Grading "Good For You" Desserts

Beyond the category of "desserts that aren't too bad for you," there's a whole category of "desserts that are good for you, or which are comprised of essentially nothing."

Fat-Free Yogurt: C+
Good For You Because
  • Contains, you know, the cultures. Those are good for you. Probiotics and regularity and all.
  • Also contains protein (6g in a 6 ounce cup of Lucerne light yogurt) and calcium (30% RDA, ditto).


Pros

  • Comes in a startling variety of flavors, including several "dessert-y" flavors like Key Lime Pie and Boston Cream Pie.
  • Relatively affordable. My grocery store always has one brand on sale 10 for $5 or something.


Cons

  • Best eaten at home. Requires refrigeration. And everyone who works in an office knows that if you put yogurt in the break room fridge, someone else will eat it. (Don't get me started on GoGurt. That stuff is disgusting and should be banned.)
  • Most varieties aren't suitable for the lactose-intolerant.
  • Creates a lot of plastic waste, which isn't recyclable in many communities.
  • Worst of all, most of the more interesting flavors also taste very chemical-y.


Fresh Fruit: B-
Good For You Because

  • Virtually no one is eating their recommended 5 daily servings of fruit. Fresh fruit contains fiber, vitamins, and, like, sunshine and stuff.


Pros

  • Many fruits travel well in a packed lunch. Does not require refrigeration.
  • Preposterously cheap; in my part of the world, bananas are about 50 cents per pound. Oranges and apples are around $2/lb.
  • Unlike most other snacks, the remains are fully compostable.
  • Is one of the few "good for you" desserts which contains actual sugars, instead of strange and non-tasty sugar analogues like Splenda or Equal.


Cons

  • How sad is it to think "Oh, I would like a dessert! Hello, banana!"
  • Can be an eating hazard in an office environment: oranges make your hands sticky, banana peels have to be thrown away in the bathroom or something to keep from stinking up the place, and apple cores invite fruit flies.
  • Perishable.


Sugar-Free Jell-O: D-
Good For You Because

  • Gelatin contains a surprising amount of nutrition, relatively speaking. It has protein, lysine, and other amino acids. It supposedly strengthens hair and nails, but I'm skeptical of those claims. Also, scientific studies conducted by Knox Gelatin proved that Knox Gelatin is good for your joints. (More skepticism, please!)


Pros

  • Kids love Jell-O. I doubt kids love sugar-free Jell-O as much as the regular stuff, but hey, it's worth a shot.
  • Pretty colors.
  • Super cheap. Costs about $2/box normally, but is almost always on sale somewhere for 50 cents a box or even less.


Cons

  • Once again we have that terrible chemical-y fake fruity taste that comes from artificial colors, artificial flavors, and artificial mock sweetener.
  • Personally I'm not a big fan of the texture.
  • Takes some prep work - more than a cup of yogurt, anyway. And you have to wait a while for it to set, which can seem like years when you really have a sweet craving.
  • Only comes in fruit flavors. Lots of them, don't get me wrong, but there isn't (I don't think) a chocolate Jell-O. Yet.

Photo credit: Flickr/passiveaggressivenotes

My First Frittata: It Tasted Better than It Looked

See My First Frittata for Yourself

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Even though I like eggs, I’ve never made an omelette before because I have a deep-seated and slightly irrational fear of destroying the beauty of the omelette with a poor egg flip. I’ve seen it happen all too often to other cooks, so haven’t been brave enough to attempt an omelette, which has a 4.3 level of difficulty with 6 being the highest. Since frittatas are baked in the oven and have a 1.8 level of difficulty, I knew my poor spatula skills wouldn’t even come into play with a frittata.

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I picked a frittata recipe at random and largely ignored most of the ingredients in the recipe and just followed the simple steps; the side bar in the cookbook had a variety of ingredient recommendations for frittatas. I used pretty much everything I had in the fridge and then some: red potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, asparagus, Parmesan cheese, and smoked salmon.

 

I sautéed everything but the cheese and eggs together in olive oil for approximately eight and a half minutes, then I whisked the eggs, and then cooked the eggs on the stove in a cast iron skillet for a little less than seven minutes (until the eggs were soft, but still wet). I poured the potato-salmon-veggie mixture on the eggs and put the whole cast iron skillet in the oven and relaxed for the next twelve minutes.

