Lay off the Fast Food

The Food Wrappers May Poison You

Saw this in the Huffington Post, thought I should pass it along -- "A Newly Discovered Reason to Avoid Fast Food" -- food wrappers.

Yes, just when one is convinced that one should cut back on the burgers and fries for reasons of fighting obesity, a story comes along that warns him to stay out of those fast food joints all-together.

A new study, reported by University of Toronto researchers ,shows that toxicperfluoroalkyls, which are used to coat fast food wrappers to keep grease from leaking through the wrappers, are showing up in human blood, urine and feces. People eating the fast food are also taken into their sysem polyfluoroalkyl. The reports says that as a result of the popularity of fast foods and its other uses, this chemical can be detected in nearly everyone in the U.S.!

Sources of toxicperfluoroalky other than s food packaging and fast food wrappers, include  "drinking water, dust, air, carpet and fabric protectors, flame retardants, non-stick pots and pans, stain-proof clothing."

Hot Buttered Rum

I have to confess that the first time I heard about Hot Buttered Rum it sounded . . . odd. Rum? With butter? Even Bacardi 151 on a freezing cold evening in January after a day spent skiing sounded odd in the context of melted butter. Then, when a friend explained that it really did involve rum with melted butter and spices and sugar, I thought it sounded less than appetizing. Essentially, the traditional recipe for Hot Buttered Rum is a hot toddy made with rum.

Hot Buttered Rum is made by adding a batter to rum, and sometimes, hot water. You make the batter by mixing butter with sugar and spices. You add a few spoons of the butter mixture (usually referred to as Hot Buttered Rum batter) to a mug, and then add a shot or two of rum, and top off the mug with boiling water. Stir gently, and serve. Generally the recipes for Hot Buttered Rum call for a dark rum; my local experts recommend Myers Dark Rum. Some favor spiced rum variants, and at least one aficionado praises Bacardi 151 after a day of skiing and no plans to leave the comfort of hearth and home.

But when another friend told me about the Hot Buttered Rum variant that used ice cream, I was appalled. It sounded awful, and the actual batter looked revolting. I was wrong. Having tried the ice cream varient I am now a convert to Hot Buttered Rum, and plan on making them a Winter holiday tradition, along with Smoking Bishop.

There are of course lots of variations. Here's a very traditional recipe for Hot Buttered Rum. Here's version for the crock pot that uses heavy cream in the batter, and you top the mug with a scoop of ice cream. Here's a version designed for the crock pot, and here's one without the rum. A similar, but unrelated drink, is the Tom and Jerry.

While Hot Buttered Rum is traditionally served as an apres ski beverage, I'm thinking it's a lovely tradition to make a batch to enjoy while trimming the tree or decorating for the holidays. The batter will keep for some time in the refrigerator so you don't have to use it all at once. Many stores also sell pre-made batter during the winter months; look in the deli and ice cream sections. The recipe I'll be using, and the one that firmly convinced me that Hot Buttered Rum is a lovely beverage is this one, made with ice cream.

4 Worst Kitchen Gadgets

A lot of things can make a kitchen gadget a useless waste of space, or "kinda dumb."  But it takes a special kind of genius to make a kitchen gadget that really is the worst of the worst.  (And how is it that so many people own these things, but don't have a single decent knife, much less a knife sharpener to keep it that way?)

Total Vision S'more Magic
This is a microwave s'more maker.  You may be thinking, "But I can just stack graham crackers, chocolate, and a marshmallow on a plate and microwave them to make a s'more."  And you would be right. 

The only thing this gadget offers beyond that method is a plunger, to push down the marshmallow.  You may be thinking, "But I can push down the marshmallow by hand."  And you would be right again.

The only thing this gadget has going for it is the price: about $5, from what I've seen online. 

Vacu Vin Kiwi Guard
This little plastic widget is a carrying case for a single kiwi fruit.  Also, it's a spoon, for eating your kiwi.

If you have such a big problem with your kiwi fruits getting bruised and mangled on your way into the office, I'm going to suggest that a kiwi fruit carrying case is not the best solution.  I'm going to suggest that you should stop carrying your fruit in your pocket, or in the bottom of your gym bag.  Maybe you shouldn't be using your kiwi fruit to prop open the subway car door as you leap from the platform. 

If only there were some way you could carry your entire lunch in a protective case!  Like a box, for your lunch.  A "lunch box," if you will.

Garlic Peeler
What is this thing that I am looking at.  Why would you use it?  You all know how to peel garlic, right?  You mash it with the flat end of a knife, then cut off the butt end and pull the skin off.  The process literally could not be easier.

