties from in-store workers to off-site proxies. McDonald's and Pizza Hut are testing it, and Chuck E. Cheese's franchises use a central call center to book reservations and parties.
They don't say anything about outsourcing order taking to India right now, but you know it's the next step. I don't visit the local Sonic as much as I use too, but when I do I can't hear them half the time. This is going to make it better?
Kind of Ruins My Appetite
Dam, I wish In-N-Out would come to New Mexico. I'm getting hungry.
The Olive Garden
A recent visit to Olive Garden by a "Italian food expert" Marcella Hazan resulted in that same expert to proclaim, "the food that they have tasted bears little resemblance to authentic Italian cuisine." I know I know, it's hard to believe. Marchella didn't knock Olive Garden too much for bad food, just that it didn't really resemble what comes from Italy.
There's one right down the street from work and we go there often. In fact the Zuppa Toscana is one of my favorites. I'm not bothered by it but I would like to compare to real Italian food.
Soda is bad for you. DUH!
Soda contains a lot of sugar that does all kinds of bad things to your body, not just the teeth. Keep in mind that Soda was originally a treat. You went to the soda shop and had it occasionally. Now big corporations have made it like a staple so they can make tons of profit. So go have some water, you can get it bottled and still make sure they make lots of money.
What Took Him So Long?
Well DUH! I respect this guy but I cannot believe it he has just now figured it out. Hopefully he uses his new found knowledge and incorporates it into his show. I came to this realization about 2 years ago and about a year ago I started to reduce my intake of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated fats. The results: over 25lbs of weight loss without doing anything else. I haven't been able to completely eliminate them but the increased amounts of fiber and heathy foods should be enough to flush out the crap, so to speak.
I'm still not the weight I was when I was 18, that would take another 25lbs. What I really need to do is, as Alton did, work out. I was doing that quite a bit about 5 years ago with good results but I didn't change my diet. Today I'm just not motivated. It's getting more and more a priority, maybe I need to make this a goal for this year.
For you dear reader I implore you. Next time you buy something at the grocery store that's in a convenient factory made package. Look closely at the ingredients. If you don't know what they are should you be putting them in your body or your families body? It's doing more bad than good.
Thanksgiving
The main dish, the bird, was made using the Alton Brown "Good Eats" method. It involves brining the turkey the night before. To prepare, I made a test turkey a few weeks before the big day. It was a small 10 pound turkey and the experiment proved that it was the way to go. The boys ate it like it was going out of style.
The next new thing was gravy. I had always wanted to make homemade gravy. Most recipes call for using the internal organs, but I find that to be gross. Considering that things like the liver are waste creation factories. I did however find a good one using the neck bone. Normally I would use the Alton Brown recipe but it seemed a bit complicated for the first try as it requires two recipes. I thought I had the "Gravy Confidential" episode on my Tivo, but looks like it mislabeled it. None the less, the results were delicious. Another hit.
I had wanted to make some mashed cauliflower but went with traditional mashed potatoes instead. Mashed cauliflower tastes almost like mashed potatoes but without the carbs and more fiber.
Nothing else real fancy besides that. We had stuffing, pumpkin pie, the normal stuff.
The Meatrix
It's certainly a entertaining animation but I think it's a bit exaggerated. I know there are farms like this and they do the polluting that they do but I don't thinks quite as bad as they suggest. It is possible to buy eco friendly, animal friendly produce and meet. If your willing to pay some extra cash for it. Still I would like to see evil agro-businesses go away.
Hollywood BS
[Update:] My girlfriend called the Weight Watchers national phone number to complain. She left a message. They actually called her back, told her this was a rumor started on a message board and that Weight Watchers has not made any offers .
Yikes! Whats in Your Food?
I found this short but interesting article on what is allowed in your food.
"For example, canned apricots are allowed an average of two percent "insect damage" or "infection by insects." Ground cinnamon may contain an average of 400 or more "insect fragments" per 50 grams."
Worlds Longest French Fry
Yes, they sell everything on Ebay. Including the worlds longest french fry ."This amazing fry is registered as a possible record breaker with the Guiness Book of World Records." I find that hard to believe...
No I don't want to eat it.
[Update:] The orginal person who sold the french fry tells me he got over $200 US for this thing. Here's a link to archive of the auction.
Also by popular demand here is a photo.
