10 Reasons to Love Food Network, Part II

5. You Empathize with People

On Chopped, when people explain why they’re on the show, or tell a bit about themselves, it’s one of my husband’s and my favorite parts. We pick our favorite that way and then root for him or her. On The Next Food Network Star, every time someone screws up or makes something you think will be brilliant but ends up sucking, you empathize with them. I don’t know how many of Tom’s dishes I had my fingers crossed for that just blew it!

4. They’re Something to Look Forward To

Okay, I get looking forward to the next episode of your show. I usually have two shows for that myself—United States of Tara in the spring and Law and Order: SVU in the fall—so I already experience that a bit. When the shows are over, I feel a bit deflated for a bit and then forget about watching TV; now I have that sense of anticipation again. And while I don’t think that it’s the best source for such anticipation, it’s a pretty cheap one that I don’t have to leave my house for, at least.

3. I Can Watch Them with My Kid!

“My shows”—the ones I listed in the previous paragraph—are anything but kid-friendly, so I always have to make sure she’s asleep before they’re on. However, if she gets up while I watch these shows—or even if I DVR something and want to watch it with her—it’s perfectly fine. I don’t have to worry about her hearing foul language, see corpses, or any of the other things you can expect from “my shows.”

2. I Can Yap About Them with Others

I always looked at bonding over TV shows with contempt. It’s not that I’m a snob (I really hope not, anyway), it’s just that I’ve always valued other things much more than television. But now that I can talk about these shows with my sisters and friends, I guess I get the appeal. It is fun to discuss who you like the best, what dishes you saw, or even possibly doing the challenges at home or your next family gathering. (We’ve talked about doing a monthly Chopped-type event!)

1. They Help Me Relax

I suppose that’s the ultimate goal of television, isn’t it? And at the end of the day, I guess a bit of TV-watching isn’t all that bad for you—as long as it’s not interfering with time with your family, and it’s not taking up a huge chunk of your time (like the six hours a day many kids spend in front of media sources). A half hour here and an hour there does add up, I’m finding, so you do have to be careful.

10 Reasons to Love Food Network

Having never been a TV fan, I find myself falling into the chair at the end of the day (how common! How suburban!) and, waiting for my daughter to finally fall asleep so I can head to work (else she will hear me type and come bother me every two minutes for hours), I turn on the Food Network.

I blame my sister. After all, she introduced me to the joys of Guy Fieri, The Next Food Network Star, Chopped, and all of the other shows I’m seemingly addicted to these days. All I can say is, WTF?! I’ve always been disdainful when it comes to TV programs—particularly sitcoms, reality shows, and other weekly broadcasts—but I find myself eagerly rooting on my favorites on The Next Food Network Star (Go, Aarti and Herb!), addicted to Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, and even checking out new shows like Kid in a Candy Store (doesn’t that guy look a lot like Andy Serkis, by the way?). So what is the appeal behind these shows? What’s so special about them that they’ve been able to melt my cold, anti-TV sealed-away heart? Here are 10 reasons I could come up with.

10. Food is My Porn

I love to eat. I love to cook—okay, I don’t love to cook right now, but that’s because we have a gas stove in our old house that terrifies me. But I do love to make new things, get creative, bake, and prepare food for groups of friends. I get excited when I see new dishes—maybe not sexually so, but perhaps with the addiction and happiness that a man might have when it comes to his porn.

9. These Shows are Realistic

They’re not campy ha-ha shows where I’m expected to really give a damn about people’s petty problems or stupid antics. They’re real people cooking—sometimes, sure, with their own real problems thrown in—and, hopefully, exhibiting their real personalities. It just doesn’t reek of the fake annoyance I used to experience when my parents insisted on watching Friends or Seinfeld.

8. They’re Mentally Stimulating

Not every show is, of course; but Chopped in particular makes you think in creative ways. How would you have prepared the dish differently? You also learn about all kinds of new foods—red carrots, poppadom, and whatever those potato-centered pastries were last night, for example.

7. They Help You Dream

When I watch Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, I do it with pen and paper in hand. The same goes if I catch an episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate. Why? So I can write down these amazing restaurants and their locations, of course! There are a ton of places that I want to go eat at now when we travel—particularly in Chicago—that I would have otherwise never known about.

