food
drorzel | February 26, 2009Prior to SteelyKid's arrival, the "Pasta with Butter, Sage, and Parmesan" recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything had become one of our staple recipes. It's dead simple to make, we always have the stuff on hand (I've been planting sage in pots outside for the last couple of years), and it's very tasty.
Unfortunately, SteelyKid reacts badly to dairy, even when Kate's the one eating the dairy. So, parmesan is right out, along with many, many other favorite foods. In an effort to preserve the sanity of the adults in the house, I've been trying to find ways to expand our repertoire of…
clock | February 24, 2009Genetic Manipulation of Pest Species: Ecological and Social Challenges:
In the past 10 years major advances have been made in our ability to build transgenic pest strains that are conditionally sterile, harbor selfish genetic elements, and express anti-pathogen genes. Strategies are being developed that involve release into the environment of transgenic pest strains with such characteristics. These releases could provide more environmentally benign pest management and save endangered species, but steps must be taken to insure that this is the case and that there are no significant health or…
clock | February 22, 2009This morning we took it easy - a little shopping for kids, some cakes at Veniero (white is shampita, brown is Napoleon), a little walk, including past the Museum Of Sex (did not have time to go in, though), with the special exhibit about sex in animals (including this, of course). Then a long wait at the new JetBlue terminal at JFK which is nice, big and technically very modern. Now at home, exhausted - tomorrow is a new (work)day!
clock | February 21, 2009A couple of times over the past few years I tried to find if there was a Serbian restaurant in New York City, but Google could not find one. So, I gave up looking and assumed there wasn't one. And that was true - until recently. Last night at the meetup, Nikola Trbovic told me there is one now - opened just last June: Kafana on Avenue C (between 8th and 9th Street, see reviews here and here).
So, tonight, after watching the amazing August: Osage County on Broadway, The Bride Of Coturnix and I went to 'Kafana' to give it a try. And we were not disappointed - the atmosphere was pleasant and the…
revere | February 20, 2009Nothing like a massive food contamination outbreak from a plant in your state to concentrate the minds of state legislators (more here and links therein). Especially when an important industry is involved. We're talking Georgia peanuts, of course. Peanuts employ an estimated 50,000 workers in Georgia, accounting for some $2.5 billion in the state's economy. So yesterday the Georgia Senate unanimously passed a food safety bill and sent it on to the Georgia House. On the surface it seems like a good move, but its chief sponsor was a Republican, so that automatically makes me look closer. I'm…
revere | February 17, 2009The plant in Blakely, Georgia that was the apparent source of the salmonella peanut butter outbreak didn't make peanut butter for retail consumption. It made bulk peanut butter and peanut butter paste which became an ingredient in many other products. The number of products is now around 2000, the largest product recall in US history. So if you bought peanut butter retail you're safe, right? Not so fast.
The Peanut Corporation of America (RIP; filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Friday) owned another plant in the Texas panhandle. Maybe you didn't know that. Neither did the Texas authorities,…
revere | February 15, 2009Mix a little hard line nationalism with religious fundamentalism and what do you get? The formula for cow piss soft drink:
A hardline Hindu organisation, known for its opposition to "corrupting" Western food imports, is planning to launch a new soft drink made from cow's urine, often seen as sacred in parts of India.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Corps, said the bovine beverage is undergoing laboratory tests for the next 2 to 3 months but did not give a specific date for its commercial release. (Reuters)
The Hindu Taliban want to desecularize Indian society and…
revere | February 14, 2009Another death to add to the nine already attributed to the peanut cum salmonella affair. This one is the company itself and the jobs of its employees. The Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) is going belly up. I don't mean Chapter 11 (reorganizing under the bankruptcy laws). I mean Chapter 7, as in liquidating. I wonder if this is an effort to wring as much private cash out of the business as possible before it gets its nuts sued off of it.
So one company, many jobs, the deaths of 9 people and the illness of more than 600 others, half of them children. In dollar terms there's also the lost…
revere | February 13, 2009People who make products containing peanut butter are seeing a dramatic drop in sales because of the salmonella problem (other posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here). That includes jarred peanut butters found in supermarkets (down 22% over the same period last year), although none are known to be contaminated. The Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) only sold peanut butter in bulk, to institutions and as an ingredient (peanut paste). Consumers aren't differentiating. This seems like a fairly prudent behavior, since everyday new products are being recalled, now surpassing a stunning…
revere | February 8, 2009The peanut butter with a side of salmonella story just keeps getting worse (other posts here, here, here, here, here, here). The toll so far is 8 dead, 575 confirmed salmonella cases (and undoubtedly many more never reported) and 1550 products recalled, one of the largest recalls in US history. The Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) plant in Blakely, Georgia, sold peanut butter in bulk to institutions (like nursing homes and schools) and peanut paste and similar ingredients to many other companies. And even as it did so, its own and government agency records showed there was a problem. The…
revere | February 4, 2009The financial industry (what's left of it) now knows what the food industry is learning (or never learned; take your pick). Effective regulation is good for business. Or rather, poor regulation is (very) bad for business. Latest exhibit: the gigantic recall of peanut products (international in scope: here's a long list of newly recalled Canadian products) after a relatively modest player (less than 1% of peanut products in US) ran a sloppy operation (for years), wasn't caught and now is dragging down everyone:
The economic wallop from a salmonella outbreak in peanut products continues to…
jstemwedel | January 31, 2009Robert Burns's birthday, which was January 25, is an important day for Scottish celebration and food.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Give it a chance.