 

The frittata was good. El Chef even complimented me on my frittata, so I know it was good. I can’t really brag too much though; I get the feeling that frittatas are next to impossible to screw up even for the most challenged of cooks.

 

 The only concern I have about my frittata is that the toppings remained on top: is that normal?

 

I don’t really have any special frittata tips to offer yet. I was extremely generous with my use of olive oil; I’m not sure if that affected the end result at all, but I do have a sneaking suspicion it helped soften  the red potatoes. I also diced everything into very small pieces, based on the advice of El Chef who is of the firm opinion that small-sized square pieces of vegetables taste much better than large square pieces or triangle pieces of vegetables. Again, this could just be another one of El Chef’s personal biases (like his preference for small-breasted chickens), so you don’t have to take the recommendations too seriously.

 

What other frittata tips do you have for me?

Bloke Robbing Babies To Make A Buck?!

I saw this item on the Internet and my reaction was: WHAT?

Item from the Associated Press -- "UK company sells human breast milk ice cream. -- Gross or tasty? A London company is offering an unusual dessert - ice cream made with human breast milk."

A restaurant in London's Covent Garden is serving ice cream,made from breast milk!

My good lord! Now what? Denying little infants their mums' milk, so that some selfish guy, taking milk from babies, can make a dollar? Or in the case of this UK bloke, a quid? What is the world coming too?

Big spoiled babies hurried to the trendy, posh London ice cream parlor called The Icecreamists and gobbled up all of the so-called "Baby Gaga" ice cream. The shop sold out as soon as the product was launched, today, Friday.

The milk is acquired from women who are paid to donate their breast milk. The company says the milk is screened in line with blood donor requirements, then is "pasteurized and churned together with vanilla pods and lemon zest."

The baby milk stealer behind the project, the owner of the company making the breast milk, Matt O'Connor, told the press that the product is "organic, free-range and totally natural." And that "it's good enough for our kids, good enough for our ice cream."

A dish of this ice cream comes in a martini glass (that shows / tells the reader how small the portion is) and it sells for $22.50 each (14 British pounds!) This dude has a bigger scam than the one Starbucks has with over-priced coffee.

The women earn $24 (or 15 British pounds) for every 10 ounces donated. Well, maybe a lot of little British babies will be going on bottle milk, so that big babies, with money to throw around, can have their new freak ice cream treat.

Google's New Recipe Search

Finding recipes more efficiently

Google has created a new set of filters, designed to help people find and even modify recipes. They're calling the suite of search filters Google Recipe View. Here's how it works:

 

  1. Perform a Google search related to a recipe. (If you're willing to live dangerously, I suggest searching for chocolate sea-salt caramels. )
  2. Once you have the results, look at the sidebar on the far left of Google's result page; there's a new Recipe View filter that will filter out quite successfully the non-recipe search results.
  3. You can then filter by calories, or ingredients. For instance, if you've chosen to live dangerously, you'll see listed on the side bar the following ingredients: corn syrup, honey, vanilla extract, butter, sugar, with Yes or No check boxes beside each; checking a box filters the search results immediately.
  4. Other search filters include filtering by calories, or by cooking time. If you click the More Search Options link on the left, you can filter recipes based on when they were posted, and various other criteria.
  5. You can even have Google modify the ingredient amounts of the recipe to accomodate a greater or a reduced number of servings, with some recipes.

You can read more about Google's new Recipe View here. There's a complete description of how Google's new metadata works, for people who post their own recipes and would like to support these new features.

These new filter tools are not just fun; they make recipe searching—and meal plaining more efficient.

Image Credit: Google

Confessions from a former Taco Bell Employee

Taco Bell's Mystery Meat

Around the same time the news about the Taco Bell mystery meat lawsuit came out, I had a chance to reminisce with a former Taco Bell co-worker of mine about our days in polyester.

 

I secretly wish I could be a Taco Bell whistle blower, but unfortunately I can’t even give you an estimate about the actual percentage of beef in Taco Bell’s beef.  When I first started working at Taco Bell, we used actual beef that came in ten-pound tubes and was cooked with a rake-like device over a gas burner. Whoever was cooking the beef had to add the “special seasonings” at the end—cooking the meat wasn’t nearly as bad as cooking the beans because of the splashes from scalding-hot beans which didn’t feel or look so nice on our stylish polyester uniforms—and had to make sure the beef was cooked to the right temperature.