6. It’s Fun to Be the Judge

I get how people could like those reality shows where people are voted on or off something now. I still don’t like the idea of them at all and won’t watch all of those crazy island/ apprentice/ bachelor/ house/ whatever programs, but I do have fun predicting who will stay and who will go on Chopped and The Next Food Network Star. Last Sunday, I even agonized over it, since I didn’t really want to see anyone go on NFNS!

Delicious, Nutritious Corn Smut!

American farmers have spent untold millions of dollars trying to eliminate corn smut, which is a fungal disease of corn.  Meanwhile, in Latin America people have been happily eating the corn smut.  And it turns out they were right!

Corn smut is properly known as Ustilago maydis, which infects the developing kernels of corn and transforms them into gigantic gray-black blobs, which look something like a brain made out of mushrooms.  In Latin America the resulting blobs are known as huitlacoche, and are used as a filling.  Corn tumors may not sound very delicious, but a lot of people swear by them!

Well it turns out that the joke's on us, because huitlacoche is incredibly nutritious!  And, if prepared properly (and from a fresh source, not canned) many people swear it's delicious as well.  

Somehow the huitlacoche fungus manages to synthesize vitamins and minerals which are not actually present in the corn that it infects.  Perhaps it is best not to dwell on how that happens, or why.

The Aztecs were the first to eat huitlacoche.  Today you can find it on the menu at many restaurants in Mexico, as a filling option along with beans, chicken, or beef.  Huitlacoche is usually purchased and used fresh, although you can buy it in canned form.

It is the canned form which I had heard of before.  Huitlacoche featured as a typically graphic entry in "Steve Don't Eat It," a regular feature where Steve eats something gross.  Steve described the smell of canned huitlacoche as being "like corn that forgot to wipe," although he begrudgingly admitted that "it doesn't taste as truly horrible as it looks."

But to be fair, can you imagine eating a can of crinkle cut pickled beets for the first time?  Canned vegetables are gross.  (I have a strange fondness for canned fruits, including those Harvest Spice flavored peach slices.)

Writing for The Atlantic, journalist Sara Lipka described the taste of huitlacoche as being "like rich earth and raw corn, like a wild mushroom that's been cut with a corny knife."

Aside from being the latest new taste sensation, what restaurant owner wouldn't want to put something called "corn smut" on the menu?  From an ecological perspective, eating corn smut is an unalloyed Good Thing.  

Farmers used to destroy crops that came down with a case of corn smut.  Not to mention dousing their crops with fungicide in an attempt to prevent it.  However, if a viable huitlacoche market opens up in North America, our farmers could quickly find themselves in the same position as South American farmers,  where huitlacoche sells for a lot more than the regular corn it feeds on.  

Corn smut comes into season when corn does, which means that in theory it's out there on the market right now.  Maybe you'll see some at the farmer's market!  Lipka recommends preparing it basically the same way you would prepare gourmet mushrooms.  Thinly sliced and sautéed in butter, it works well as the filling of a burrito, or in quesadillas.  

If you track some down, do let us know how it went!

Photo credit: Flickr/hexodus...

Pumpkin Crisis 2010!

Recently, a f

riend off-handedly mentioned that "everyone's out of pumpkin, you know.  There's a national shortage."  I didn't know, actually!  

As a big fan of pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin muffins, you would think I would have noticed. In fact, I hardly believed her, and had to look it up myself.  But it's true: America is experiencing an unprecedented shortage of pumpkin.

At grocery stores nationwide, the pumpkin puree spot on the shelves lies empty.  Most of us probably won't notice until fall (when the market for pumpkin-based foods starts cranking up for the season).  Those who need pumpkin immediately are having to turn to alternatives, or simply do without.

This recent article from the Washington Post explains the situation.   Libby's, the nation's primary producer of canned pumpkin puree, has an inventory that totals precisely: six cans.  

The problem is weather.  Three years of bad weather has pushed the commercial pumpkin crop to its breaking point.  The record rainfall and flooding in the Midwest has caused pumpkin fields to become all but impossible to plant and harvest.  

And to compound the problem, pumpkins are a crop that do not like to get overly wet.  In fact, here in the Pacific Northwest it's taken as a given that pumpkin plants will fall prey to powdery mildew and other "too wet" diseases.  The question is whether it will happen before or after you get your pumpkins harvested.

