food
clock | October 5, 2006We are what we eat: corn and petroleum
Interview by David Auerbach in this week's Independent Weekly.
moleculeoftheday | September 29, 2006Another member of the unusual collection of decent-smelling thiols (take a look at the previous entries on diallyl sulfide and ethyl thiolactate) is furfuryl mercaptan:
Furfuryl mercaptan smells of coffee. You'd expect it to smell awful, but it doesn't. Fragrance and flavor people talk about this stuff to no end in trade mags like Perfumer and Flavorist:(See here and here for the article refrenced below)
"... I have smelt
Corruption in the dish, incense in the latrine, the sewer in
the incense, the smell of sweet soap in
the woodpath..."
-- T.S. Eliot, "Murder In The Cathedral" (1934)
Eliot…
moleculeoftheday | September 27, 2006Check out Khymos, a molecular gastronomy website, as I work my way through it too (thanks Jase!)
clock | September 14, 2006Tonight, I felt I needed to regress into my childhood so I fixed myself something I haven't eaten since I was a little kid - chocolate cream-o-wheat! Here is the recipe for half the quantity I used to eat as a kid in one sitting:
Put a bar (100g) of bittersweet chocolate (or less - I like it superchocolatey) and 4 tablespoons (or less - I like it supersweet)of sugar into 250ml (1/4L) of cold milk. Put on the stove and turn on high. Star mixing continuously. When the milk boils, add a heaping tablespoon (25g or a little more) to the mix. Cut the heat down to Medium and keep mixing…
revere | September 4, 2006Look, obesity is a problem. No denying it. But.
When the chairperson of an international conference (diabetologist Paul Zimmet from Monash University in Australia) tells a meeting of 2500 experts and health officials there is an "insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity [that] is now engulfing the entire world," and it is "as big a threat as global warming and bird flu," it kind of takes your breath away. (via Globe and Mail)
We talk a lot about bird flu here, so I won't bother to argue the inaptness (ineptness?) of the comparison. But obesity is as big a threat as global warming?
I - don't…
revere | September 4, 2006I brought this up once before and it got a negative reaction that surprised me. So I am prepared for more of the same. I am undeterred. So here it is: Cultured meat. I rather like the idea: growing meat in tissue culture.
From a (largely negative) article on Alternet:
Take some stem cells, or myoblasts, which are the precursors to muscle cells. Set them on "scaffolding" that they can attach to, like a flat sheet of plastic that the cells can later be slid off of. Put them in a "growth medium" -- some kind of fluid supplying the nutrients that blood would ordinarily provide. "Exercise" them…
clock | August 31, 2006Michael Pollan, author of "Omnivore's Dilemma" and other good, thought-provoking books, will be on a speaking tour this Fall. Click on the link for details of your place. He will be in my neck of the woods in October:
October 11, 2006, 7 pm: Chapel Hill, NC; Morehead Planetarium at the University of North Carolina
October 10, 2006, 6 pm: Durham, NC; SEEDS Harvest Dinner
You bet I'll be there.
clock | August 27, 2006Amanda, a fellow hot-pepper-lover, reminds me that I have not finished my Hot Pepper series. It is supposed to be a THREE-part series, but I only wrote two parts so far, the introductory (personal) post and answering the question why are peppers hot (quite a popular post of mine, linked and e-mailed around a lot, I noticed) - an evolutionary account from peppers' perspective.
I still owe you the third part trying to explain why people (at least some people, like Amanda and myself) like to eat hot food. It turned out to be a much more exhaustive area of research (and dispute) than I…
clock | August 26, 2006Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Troy Duster, Elizabeth Ransom, Winona LaDuke, Peter Singer, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Carlo Petrini, Eliot Coleman & Jim Hightower recently participated in a Nation forum: One Thing to Do About Food. Here are a few excerpts - go read the whole thing:
"Once you learn how our modern industrial food system has transformed what most Americans eat, you become highly motivated to eat something else."
"....the American food system is a game played according to a precise set of rules that are written by the federal government with virtually…
clock | August 24, 2006Now you know where I was last night instead of blogging. Local North Carolina wine and local North Carolina cheeses and local handpicked blueberries and local grass-grown beef and local organic potatoes, tomatoes and squash....and discussing "Omnivore's Dilemma" with the locally grown, organic and sustainable (grass-fed?) science writers of North Carolina.
moleculeoftheday | August 17, 2006Diacetyl is a unique molecule because it's a simple enough structure that you could expect some biochemical pathways to find their way there via glycolysis or fermentation (sure enough, yeast does. more in a minute), and it has the ineffable aroma of butter
Predictably, certain flavor chemists have made liberal use of it (in the cloying artificial butter flavor that is ubiquitous in microwave and movie popcorn).