 

When I came back to work at Taco Bell on a short break from college, the company had graduated from using “real” beef and beans to dehydrated beef and beans, which was quite a difference. Just add water and POOF, there was meat or beans.  This all happened in the back, so none of the customers knew anything about it and for whatever reason, most of the employees at the Taco Bell I worked at didn’t spread too many rumors about our place of work even though we were kind of scared by the idea of dehydrated meat.

 

We maintained our silence about the switch.

 

 

Not so coincidentally, the big change to dehydrated beef and beans coincided with Taco Bell’s “special menu” starting with incredibly cheap tacos at 59 cents. The cheaper price for the tacos definitely reflected in a loss of quality in the meat, but we got busier than ever.

 

 

When I worked at Taco Bell, there were more things for the customer to worry about than just the poor ingredients. The Taco Bell I worked at didn’t seem all that particular about its hiring practices-- a common theme at many fast food restaurants. It seemed like anyone over the age of twenty was promoted to a managerial position based on their lack of acne alone.

 

When customers were rude enough to come in late at night, a few employees would make “special burrito supremes” for them. The special burrito supremes contained all of the required ingredients, but the ingredients weren’t spread out correctly. In the first bite, the customer would taste all onions; the second bite, all dehydrated beef; and the next bite, tomatoes and so on down the burrito, all the way to the last bite. Since the late-night managers weren’t necessarily all that loyal to the company, the employees always got away with it.

 

I don’t remember any specific instances of anyone spitting in a burrito, but it could definitely happen.

What is the Oscar Statuette actually made of?

It seems to be one of those questions that just lingers with time - "what is the Oscar statuette / trophy / Academy Award of Merit actually made of?", and the answer might surprise you... but it probably won't. 

The little Oscar Statues that are given annually to sobbing celebrities are actually made of metal mixture called Britannium - which consists of approximately 93% tin, 5% antimony, and 2% copper. This metal mixture is molded into the familiar forms and is then plated in 24 karat gold. Mystery solved!

In case you are still a little curious, not just any company can make these fancy awards. Only one company is in charge of all of them, and has been since the early 1980's - R.S. Owens & Company of Chicago, IL.

Do you ever feel, you know, not so fresh?

I remember watching these commercials when I was a girl, but unlike in the commercial my mother wasn't as sweet and forth-coming in talking about her lady bits, or lady bits products. So when I asked my mother what a "douche" was, she responded "It's something married ladies use." And that was it. She had the same answer when I asked her about tampons. I'm glad I don't have to answer such embarrassing questions for my daughter since these products are pretty much obsolete and we all know how bad douches can be for the delicate insides of our lady-flower. That doesn't stop some from telling women what their pussies should look like and smell like, but it's nice to see that this douching business is passe.

Do You Douche? A Short Film from Nerve Media on Vimeo.

TV Food Pr0n: Avec Eric

Anyone can cook

I have to confess that while I'm familiar with Le Bernardin, I didn't know until a few months ago that Eric Ripert was a partner and the executive chef. My introduction to Ripert's career and cuisine was via reading about Tony Bourdain's meeting with Ripert shortly after Bourdain published his reveal-the-dark-underbelly of the culinary trades book Kitchen Confidential; Ripert was courteous and kind then, and, honestly, it seems to be his modus operandi. Ripert is very much of the Anyone can Cook School; I suspect Julia Child would have (and perhaps did) get along famously with Ripert.

Avec Eric is Ripert's cooking and food show (and a cookbook as well). Now in the second year on PBS (after winning an Emmy for the first year) each episode is built around a theme, which may be a cuisine or an ingredient or something else; we see the ingredients in their original, often still-living form, and then we see Eric use them in his cooking. There are several related segments that appear in many of the episodes. All the episode are available via streaming on Hulu and linked on the show's Avec Eric Web site episode guide for season 1 and season 2. All the episodes emphasize good food, fresh sustainable ingredients, and simple reproducible techniques in the kitchen that don't require exotic apparatus.

As part of every dish Ripert makes on the show, he carefully explains why he is doing something a particular way, even something as simple as sprinkling the salt a foot or so above the dish, so that gravity forces the salt to spread evenly. These are matters of technique, and they are explained so very clearly that his procedures are simple to follow even if you are fairly new to cooking. On of the regular segments featured on the Ave Eric Web site is Get Toasted, about cooking "real food" using a (admittedly high-end Cuisinart) toaster oven.