So what's a pumpkin-hungry public to do?

1.  Go Pumpkin Hunting!
A lot of small local outfits have not experienced the weather problems the Midwest has been faced with.  The Washington Post article mentions that there is a local organic pumpkin company which has canned pumpkin in some Washington DC stores.  

Local growers will be bringing fresh pie pumpkins to market starting in August (depending on your part of the country).  Look for local farms, scour the classifieds, and stalk the farmer's markets.   Be sure to ask if it's a pie pumpkin - you don't want to try and make muffins out of a carving pumpkin!

2.   Substitute
Butternut squash is functionally the same plant as the pie pumpkin.  Butternut squash can be cooked and pureed just like pie pumpkins, and used in squash, tortellini, pies, and everything else a pumpkin can.

Sweet potatoes are another good substitute for canned pumpkin.  If you don't have the patience (or the kitchen equipment) to cook and puree a butternut squash, sweet potatoes are a little easier.  Simply cut a sweet potato into chunks, cook at a medium boil for about half an hour (or until the chunks are soft to the fork).  Drain and let it cool, then mash them up with a fork.

Either butternut squash or sweet potatoes can be used to make pie, with judicious applications of pumpkin pie spice.  I also found this incredibly delicious-looking recipe for Sweet Potato Buttermilk Pie at Smitten Kitchen, which should quiet the qualms of any pumpkin pie aficionados!

According to Wikibooks, you can substitute a puree of carrot, swede, and yogurt for pumpkin puree.  Frankly, I'm skeptical about that claim, but I include it here for the sake of completeness.

Photo credit: Flickr/elana's pantry

Starburst GummiBursts

I have a difficult time saying whether or not these are "good" because that's such a subjective term.  And because they completely squicked me out.  

GummiBursts are the latest blow struck in the experimental candy wars.  The package proclaims them to be "liquid filled gummies," and so they are.  What it fails to mention is that the resulting texture is unavoidably biological, and not in a fun way.

Upon opening the package, the first thing that struck me was the fruity smell.  It wasn't like I opened the pack right under my nose or anything - I opened it at a normal arm's length.  And yet the fruity smell was vigorously detectable, as if it had been just waiting for its chance to escape.  It made me imagine that the last step at the factory, before sealing the package, is to shoot in a puff of concentrated fruity scent, in order to round out the consumer's experience.

When I poured them out on my desk, these looked like regular gummy candies.  A slightly odd shape, to be sure.  I wonder why they went with round solids, instead of making them square to echo the shape of Starburst candies?  Ah well, I'm sure better minds than mine were responsible for that decision, somewhere in the bowels of the Mars Snackfood Corporation's product development labs.

I half thought that the "liquid center" would prove to be an exaggeration.  I poked a candy experimentally, and it gave beneath my finger in a disturbingly fleshy fashion, like a little cube of raw steak.  When I picked one up and rolled it between my fingers, the fluid filling could be distinctly felt.  

Those of you with delicate temperaments may wish to look away before you read the next sentence.  The texture of Starburst GummiBursts is very much like the texture of the cyst I recently found on the neighbor's dog.  Firm, yet rubbery, with a distinctly liquid center.  

(I told the neighbor, and she took her dog straight to the vet to have the cyst lanced and drained, and given a prescription for antibiotics.  The vet thinks it was probably either an insect bite or a nip from one of the other dogs that got infected.  The dog is fine.)

Cutting open a GummiBurst didn't help this perception.  I happened to choose one of the cherry candies, so the gel-like fluid that oozed out was a bright red.  Lovely.

Compounding the problem, the taste of each flavor is distinctly medicinal.  Cherry is the worst, tasting exactly like cough syrup.  Lemon has those unfortunate bright floor polish overtones that you find in cheap flavorings, orange tastes just like baby aspirin, and strawberry is a dead ringer for a Hall's throat lozenge.

This is particularly a disappointment coming from the Starburst line.  Starburst usually has some of the best fruit flavors around.  I don't know where they got the flavors for their GummiBursts.  Maybe they got a great deal on a liquidation sale from some discount drug store candy company.  

These should be avoided at all costs.