Why you would want to use a big rubber manicotti is beyond me.  Apparently you stick the clove in, rub it back and forth, and kind of chafe the skin off the garlic.  Then you have to pick the skin out from inside it. 

Any Single-Purpose Slicer
I'm putting these all under the same entry, because they're all just a manifestation of the same stupid and useless thing. And because THAT IS WHAT A KNIFE IS FOR. SLICING.

Think of any fruit or vegetable in the world and there is a single-purpose gadget to either peel it or slice it.  (In some cases both.)  99.4% of the year, these items will sit idle in your drawer, taking up space.  The other .6% of the time you'll drag it out and use it out of a sense of obligation, all the while secretly wishing that you could just use a knife instead.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled avocado slices and pineapple corers and asparagus peelers and strawberry de-toppers yearning to be free.  I will trade you all of them for one semi-decent chef's knife.

Sweet and Spicy Potatoes

Who doesn’t love the delicious starchy, filling flavor of potatoes? In our house, they’ve always been a staple. They’re not expensive, and I can remember times—as a kid, in college, as a young couple, even sometimes these days—when I’d simply warm one or two up in the microwave for a meal. Served with cheese, butter, or sour cream, it was always an easy dish for a vegetarian, and they could even cook while I studied or washed baby bottles.

Today my taste has become, let’s face it, a bit more grown up and, well, snobby. I still like my plain baked potatoes now and then, but it’s fancy potato soup and flavorful, diced spuds that catch my attention these days. My husband has actually perfected both this year—pretty much just at my request, during Mother’s Day and other holidays—and now his recipes are the ones I prefer to all of the restaurant versions.

His sweet and spicy potatoes are delicious as they are or as a base for potato soup. It’s essentially a simple recipe that yields super high flavor. To make it, you’ll need:

  • About a third of a bag of potatoes
  • Brown sugar
  • Cayenne Pepper
  • Garlic powder
  • Onion powder (you can use onions, chopped as finely as you like, instead; we just don’t like their texture)
  • Sea salt (regular salt works too)
  • Black pepper (He uses large flakes, but you can use whatever you like)
  • Sour cream, cheese, or anything else you like to taste

I know this isn’t an exact recipe, but he pretty much just wings it every time and it’s fantastic. First, peel and dice up your potatoes into small, bite-sized pieces. We use about a third of a bag of potatoes for a family of four; alter the amount of potatoes according to the number of people in your household.

Caramelize the brown sugar and potatoes in the skillet until they have nice brown edges. They should also be soft in the center when you cut them open; be sure they’re not still raw. Cooking them takes about fifteen to twenty minutes as long as they are diced small enough. Add in all of the rest of the ingredients and continue tasting it until you have the combination you like; add more brown sugar if you want it sweeter, or more cayenne to make it spicier, etc. Then serve them hot with whatever toppings you like.

Extreme Couponing: Accidentally Thought-Provoking

Before the first episode of "Extreme Couponing" aired last night on TLC I wondered aloud, "Is this going to be like Hoarders, but with coupons?"  I was just kidding, but it turned out to be a surprisingly apt description.

Obviously there's more to couponing than it seems on the surface.  Which is partly why I was so eager to watch the show.  It's hard to find how-to advice online, and there is a surprising amount of coyness involved.  When people talk about their couponing, you sense they're leaving a lot out of their explanation.

Boy howdy.

If you want it to be worth it, you need a lot of storage space.  In order to maximize your time spent per coupon redeemed, you need to buy the maximum allowed amount.  If that means having a floor-to-ceiling stack of a three year's supply of toilet paper, then so be it. 


I fail at this, because I have a small home with extremely limited storage.  If pasta is on sale 10 boxes for $10 I'll only buy two or three, because where the heck am I going to put 10 boxes of pasta?

Stockpiling is inefficient.  This is the strange contradiction inherent to top-level couponing. 

Stockpiled food takes up space.  Space which you are paying for every month, in the form of either rent or a mortgage. 

Let's say you have a 1,000 square foot apartment for which you pay $1,000/month in rent.  Now take a shelving unit that's three feet long.  You're paying $3/month just to store all the food on that shelving unit.

This may not sound like a lot, but it adds up.  How long does it take before you eat everything on that shelf?  Maybe a year?  That's $36 you just paid for that food, above and beyond the cost to buy it. 

How much did you save by buying it with coupons?  And what else could you be using that space for? 

Bad things can happen to stockpiled food.  If your house catches fire, or you get mice, or there's an earthquake, or you have to move and you can't afford to ship it across the country, you're out all of the money you paid for that food. 