As mentioned before, yeast can produce some diacetyl in the process of malolactic fermentation. Many winemakers have taken advantage of this, especially producers of the buttery-oaky…
drorzel | August 14, 2006Beer is wonderful stuff. Not only is it the subject of the oldest known recipe, some have argued that agricultural civilization started in order to brew beer-- see, for example, the comments in this article. And, remarkably, despite the inclusion of both "alcohol" and "carbonated beverages" in the list of things that people with heartburn should avoid, beer is one of two things I've found that consistently make my stomach feel better-- if I have a beer or two, nothing else seems to really cause problems.
(The other consistent solution, for those who care, is physical exercise. Even when my…
drorzel | August 11, 2006Well, OK, you might want to wait until after work. But if you're into wine, you might be interested in The Naked Vine, a wine-recommending blog started by a guy from a mailing list that I'm on. The origin in explained in the mission statement:
The August 2006 issue of Gourmet magazine has a sidebar - "Best Wines for Grilling." Don't get me wrong - I enjoy that magazine. I leaf through it every month. I'm an amateur foodie - and I love new ideas. That said, when the cheapest recommended selection on a rack of pinots to accompany your freshly flame-caressed breaded pork chop is close to $30,…
clock | August 2, 2006When I saw this article in SEED Maagazine, I had only one thought - Mokie-Koke!
Readers of science fiction know what I am talking about. I was reminded of "The Merchant's War", the 1984 sequel to the 1952 brilliant dystopia "The Space Merchants", the book that beat "1984" and "Brave New World" in its accuracy of prediction. The initial novel - one of the all-time-greats of the genre, was written by Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth. The sequel, 32 years later, was written by Pohl alone.
It's been at least 15 years since I last read The Merchants' War, but if I remember correctly, each…
clock | July 21, 2006
Some plants do not want to get eaten. They may grow in places difficult to approach, they may look unappetizing, or they may evolve vile smells. Some have a fuzzy, hairy or sticky surface, others evolve thorns. Animals need to eat those plants to survive and plants need not be eaten by animals to survive, so a co-evolutionary arms-race leads to ever more bizzare adaptations by plants to deter the animals and ever more ingenious adaptations by animals to get around the deterrents.
One of the most efficient ways for a plant to deter a herbivore is to divert one of its existing biochemical…
clock | July 21, 2006I had lunch with Anton yesterday. We talked about the upcoming busy blogging Fall and he showed me his new book.
We ate in my neck of the woods, at Town Hall Grill in Southern Village in Chapel Hill. Anton brought his laptop - the wi-fi signal is strong, so, after Brian and Ruby get married tomorrow (OK, they already are), Brian can add this restaurant to the Chapel Hill Wireless map.
Being very hungry, and knowing that the food there is delicious, I came prepared. While Anton had their lightly-battered fish and chips, I ordered a NY strip.
When the food arrived I reached down into my…
clock | July 19, 2006This is pretty common knowledge, but it's nice to see it supported by data:
In `food deserts' of city, healthy eating a mirage:
For African-Americans who live in "food deserts" on Chicago's South and West Sides, where fast-food restaurants are plentiful and grocery stores are scarce, a lack of choices is more than an inconvenience. A provocative new study concludes that residents are more likely to die prematurely from diabetes, cancer and other ailments.
----------snip-----------
Starting with the fundamental premise that the well-being of urban communities is a block-by-block phenomenon,…
stcynic | June 19, 2006It's been a while since I wrote about one of my great passions, BBQ. This weekend I made the best ribs I've ever made with a few minor little experimental adjustments. I tend not to follow the same rules every time, I like to try different things and see how they work out. A great source for such ideas is any book by Steven Raichlen, three of which I ordered a couple months ago. Anyway, for any BBQ afficianados out there, here's what I did that turned out so perfect.
First, I soaked the wood chips (hickory) in red wine instead of water. This changed the flavor in subtle ways. Second, I added…
drorzel | June 8, 2006Because it's not science without graphs:
(Click for larger image.)
Basically the same deal as the last time I posted one of these. It pretty much breaks into three parts: 1) The initial "eat less and exercise" weight-loss plan, with a linear slope through January and February, 2) The "heartburn diet" plan, when the gastroenterologists made me really paranoid about food triggers, and I really restricted what I ate, leading to the steeper downward slope, and 3) The "screw the doctors" plan, where I gave up on trying to find foods that would eliminate the problem, and started eating a bit more…
drorzel | June 7, 2006A little while back, Eugene Wallingford wrote about the dumbing-down of cookbooks as a metaphor for computer science education. As we get a fair number of student in introductory calculus-based physics who can barely take a derivative of a polynomial, I have some sympathy with what he describes.
The cookbook thing, though, is interesting from a different angle. The article Eugene linked has some interesting quotes from people in the cooking business, including this one:
"We're now two generations into a lack of culinary knowledge being passed down from our parents," said Richard Ruben, a New…