Keeping Your Chickens Cool

The hottest days of the summer are upon us, and everyone is suffering - including your chickens!  Heavily feathered breeds like the Buff Orpington and Wyandotte are at a distinct disadvantage this time of year compared to closely feathered, Mediterranean, and tropical breeds such as the Rhode Island Red and the Leghorn.

A chicken's body temperature is normally between 104 and 107 degrees Fahrenheit.  Their body temperature is lethal when it reaches between 113 and 117 degrees Fahrenheit.  Therefore it is extremely important to keep chickens cool when the outside temperature starts hitting the triple digits.  If a chicken is unable to dissipate its body heat, it can become heat sick very quickly.  

Birds do not sweat, and (unfortunately in hot weather) their feathers do an excellent job of trapping heat against their bodies.  Luckily, their respiratory systems are very good at cooling them off.  Many people are surprised to learn how different a chicken's respiratory system is from ours.  Chickens essentially have four lungs, placed throughout their body.  Instead of breathing in and out like we do, chickens breathe in a circuit.  This gives each breath ample time to exchange temperature with their body interior.

Ventilation and air movement are key.  If chickens are stuck in a closed coop for very long, the temperature will quickly skyrocket.  In hot parts of the country, some chicken owners even resort to outfitting their chicken coops with air conditioners!  Even if you don't plan to go this far, fans set up to bring cool air in near the ground and vent hot air out near the roof will make a big difference.

An outdoor mister or fogger system can often be purchased from your nearest home improvement store.  These are designed to make outdoor patios more comfortable, but they work great in the chicken pen, too!  They hook onto your hose just like a regular sprinkler, and deliver a fine mist.  This evaporative cooling is remarkably effective.  

Shade is also important, particularly in the run during the day.  Don't simply drop a blue tarp over the run, because these can magnify and trap the heat.  Instead, purchase a swath of "shade cloth" from the home improvement store.  Shade cloth is sold in the gardening section, and is rated by the percentage of sun that it blocks.  Buy the highest protection value you can afford - no one ever regretted buying shade cloth that was too strong!

Any "old school" chicken keeper will tell you not to feed your chickens scratch in hot weather, because scratch is "warming."  I don't know about that.  Scratch is very high in calories, and calories are of course what your body burns for heat, so there may be some truth to the "warming" claims.  

However, chickens will often go off their feed in extremely hot weather.  In which case it can be difficult to keep the weight on them.  When this happens, scratch can be a valuable feed supplement, because it delivers more calories per ounce.  Offering scratch first thing in the morning when the weather is still relatively cool can help fuel your chickens through the heat of the day.

Photo credit: Flickr/mrlerone

Ode to Little Caesar's Pizza: Greasy! Greasy!

Does every Little Caesar's have the "$5 Monday" special, or is it just ours?  They're franchise stores, so it's hard to tell.  There is a Little Caesars store in the next town over where all day Monday you can get a large pepperoni pizza for five bucks.  

Of course, despite the fact that the offer applies to their "Hot-N-Ready" pizza which is theoretically always ready to go, you often have to wait a few minutes, because they have trouble keeping up with the parade of people through the door.  

The risk during those few minutes is that you will decide to order something else - soda, or some of that Crazy Bread that looks so delicious, and tastes so salty and awful and good.  But you must resist!

I happened to be in town yesterday, and all day long I couldn't stop thinking about $5 Monday.  I tried to convince myself I wanted something better to eat.  Something decent, maybe with a vegetable.  Since I'm a vegetarian I end up picking off the pepperonis and feeding them to the neighbor's dogs (with her blessing  - and they're very large dogs, so they can handle it).  This always strikes me as a bit of a waste, but the dogs do love the pepperoni, and a large cheese is a whopping $8.  

Regardless of $5 Monday, Little Caesars is still pretty affordable.  Their pizzas cost only slightly more than a frozen pizza from the grocery store, but are served up at the ultra-hot temperature that's required for a really decent pizza.  (That's the big difference between "real" pizza and the ones we make at home: the temperatures.)

Nutritionally though… maybe it's best not to think about it.  I checked their website, and was not able to find any nutritional information whatsoever.  Maybe that's for the best.

For the longest time, Little Caesars was "that place with the square pizza."  They seem to have moved away from that in recent years, although their Deep Dish Large pizza is still square.  I remember a promotion they had years ago, where you could order a rectangular pizza that was (if memory serves) three feet long and two feet wide.  Horrifying!  And tasty.  You could tip that thing, and the grease would pour off.

