food
revere | April 17, 2010It would be surprising if failure to fund local public health and neutering regulation would result in a decrease in foodborne illness. Alas, there is nothing surprising about CDC's latest report on incidence of foodborne illness in the US. They put the best face on it they could, pointing to a decrease in E. coli O157H7 cases, but they've seen that kind of progress in E. coli before only to slip back.
In reality we aren't sure how much food poisoning occurs each year. Most of it is self-limited and never comes to the attention of medical or public health authorities. It never gets counted.…
pronald | April 13, 2010> WASHINGTON- (AP) The leader of the United States Department of
> Agriculture's National Institute for Food Research, Dr. Roger Beachy,
> admitted that the release of last week's request for proposals (RFP)
> from scientific researchers was "simply a gag to lighten the research
> funding environment" and that the real one will be released this week.
>
> "Researchers are too stressed out; it seems that all they do is write
> grants. The request for proposals to address extremely finite subject
> areas would alienate 95% of them and give them all an opportunity…
clock | April 9, 2010The best challah I ever tasted, baked by my daughter.:
Super-secret recipe and special braiding technique: the mother-daughter team produced a work of art tonight
omnibrain | April 6, 2010I'm seriously considering dropping science (although the methods might come in handy) and taking up food. Check out my latest creation - a cold smoker:
The idea here is that you generate smoke in the green, steel, eggish shaped thing - and then pipe it into the 55 gallon barrel where some salmon, ham, or other yummy food is waiting. The smoke is cooled to 80-90 degrees so that the food is not actually 'cooked'. Typically the smoking lasts for 8,12, or even 48 hours. I'm seriously looking forward to the results.
What would you do if you quit your career? What's your 'Plan B' ??
sastyk | April 5, 2010During the period of my life when I was a professional smart-ass (ie, my adolescence), I used to complain to my mother that even the day after she went grocery shopping, there was never any food in the house, only the component ingredients of food. As I teenager I wanted to eat like my peers who seemed to have an endless supply of chips and soda around. To have to come home from school and actually scramble eggs or make a sandwich seemed horribly unfair. My mother and step-mother expressed little sympathy.
It was only later that I realized how central this "buying the ingredients of food…
revere | April 5, 2010We are now through with two major religious holidays, Easter and Passover. I dislike both holidays, Easter because it is soaked in images of cruelty and mythology, Passover because it is a nationalistic orgy. Now that I've offended half my readership, let me say something positive about something I once thought pretty silly: a version of Coca Cola branded as "Kosher for Passover." It's a small thing, to be sure, but an interesting one, at least to me. This post started with a research highlight I read over the weekend in the journal Nature, summarizing work published in Pharmacology,…
revere | March 29, 2010If you eat raw shellfish you are asking for trouble. I know, I know. There are people who love rawbars and think nothing is better than letting a raw oyster slide down their gullet. The FDA is warning consumers and retailers nationwide, though, that they might love nothing less that what could happen if they eat oysters recently harvested near Port Sulphur, Louisiana from an oyster bed known as Area 7. Not that if you do it will likely kill you. But you might wish it would, because these oysters are suspected in an outbreak of norovirus.
We've dealt with norovirus here (and in real life) a…
revere | March 22, 2010I'm a coffee drinker. I'm not finicky about grind or bean or method of preparation, although I guess I have some preferences. There is one thing that coffee has to have for me, though, and that it's strong. Very, very strong. The spoon has to stand up in the cup by itself. My usual cup in the morning is from an ordinary drip pot with whatever coffee is around. We usually buy it already ground and it's either a mail order Green Mountain espresso or sumatra or a Starbucks Goldcoast blend or Trader Joe's Bay Blend. Mostly dark roast and extra bold. Nothing fancy. Just good, strong coffee.
Wnich…
pronald | March 16, 2010Tomorrow's Table's Swiss-Gruyere pie made it to the pi day Pie Bake off finals.
If you have time to peruse the entries, please do. Vote here.
jstemwedel | March 13, 2010Longtime readers of this blog may remember last year's orgy of pies on the run-up to Pi Day (March 14th, or 3-14). This March at Casa Free-Ride, there's been less pie making, in large part due to the fact that I'm no longer on sabbatical (either from my job or from coaching soccer).
But the bake-off is on again, so I figured that I needed to feed you all one really good pie (or pie recipe, anyway).
