food
bleimanb | October 23, 2007This was posted by our good friends over at cracked.com. (Actually, I think they are good friends of mine...old college buddies from my days as a lovable scamp at Gtown!) Anyway, worth a read.
(Disclaimer: do not read if you have a weak stomach)
6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World
drorzel | October 18, 2007While we're being all charitable, here's a link to FreeRice's charity vocabulary quiz. It's pretty simple: They give you odd words, you guess the meanings, and for each word you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice to an international aid agency.
Do you have a large vocabulary? Are you looking for an Internet-based way to waste time? Well, here's a way to make that work for you.
(FreeRice link via a mailing list.)
clock | October 18, 2007Nice interview in Grist magazine:
The new book is called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. It's a book that really grew out of questions I heard from readers after Omnivore's Dilemma, which was basically so how do you apply all this? Now that you've looked into the heart of the food system and been into the belly of the beast, how should I eat, and what should I buy, and if I'm concerned about health, what should I be eating? I decided I would see what kind of very practical answers I could give people.
I spent a lot of time looking at the science of nutrition, and learned pretty…
revere | October 15, 2007[Today is Blog Action Day, where bloggers of all political stripes and subject interest are encouraged to put up a post on an environmental topic. Here is the first of two.]
Maryland and its Chesapeake Bay have a water pollution problem. The size of the problem is not chickenshit, either. Or rather, it is chickenshit. 1 billion pounds of it. A billion. That's not chickenshit. Or rather, it is chickenshit. There's really a lot of chickenshit around in Maryland. Maryland regulators have been too chickenshit to regulate the source: the poultry business. Why? Guess:
Maryland requires [waste…
clock | October 9, 2007Another thing I will also have to miss - the Inaugural Event of the 2007-2008 Pizza Lunch Season of the Science Communicators of North Carolina (SCONC), on October 24th at Sigma Xi Center (the same place where we'll have the Science Blogging Conference). Organized by The American Scientist and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the first Pizza Lunch Session will feature Dr.Fred Gould, professor of Entomology and Genetics at NCSU (whose Insect Ecology class blows one's mind - one of the best courses I have ever taken in my life). Fred recently received The George Bugliarello Prize for an…
drorzel | October 6, 2007As noted here in the past, I had horrible stomach problems for a good chunk of last year. This was diagnosed as "Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease" or "GERD," which basically amounts to "Your stomach hurts." After a number of deeply unsatisfactory appointments with a gastroenterologist, and some tests about which the less said the better, it eventually got better, and I haven't had serious problems with it for a while now.
Wednesday, I aggravated an old shoulder injury playing basketball. I separated both shoulders (at different times) playing rugby, back in the day, and every now and then I…
clock | September 25, 2007The highlight of this week's foodblogging event must have been last night's dinner at Piedmont restaurant in Durham.
Anton has several posts about the events of the past couple of days, including a detailed description (including the menu, and exactly who was there - about 30 people) of the dinner itself. I came a little late (because I always get lost in Durham as the layout of that city always stumps Google Maps), but as soon as I started chatting with the wonderful people there and eating the wonderful food, my mood changed for the better and I really enjoyed the evening (yes, while…
revere | September 25, 2007In my other life (science) I've been reading about measurement theory (Dover just reprinted the multivolume set, Foundations of Measurement by Krantz et al.). It's pretty abstract stuff (Archimedean simply ordered groups make an early appearance) but the problem is not at all abstract: how do you assign quantitative representations to qualitative structures. Some things are pretty hard to measure and recently I ran across an interesting example: what determines the perception of "crumbliness" in food. Food researchers wanted to know what determined that perception in whey proteins and…
drorzel | September 24, 2007I was just reminded again of a mysterious thing in Yokohama, that some readers may be able to help with. One of the first nights we were in Yokohama, I went up to the bar on the 70th floor, just to see what it was like. I was neither cool enough nor rich enough to really be there, but they let me sit at the bar and listen to the jazz band they had playing.
When I sat down, I asked the bartender what sort of draft beer they had, and he said "Budweiser." I said "I see a tap over there that says "Guinness," so bring me a Guinness."
Then I watched him go to a cooler, take out a bottle, and pour a…
clock | September 23, 2007The three-day Foodblogging event has started, with a reading/booksigning by Michael Ruhlman at the Regulator bookshop in Durham.
Among those in the audience were Reynolds Price, local bloggers Anton Zuiker and Brian Russell, as well as Anna Kushnir, foodblogger who drove all the way from Boston (OK, via Virginia) to attend the event.