These days, Little Caesars is perhaps better known as "that pizza you buy at K-Mart."  It is true that it doesn't help the ambiance to walk through a K-Mart in order to get your dinner.  Oh how I wish they had an external door, like so many in-store Starbucks cafes.  But I'm pretty sure that's the point, that you will be lured into buying some cheap jewelry or sweat pants on your way in to pick up a pizza.  (I only wish I was being snarky, but the truth is that the last time I went to a K-Mart Little Caesars, I bought both of those items.)  

The worst part about going to K-Mart for dinner is the combined smell of stale popcorn and stale cotton candy from the K-Mart Café, which is the precise smell of sadness.

Photo credit: Flickr/mastermaq

Wonka Chewy Gobstopper

Something about Winco Foods brings out the candy experimenter in me.  Maybe it's just because they have such a wide range of unusual and off-brand candies.  (This week they had Idaho Spuds on sale, 5 for a dollar!  People, you cannot top that!)  Or maybe it's just that my mental resources have been worn down to a nub by the time I get to the checkout stand.

At any rate, this week I picked up a box of Chewy Gobstoppers, despite the fact that I dislike the original Gobstoppers, and I'm not a big fan of "chewy" as a candy texture.  

I like the flavor of Gobstoppers, even though it's just your basic off the rack candy flavor from the Wonka Candy Company.  I have mentioned before how I feel like they have six tubs of flavor in a warehouse somewhere, and their entire manufacturing process is just a matter of deploying those flavors in different forms.  (Taco Bell does pretty much the same thing, except with lettuce and cheese instead of Lemon and Cherry.)

One thing that tilted me towards buying these is that my main objection to Gobstoppers is that they are too hard.  I know how ridiculous that sounds.  It's like objecting to a Hershey bar because it's "too chocolate-y."  But there you have it.  

I used to like gobstopper candies, but that is when I was young, and didn't have quite so much dental work.  These days I feel like I'm taking my life - or at least my annual deductible - in my hands whenever I risk a Jordan Almond.  So the idea of a "less hard" gobstopper caught my attention.

Despite the promise of chewiness, I was not able to cut one of these in half for their picture.  Not without risking the tips of my fingers.  And I really tried, people!  Rest assured the outer layer of the Chewy Gobstoppers is still pretty hard.  (I guess what I really need is some kind of candy vise, because this is not the first time I have had this problem.)

As for the chewy… well.  It's chewy in the same way that a cheap gumball is chewy.  In fact, you could be forgiven for mistaking one of these for a very stale cheap gumball.  Except that after you give it a few chews, it dissolves instead of turning into gum.  But it has that same almost crunchy chew, very crystalline and dry.

From what little I can gather from the candy itself, there are actually three layers: a super-hard outer coating, an inner layer of the hard powdery original Gobstopper material, and then an inner layer of "chewy."   This inner layer puts me in mind of Giant Chewy Sweet Tarts, which I adored when I was in junior high.  They weren't "chewy" so much as "extremely cohesive under pressure."

These also have a similar tangy flavor, although it's hard to discern any specific flavor beyond "undifferentiated fruity."  The package promises that these are "gobstoppers that change colors and flavors" and that they are.  So much so that it's difficult to make anything out, aside from that classic Wonka palette of flavors.

Green & Black's Ginger Dark Chocolate

I'm learning that the Green & Black's line of chocolate is pretty much unassailable in every way.  Their chocolates are made with organic ingredients, ethically sourced using fair trade to prevent human suffering and slavery, many of their bars are vegan-friendly, and best of all they are delicious.  

Green & Black's is one of the few fair trade chocolates which is available in America.  (Although several mass market chocolate manufacturers like Cadbury and Mars have gone fair trade in the UK, the American versions of their bars are not fair trade.)  They deserve your money for that reason alone, since the atrocities committed in the name of non-fair trade cocoa beans are truly horrific.

The only possible objection anyone could have to Green & Black's is that they do cost quite a bit more than their competitors.  Nearly twice as much, if you stack up a big Green & Black's to, say, a big Cadbury bar.  This is a great example of the way that low costs ruin everything, because the Cadbury bar has nothing going on the Green & Black's.  But at the same time, I usually find myself hesitating, before I finally give in and reach for the cheaper one.