(It's why we keep our money in banks, rather than stuffed under our mattress.)

Liquidity is important.  If you have $10,000 tied up in stockpiled food, that's $10,000 you can't spend elsewhere.  If you keep that $10,000 in your bank account until it's time to buy food, it gives you the option to do something else with it if an emergency crops up. 

Food is a bad investment.  This sounds counter-intuitive - after all, everyone needs food!  But the resale value of food is basically nil.  By stockpiling food, you're making an investment in something which is guaranteed to depreciate. 

Your time is valuable.  You may not spend 70 hours a week at the coupon game, like the first woman profiled on the show.  But you will have to spend some time.  Two hours a week?  Five?  Ten?

Don't be fooled by the talk of savings: anything more than the most casual form of couponing isn't about money.  It's a hobby, a game, a way to feel like you're beating them at their own game.  And it's a way to feel better than other people, the suckers who pay full price for a pound of pasta.

Photo credit: Flickr/sdc2027

Rice: More Than Uncle Ben

For Christmas I received a rice cooker.  I can make rice now!  You don't know how revolutionary this is: I have never once cooked rice properly.  I had given up on it, in fact.  Now that I can cook perfect rice just by pushing a lever, I have been investigating all the delicious possibilities.  There's a lot more to rice than the standard American long grain white rice!

There are over 40,000 different varieties of rice in the world.  Most varieties are exquisitely local, being grown and distributed only throughout a single county or small region of the world.  All rice starts out as brown rice, which is simply the whole rice grain (actually a seed).  Some forms of rice take an extra step in production to remove the brown coating of rice bran from each grain, thus producing white rice. 

The rice bran has significant nutritional value, which is why people always nag you to choose brown rice over white.  (Among other things, brown rice is an excellent source of thiamine, and cultures which eat white rice exclusively have often found themselves plagued by Beriberi.)  However, it must be said that white rice has a smoother texture and a milder flavor, which many people find more pleasing.

Long grain rice tends to be less sticky than short grain rice.  But as a general rule, rice varieties should not be substituted in a recipe, unless it's a real rice emergency.  Each kind of rice is distinct enough that the end result just won't be the same if you use a different rice.  The world won't come to an end if you use basmati rice in a recipe that calls for jasmine rice, but you will probably notice the difference!

Wehani Rice
My rice cooker came with an extra gift: a packet of Wehani rice.  This is a trademark variety of brown rice which was developed by the Lundberg Family Farm in California, and descended from basmati rice.  It has all the nutrition of brown rice, plus a wonderful rich, almost floral aroma. 

Basmati Rice
Basmati rice can be either white or brown.  It is a long grain rice which is popular in India, where they take it very seriously indeed.  Most strains of basmati rice are considered "fragrant," with a characteristic rich smell and delicious taste.  Unlike most rice, basmati rice is not sticky when cooked but loose, almost like pasta.  Basmati rice also has a low glycemic index, which makes it a good choice for diabetics and carb-watchers.

Jasmine Rice
This long grain rice is a favorite in Thailand, where its delicate floral fragrance (whence the name) complements the range of traditional Thai flavors.  It has a mid-range stickiness - stickier than a basmati rice, but not as sticky as a short-grain rice.

Aborio
This is a short grain rice variety which is a favorite in Italy, where it is used to make risotto.  Arborio rice is traditionally cooked slowly in a pan on the stove top, with lots of liquid added at regular intervals, creating almost a soupy texture.

Wild Rice
Wild rice is unrelated to "real" rice (Oryza sativa), although it has a similar form and structure.  Wild rice is the grains of four different wild grasses which grow at the fringes of lakes and ponds in North America.  Compared to other types of rice, wild rice is higher in protein, lysine, fiber, and a host of vitamins.

Mexican Mahi-mahi Topped with Chopped Zucchini

 For Christmas Eve, my dinner companion and I decided to make a very special treat. This recipe was again, straight out of Rick Bayless’ cookbook: Everyday Mexican. We made seared mahi-mahi topped with fresh sautéed zucchini, drizzled with a rich garlic sauce and garnished with fresh squeezed lime.

To make this dish, my dinner companion first heated olive oil in a skillet under low and then turned the stove up to medium heat. I washed and prepared the zucchini by chopping it into ¼ inch cubes. He then seared the fish on both sides in the warmed skillet until the skin simply fell off.

When the fish was seared slightly to his liking, he removed the fish from the skillet and cut it into large chunks. He then returned it to the skillet and continued to sear both sides until it was thoroughly cooked and coated with olive oil. The kitchen was starting to smell delicious.