I bought The Reach of a Chef and asked him what is the best way to get a kid/teenager who is interested in cooking started. He said that hands-on experience is essential and that one should carefully pick a course that focuses on basics and not on fancy gimmicks…
drorzel | September 23, 2007At dinner with my parents last night, we were talking about the dinners at Sumiyoshi, the ryokan we stayed at in Takayama. I haven't gotten around to uploading those pictures yet, but I dug this one out:
It's not the best picture of Kate, but she does provide a sense of scale... It was a great meal-- sashimi, tempura, beef cooked at the table, fish, pickles, miso soup, and probably some other things I'm forgetting.
There was also this from the next morning:
Which really just begs to be captioned "I Can Has Toaster," but discretion is the better part of valor.
Breakfast was served in the…
omnibrain | September 20, 2007MMmmmm..... Brains!
Mixed chocolate human mini brains treats with cherries is a set of twelve anatomically correct mini Chocolate Brains. Each brain is 1x1.25x.75"
-via Neatorama-
drorzel | September 12, 2007Two words: Beef Sushi
This was bought at a stand in Takayama, which takes a lot of pride in the local beef (which was, indeed, excellent). I'm not sure it's completely raw-- another place had a poster showing similar sushi pieces being roasted with a blowtorch, but alas, they were closed for renovations. I couldn't see exactly how this was prepared, but the color here mostly comes from a thick soy-sauce glaze put on the meat before it was served.
Even if it wasn't actually raw, it was certainly extremely rare. And goooooood....
omnibrain | September 10, 2007According to MSNBC:
A small number of companies have linked health factors to what employees pay for benefits, but the practice is expected to grow now that some federal rules have been finalized, spelling out what's allowed by law. Employee advocates worry that other anti-discrimination laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act won't cover the person who is 20 or 30 pounds overweight.
I can't think of one legitimate reason why people shouldn't be charged more for living an unhealthy life style. After all, the inflated health care costs are in large part due to peoples unhealthy life…
clock | September 5, 2007Before we focus on science, and while the weather is still nice, we (and by "we" I mean "bloggers in the Triangle area of North Carolina") will have some other kind of bloggy fun, the one that involves taste buds!
Yes, join us for a three-day Foodblogging event on September 23-25, 2007, with the special guest-star: the famous chef-author-blogger Michael Ruhlman. We'll eat, drink, read, chat and blog while celebrating and promoting the locally grown food prepared by local chef celebrities.
Anton has all the details - the seating is limited so sign up quickly. Yummy!
clock | August 28, 2007Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma got out in paperback today, so if you have not read it yet, now is the time.
Also, in his mailing-list letter, Pollan announces that he has "...just completed a new book, a short manifesto about diet and health called "In Defense of Food." It's scheduled to be published January 1."
On the Farm Bill, currently going through the Congress, he writes:
The House Bill was a disappointment in many ways, leaving the current subsidy system undisturbed, though there are a handful of creative provisions tucked into it regarding school lunch and local food…
moleculeoftheday | August 9, 20074-ethylphenol is a simple substituted phenol. It smells like band-aids.
You can find it in some wines or beers - rarely, this is intentional, and provides an interesting flavor at high dilution. Usually, though, it's because someone was homebrewing and contaminated the wort or must with Brettanomyces yeasts, which produce the stuff.
Interestingly, the related m-cresol is used as a preservative in medical insulin, which smells just like band-aids. The smell is defeinitely reminiscient of phenol - which I've smelled. Haven't smelled either of these two, though.
moleculeoftheday | August 7, 20075-nitro-2-propoxyaniline is a potent artificial sweetener:
It's banned in the States. Nitroaromatics tend to be tox liabilities. One toxic nitroaromatic with a very specific mechanism of action is 2,4-dinitrophenol.
revere | August 7, 2007We all know we should eat lots of fruits and vegetables. I do it because I happen to like fruits and vegetables, but there are good health reasons, too. But my father always said that with diet as with life, "Everything in moderation." A whole lot of fruit and vegetables is not necessarily a whole lot better than just enough. It may not be better at all, and if they take the place of other sources of essential nutrients, maybe worse.
First a disclaimer. I'm a physician. By definition that means I know practically nothing about nutrition or diet and don't even know what I don't know. But I do…
clock | August 1, 2007I started my stay in San Francisco with a dinner at Incanto and ended it tonight with a dinner at Incanto again. Last time, the duck fries were not on the menu, but this time I had better luck. Delicious!