This pie melds three flavors that play very well together: rich chocolate, tart cherries, and almonds. As a bonus, it puts those flavors together in a pie that is rich but not heavy, one that…
ddobbs | March 12, 2010Never thought I'd run an ad on my blog. But this is just so ... satisfying. And quite pretty. My favorite part is when the dog's feet leave the ground.
h/t @taylordobbs
sastyk | March 12, 2010The Miami-Herald is reporting today that food stamp use has more than doubled among Floridians in the last three years:
More than 2.5 million Floridians are on food stamps, up from three years ago where 1.2 million residents received assistance.
That's according to records kept by the Department of Children and Families, which administers the program.
DCF Secretary George Sheldon told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Tuesday that Florida's food stamp rolls grew the fastest in the nation since 2007.
Some of this is due to increased efforts on the part of states to expand access, but it is also,…
revere | March 12, 2010When last we visited the US food safety system during the Bush administration it was busy serving up peanut butter with a side of Salmonella. That one caused over 4 thousand product recalls, 700 Salmonella cases and at least 9 deaths. Now it's Salmonella serovar Tennessee in hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), a common flavor enhancer used in all sorts of food products, including, according to the FDA, soups, sauces, chilis, stews, hot dogs, gravies, seasoned snack foods, dips and dressings. An important difference -- so far -- is that there are no illnesses traced to the contaminated…
cagapakis | March 11, 2010The fight over genetically modified foods, whether they're safe, healthy, good for the environment, or just plain "unnatural," has been going on for a long time now. Most people in the scientific community agree that genetic modification in general is a good thing, able to create crops that need less water, less fertilizer, less pesticide, or that contain extra vitamins and nutrients that are otherwise difficult to come by in certain parts of the world. Many would also argue that fighting against such life-saving, often environmentally sustainable modifications is a sign of an ignorant anti-…
pronald | March 10, 2010 For the 2010 Pi day bakeoff, I baked a Swiss chard-Gruyere pie.
Shown here is the backdrop to our garden:a mural on the side of our barn, painted with California poppies, rice plants, sunflowers and (look closely) a red double helix. Artist: Jim McCall, Elastic Media.
Here is the recipe:
First, gather as many ingredients as you can from your garden. In our garden, I found multi-colored swiss chard, Kale, chives, thyme and parsley.
Next, prepare the crust:
1 cup barley flour2 cups white flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup unsalted margarine, frozen
grated rind of 1…
aardvarchaeology | March 9, 2010
Christian fundamentalists like to believe that homosexuality is an illness that can -- and should -- be cured. The factual belief is contradicted by a solid scientific consensus, and the value judgement is widely considered to be a repressive holdover from the Bronze Age.
The makers of the French orange-based soft drink Orangina seem to agree with the fundies' unscientific belief that homosexuality can be induced post-natally in a fully formed individual. They, however, are certainly not homophobes. On the contrary, in a recent major ad campaign they invite consumers to use Orangina to "Wake…
pronald | March 5, 2010Thank you Bill Gates for your work on behalf of farmers and.... for blogging on our book, Tomorrow's Table!
If you don't have time to read the full reviews, here are a few excerpts:
"This is an important book for anyone who wants to learn about the science of seeds and the challenges faced by farmers... I think anyone who reads this book will be convinced of the authors' sincerity and intelligence - even if, like me, you never try any of the cool-sounding recipes...
I gained an understanding of the history of organic farming and learned about some of the very clever ways organic farmers…
sastyk | February 26, 2010Three feet and counting so far. The prediction for the "upper elevations" (that would be us) is that we could get another 1-2 feet before tomorrow night. So while I am lost in meditation of the stunning beauty that surrounds me and trying to locate my woodpile, our car and the dog, all of whom are largely encompassed and hidden by snow, I leave you with some alternate reading.
First of all, in the "deeply sorrowful things" category, Leila, who posted at ye olde blogge as "Bedouina" and "Leila" died this fall. I hadn't realized it - and I feel terrible that I did not realize. The last…
sastyk | February 21, 2010Because of the enormous impact of agriculture on climate change, pick up any book about "green" solutions and you'll find the suggestions that you grow a vegetable garden. Bang into the "we can't go on as we are" end of the environmental movement (mine), and you'll see the general assumption that growing food is part of any process of adaptation to lower resource use.
This often then morphs into the assumption that all of us should be able to grow all of our food, or a vast majority of it - that sustainability means the country life for everyone. You might think that because I do produce a…