So, back at ScienceOnline'09, I was talking with AcmeGirl about marking the 25th with some lovely Scottish food. She was talking about haggis. In the Free-Ride house, seeing as how we don't do meat, we don't do canonical haggis either. (In 1997, in Scotland, I had a fabulous vegetarian haggis, but I doubt I could reproduce it in my own kitchen, at least on the first try.) So I was thinking maybe tatties and neeps (potatoes and turnips…
revere | January 28, 2009Even as the the peanut cum salmonella recall spreads (sorry, couldn't resist), we learn that the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Georgia thought to be its source has a history of "problems":
The plant in Georgia that produced peanut butter tainted by salmonella has a history of sanitation lapses and was cited repeatedly in 2006 and 2007 for having dirty surfaces and grease residue and dirt buildup throughout the plant, according to health inspection reports. Inspection reports from 2008 found the plant repeatedly in violation of cleanliness standards.
Inspections of the plant…
ksharpe | January 27, 2009Review by Maria Brumm, from Green Gabbro
Originally posted on January 23, 2009, 5:29 AM
Since today is National Pie Day, I thought I would list a few of my favorite cookbooks. In particular, the ones that have taught me to bake pie. The ones with science.
My staple meringue pie recipe comes from The New Best Recipe. The Meyer lemon meringue pie I made from this recipe for Thanksgiving several years ago is what kicked off my love affair with meringue pies, and with meringue in general. But before I can tell you about this cookbook, I need to tell you about seismology.
Seismologists set up…
revere | January 26, 2009The peanut butter/peanut paste ingredient based salmonella outbreak has been in the news lately and we've discussed it here (and here, here, here, here, here). There are now about 500 reported cases and six deaths. That's a case fatality ratio of just over 1%. So what if there were a disease outbreak of 100,000 cases with a case fatality ratio of 20%? I think we'd be pretty alarmed. But it happened in 2005. And it happened in 2006 and 2007 and last year, 2008 And it's happening, now, too. It isn't salmonella or or even HIV/AIDS, although it is estimated to kill more people in the US than both…
revere | January 23, 2009PetSmart's Grreat Choice Dog Biscuit isn't such a great choice for fido because they contain peanut paste with salmonella. It may also not be so Grreat for fido's owners:
Dr. Stephen Sundlof, a veterinarian who is the director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said that the risk to animals is minimal but that people who handle contaminated treats could come in contact with the salmonella bacteria.
"It's especially important that children wash their hands after feeding treats to pets" because the bacteria could be on the surface, Sundlof said. (CNN)
PetSmart has…
clock | January 22, 2009
Friday morning was really, really cold (for North Carolina), so what better way to start off ScienceOnline09 than at Counter Culture Coffee where about 25 or so participants (and several other people - this is an open event) showed up bright and early to learn about the science (and business) of coffee.
Coffee is one of those things that you just drink, unthinkingly, at the time of the morning when it is hard to think anyway. So this was quite an eye-opener - learning what happens between the moment the coffee plant is planted and the moment when you taste the coffee. And there are many…
revere | January 21, 2009While we were busy with the pageant of the new administration, we are still cleaning up the messes from past administrations (not just Bush although Bush was the examplar of incompetence). Past messes like a broken food safety system. The latest example, of course, is the peanut butter and peanut paste salmonella debacle (see here, here, here), which just keeps getting worse. Bulk supplied institutional peanut butter containers were the first to be implicated and the connection was first made from nursing homes that used these. Supermarket peanut butter sold to consumers wasn't implicated.…
revere | January 18, 2009The four month old salmonella outbreak (here, here) that has already claimed at least five lives seems now to be an "ingredient" affair. The ingredient is peanut butter made in a Georgia plant of the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) and sold to food distributors in bulk for use in institutions and not to consumers but also as as a peanut paste ingredient used other foods like cookies, crackers, cereal, candy, ice cream, baked goods or cooking sauces that are sold to consumers. As a result, CDC is now advising consumers to postpone eating products that contain peanut butter (such as cookies…
jstemwedel | January 16, 2009Abel Pharmboy set up a wine-tasting for this evening with a selection of wines from Wine Authorities for us to taste.
Abel professes to be an "amateur" at wine-tasting, but I'm coming here from Northern California, so I have to represent! Also, after this morning's coffee tasting, I'm kind of sold on the idea that looking, smelling, and tasting carefully can give me something like a better appreciation of the complexities of fermented grape juice. So, I'm going to attempt something more detailed.
I'm taking my guidance from this article, and will be describing:
Color: (what color the wine…