In Episode 6 of the first season, Ripert prepared his grandmother's Roasted Chicken with Zaatar Stuffing and Romaine Salad with Garlic Vinaigrette; you can watch the video and follow the recipe, here. Alternatively, for those with a toaster oven, Ripert shows you how to prepare Herb Roasted Chicken Tenders. One might quite respectably pair the chicken with Caramelized Mangos with Rum (and vanilla ice cream). In addition to the videos, all the recipes are designed with a convenient link to print a properly formatted version.

Image credit: Avec Eric

February is Exotic Veggies Month

February is Exotic Vegetables Month, a perfect time for us all to give a new veggie a whirl. It’s hard to do this in my household sometimes, as both my husband and my aunt only like the basic Midwestern meat and potatoes type meals, with the occasional corn or green beans thrown in. My daughter and I, however, will generally try anything once (save for cruel foods, like foie gras or dancing fish), and while I thought I was well-seasoned on my love of foods like eggplant, zucchini, and squash, I’ve seen some incredibly crazy stuff on the television show Chopped on Food Network that I’ve never even heard of, let alone tried.

So far, the only veggies I don’t care for are hot peppers (sweet ones rock my world, though), onions (though I can dig a few thin, tiny scallions), and strangely enough, tomatoes. People gawk over how I love tomato soup, ketchup, and marinara, but I can’t stand the fruits themselves. It’s all about texture, I always say, and it often is. So I’m thinking that whatever I try, the odds are that I will enjoy it. Below are some lesser-known veggies (at least, in my area) that I think I’d like to try. Are you familiar with any of them? If so, what’s your opinion of them? And do you have any other exotic veggies to suggest?

Artichoke: Okay, admittedly I’ve had artichoke/spinach dip and liked it, but I’ve never had the vegetables by themselves.

Rutabaga: This thing is supposed to taste a bit like cabbage, another vegetable that I’m not all that fond of (unless it’s raw), so I’m not sure if I’ll like it or not. That said, it’s such a fun word—it always makes me think of another funny word, Winnebago, which sounds so similar—that I’ve got to give it a shot.

Parsnips: This food always makes me think of the United Kingdom because it sounds so proper, or of the Shire from Middle Earth.

Watercress: This looks pretty scrumptious. In fact, I may have had it on salads before and not known it. I’ve seen kids grow this plant from seeds and it looks like it would be fun to cultivate and harvest, too.

Rhubarb: When I’ve seen photos of rhubarb—particularly when used in recipes, such as strawberry-rhubarb pie—it always looks so pretty and delicious. I wonder if it tastes as good as it sounds?

February is Bake for Family Fun Month

Today my daughter baked a batch of brownies, with a little help from her dad, in honor of Bake for Family Fun Month. It’s not that we need an excuse to bake, but with the cold weather, Valentine’s Day, and the sweetness of February upon us, it does seem to be a perfect time to get the oven going to make something special and delicious to share.

Our five-year-old was able to measure and put all of the ingredients in (save for the eggs) and mix them all together, but even younger children can still help pour ingredients in, stir a bit, and definitely eat treats once they are finished! Older kids can look up recipes they want to try, make shopping lists, estimate the budget they’ll need to make their treats, and make their baked goods with supervision. Just keep in mind that mistakes will probably be made and that’s okay, just as the probable mess should be expected as well. Letting kids learn from their mistakes (as well as how important measuring ingredients is when it comes to the final product!) is one of the best things we can do as parents.

Here are a few ways you might want to celebrate Bake for Family Fun month.

Bake something from your favorite book. Try a Dr. Seuss recipe, something from Harry Potter, or perhaps one of Peeta Mellark’s famous cakes from The Hunger Games. Be creative in making up your own recipe, or simply modify one you already have (such as adding food coloring) with your imagination.

Make it an extended family affair. Have your child call up some relatives and ask about their favorite baked good recipes. This will allow him or her to connect with relatives while learning about new foods. Or, host a baked potluck where everyone brings a baked good—from a hearty lasagna to a decadent cake—and have a delicious early-year family reunion. Alternatively, have one with local friends or a playdate group.

Bake something and donate it. Give it to a shelter, a Ronald McDonald House, wherever you can think of that will be in need of it. Give it to an elderly neighbor who would be grateful for the meal—or invite him or her over for dinner. Host a bake sale for your favorite charity, school group, or cause.

Serve only baked items for a week. See how creative you can get, how limiting it might be to not have a stove or microwave, and simply how far you can take it.

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