He then dished out the seared mahi-mahi into two portions on plates for each of us. Then, using the oil he had seared the fish in, he browned the garlic in the same skillet. Then he put the browned garlic into a blender with a little fresh ground pepper and a dash of iodized salt. Then he placed the (now minced) garlic back into the skillet. With the minced garlic, he tossed in the zucchini that I had prepared and stirred it in the skillet until it was coated in rich, luscious olive oil and garlic sauce. He put a lid on top of the skillet and sautéed the zucchini for about six minutes.

He then placed the sautéed zucchini with sauce on top of the fish on each plate. Then he added a few slices of lime on the side for flavoring and garnish. Dinner was served. I topped each plate with some fresh ground pepper and really this was all this dish needed.

We enjoyed this dinner immensely. When we paired the fish with our Torrentes white wine, it made for a simple dish that was full to the brim with complex tastes. The fish was flakey and buttery and delicious—you could cut it with a fork. The zucchini was perfectly cooked. We combined the sauce with a fresh squeeze of lime and that made all the difference. This dinner was simple in theory, and fantastic in reality. The wine was sweet, yet savory and complemented the fish very well.

One day, I would love to take a trip to South America, where I can partake in this deliciously simple, yet satisfying dish al fresco on a lovely evening with lanterns or twinkling lights above my head, being lulled by ocean breezes.

I would clink my wine glass with my dinner companion as we said “aplousos” (“Cheers” in Spanish). Then taste a forkful on my plate, knowing that my fish had been freshly caught that morning in the deep azure blue the romantic patio looks out onto.

Deciding on the Wine for the Main Course

Hello again, hungry bloggers. For Christmas Eve, my dinner companion and I made a special treat. We made seared mahi-mahi topped with chopped zucchini, drizzled in a delicious, rich sauce. This recipe came, again from Rick Bayless’ cookbook: Everyday Mexican.

This was a very simple dish, by definition. Though, when all the flavors blended together, this basic dish created quite a luscious sample of tastes for the palette on such a special night.

The recipe called for fish as the main ingredient. Rick suggested fresh snapper. Since it was Christmas Eve, we splurged and decided to purchase our fish from the Fresh Fish Company in Ballard. For reference, Ballard is one of the neighborhoods in Seattle, Washington. 

The snapper looked good behind the counter. Though, the mahi-mahi looked better. It was pinker in color and just generally looked fresher. We purchased about a pound and a quarter of their fresh mahi-mahi. We also bought a pound of fresh zucchini, some garlic cloves and a couple limes that we intended to use as a garnish. All of our ingredients were fresh and we were willing to pay a bit more for better quality. Usually the price is worth it.

When deciding what wine to pair this dish with, I scanned online briefly to look for recommendations to pair with seared mahi-mahi. We struggled a bit finding a good pairing, because all of the recommendations were white. My dinner companion and I are not a fan of white wine, we usually opt for red wine. White wine tends to give me a terrible headache from all the sugar the next day. In the past, my dinner companion has admitted to dealing with the same problem.

However, we finally found a happy medium and decided on a Torrentes called Alamo from 2009. According to hellovino.com, “[Torrentes is] an aromatic white with lychee, honey, and exotic fruit aromas and lemon zest flavor.” Torrentes is a white wine—yes. Though, it didn’t taste too sugary to me and had a very complex finish, not too sweet. It paired quite well with the fish.

Another wine recommendation for pairing with mahi-mahi is Gewürztraminer, pronounced: guh-VURTS-trah-mee-ner. I have drunken Gewürztraminer in the past. Although, I did not pair it with fish. I find it to be very sweet and usually too sweet for me to drink in large quantities. Sauvignon Blanc was a third option to pair with mahi-mahi. From hellovino.com, “[This is] a light white wine with passion fruit as a match.”

Cilantro Recall: Food Fight

Upon hearing the news that cilantro (and parsley) is being recalled in the US and Canada due to salmonella, half the population will cheer with glee.  The other half will sob in dismay. 

Cilantro is a contentious issue in the food realm.  Maybe THE most contentious issue.  I don't know a single person who's neutral or "meh" on the cilantro issue.  People either love it or hate it.  (Full disclosure: I love it.)

The cilantro issue is partly due to genetics.  A portion of the public is genetically unable to taste the deliciousness of cilantro.  They lack the ability to taste the zesty, citrus-y flavor, and are left with simply the flavor of soap.  But it's impossible to say how prevalent the genetic issue is.  A lot of people may taste cilantro the same as the rest of us; they just don't like it.