I tell you what, though - you're doing yourself a real disservice.  One thing I have learned with my chocolate sampling activities is that cheap dark chocolate is brittle, it crumbles into shards when you nibble it, which was always my chief objection to dark chocolate.  But good dark chocolate, like you find in a Green & Black's bar, still has that wonderful creaminess that you want from a chocolate bar.

This bar, which is a 60% cocoa dark chocolate, has all that and more: it has ginger.  I love ginger LOVE IT, and therefore I was actually a little disappointed with this bar for not being more ginger-y.  Ginger is one of those things you build up a resistance to, like salt or garlic or spicy foods.  I have that resistance in spades, which means that to me, this was only the faintest hint of ginger.

To any reasonable human being, I'm sure this bar would be wonderfully ginger-y.  It does after all contain little bits of candied ginger, which is frankly delicious.  I would like to see more things have ginger in them, because I had never thought of ginger and chocolate as being a viable combination, but now that I've tried it, I want a lot more.

The ginger gives the chocolate just a touch of heat, although nothing like you would find in a chili + chocolate combination.  That little bit of ginger warmth is a great combination with the dark chocolate.  My only low mark for this bar was the slight grittiness, which is often a hallmark of organic chocolate bars.  Although it might just have been the bits of candied ginger, some of the other organic Green & Black's bars I have tried have had the grit, too.  Not sure what's up with that.  I have actually learned to love the grit, the way I have learned to love the texture at the end of a cup of French press coffee.

The McDonalds Mocha Frappe

I had my first McDonalds Frappe this weekend and I have to say, I was not impressed.  I want to say "Starbucks has nothing to fear," but on the other hand, McDonalds has made a bazillion dollar a year industry out of delivering bland over-processed flavorless fat bombs to the undiscerning American public.  So maybe Starbucks SHOULD be worried.

I was curious about how this thing would be made, but most of the process took place behind a big black and silver machine that was clearly meant to look like a proper espresso bar's espresso maker. 

This seemed a bit disingenuous to me; talk about mutton dressed as lamb.  If you buy your espresso drinks from McDonalds I don't think you're going there for the ambience.  

For all I know, this thing was dispensed into my cup from a pull faucet, just like a milkshake.  It came with a ton of whipped cream, and a big delicious blob of chocolate sauce atop that.  More than just a dash of sauce for color - this was a formidable amount of sauce.  

I identified the flavor - of both the sauce and the drink - immediately.  It is the exact same flavoring which McDonalds uses in their chocolate shakes.  I like their chocolate shakes a lot, don't get me wrong.  But it was a little disconcerting to be basically handed a chocolate shake and told it's a Frappuccino.

Speaking of chocolate milkshakes, the medium Mocha Frappe I bought contained 560 calories, 24 grams of fat, and 78 grams of carbs.  No one drinks a Frappe or Frappuccino thinking it's a health drink, and much has been made of the piggy stats on Starbucks' Frappuccino as well.  

Nevertheless, I feel obliged to point out that the Mocha Frappe has nearly the same nutritional profile as a chocolate shake of the same size.  A medium chocolate shake has 580 calories, 14 grams of fat, and 102 grams of carbohydrates.

The word which came to mind, as I slurped at my Frappe, was "insipid."  Insipidly sweet, insipidly homogenous, insipidly flavored.  It has no bite, which made me wonder if it even had any caffeine in it.  Of course, I'm accustomed to ordering a Frappuccino with an extra shot of espresso added, which definitely adds some body to the drink.  

The McDonalds Mocha Frappe resembles most closely the Starbucks bottled Mocha Frappuccino drink. Both are dumbed-down versions of the original, without any of that scary "flavor" or "texture" that apparently frightens the mocha-drinking masses.  Why do people so desire coffee drinks that do not taste like coffee?  It is a mystery to me, but there you have it.  

A lot of people seem to prefer McCafe drinks over Starbucks drinks because McDonalds lacks the pretention which so infuses Starbucks, and "the Starbucks experience."  Which, you know, fair enough.  I think it's a bit silly to fight your battles based on fast food outlets, but such is the nature of life in America in the year 2010.

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