2010 has been a bad year for vegetables.  We have had salmonella scares in baby spinach, tomatoes, peanut butter (peanuts are a vegetable, right?), fresh alfalfa sprouts, strawberries, and now cilantro.  Unfortunately, this is one of the few cases where eating right can do you harm.  Fresh vegetables are healthiest for you eaten raw, on sandwiches or in salads.  But this leaves you open to illness.

Washing produce used to be enough.  This is still true for certain vectors of infection, and certain vegetables.  One example being apples contaminated with e. coli from having been sprayed with raw manure, from rolling through a contaminated factory, or from being handled by someone who didn't wash their hands before leaving the bathroom.

Apples don't take up fluids through their skin.  And their skin is relatively non-porous, so bacteria are less likely to make their way in to the apple's flesh.  Just rinsing an apple in fresh water is enough to clean it, for the most part.  For those who have extra cause to worry about germs (like the immune-compromised), a quick soak in a bath of cold water with a splash of lemon juice or vinegar will sanitize an apple nicely.

But many cases of infected produce don't follow this old route.  Instead, the plant takes up the bacteria, which then colonizes the actual inside of the fruit or vegetable.  In the spinach recall, for example, the plants had been watered from a contaminated source.  The plants sucked up the water, and the bacteria along with it.  Washing the outside of the spinach wouldn't have helped, because the bacteria were actually inside the cell walls.

In this situation, the only way to have avoided illness would have been to cook the spinach thoroughly.  A terrible thought for those of us who enjoy a salad of fresh baby spinach!

Hopefully issues like this will one day be a thing of the past, if the Food Safety Bill manages to survive. America has one of the worst food safety records of any industrialized nation, but the Food Safety Bill would be the first overhaul of the system since the 1930s.  For one thing, it would send an additional 2,000 new FDA inspectors out into the field, to help catch problems like this before they happen.

Photo credit: Flickr/Michael_Lehet

Last Minute Superstar: Jell-O No Bake Cheesecake

You know the scenario all too well.  For whatever reason, you need to pull a dessert out of your - ahem - "pantry" - at the last minute.  But you have neither the interest, nor the time, nor the inclination to make it yourself.  Maybe it's too late to go buy a proper bakery dessert; maybe that would be an inappropriate contribution; or maybe you just don't care.

Enter the Jell-O No Bake Cheesecake.

For the princely sum of about $4 plus 2 T sugar, 5 T margarine, and 1.5 C milk, you can have "homemade" cheesecake ready to go.  It takes about five minutes to assemble.  Maybe 10 if you spend a lot of time huffing and sighing in an exasperated fashion and rolling your eyes at how annoying it is to be tapped for a last-minute dessert.

The only even remotely specialized aspect of this procedure is that you need to have your own dish.  I use a 9" glass deep dish pie plate.  If you don't have one, you can buy one of those flimsy tinfoil ones.  Or you can buy a pre-made graham cracker crust, and just glop the cheesecake filling straight into it.  Skip that pesky "crust" step entirely.  (Although the crust that comes out of the box really is better than the pre-made stuff.  But if you're at this point already, you probably don't care.)

I don't know if you'd want to try using a springform pan to really fool people.  I'm not convinced that the final product has enough body to hold itself up like that.  If you want to try this, I recommend doing a trial run first.

There are two varieties you'll encounter at the store.  Both are usually found over by the Jell-O and pudding, often hidden away on the top shelf in the Slot of Shame.  One variety is just cheesecake and crust.  The other variety is cheesecake, crust, and topping.

Frankly, I don't think the toppings are very good.  If you have to bring one of these to a gathering and pass it off as homemade, I recommend getting a better topping.  What you get with the package is overpriced for the amount, and tends to have a serious chemical taste.  You can do better just by buying a jar of high-end chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, or, heck, both. 

If you want to do some master class action, you can add cranberry sauce as a topping for the holidays.  You could even make your own just by macerating frozen strawberries.  (This sounds fancy but it just means: thaw frozen strawberries.  Add sugar.  Mash together.  Spread on cheesecake.)

Making this baby is simple.  You mix the graham cracker crust and press it into the plate, then blend the cheesecake mix with the milk.  Then pour the cheesecake mix into the crust, and refrigerate for a few hours. 

The result is reasonably rich, with a convincing cheesecake flavor.  It probably wouldn't stand up to close inspection.  But if you give it a good enough topping to distract people, let's be honest - after a whole entire holiday dinner, with all the wine and sniping, who's really going to be scrutinizing the dessert that closely?  JOB DONE.

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