Vegetarian Nightmare

Shit, the science always gets ya in the end, doesn't it?
I haven't read this in depth, only skimmed, but my takeaway (the U.S. isn't Australia) is look for grass fed beef.

Viral Dog Video O' Teh Week

I have never had so many friends share one of my found videos before. Of course, it is raining really hard, not much to do.

Geoduck!

What would Julia say? Well, whatever she would say, at least I could understand it. I am glad the French know how to have fun, but I would like to know what he does next.

I'll Never Eat

at any of the world's 50 best restaurants, but never mind, I have the French Laundry cookbook, and actually prepared something from it once. Can't remember what.

Nastiest Restaurant Review I've Ever Read

So nasty, in fact, it sounds truthful.
Nello (I've actually heard of it, though not that the food is terrible), from the NYT.
Tidbit:

During the day, the crowd is women who shop and women who dress like their daughters and men who meet them for lunch. There are air kisses and the tinkle of tennis bracelets against wine glasses.

You Know It's A Good Day...

When while cleaning out the secondary silverware drawer, you find your 40-plus-year-old cream cheese pastry recipe. I swear to goddess, it's the best. Like buttah, only bettah, Sweetie.

Uh, okay, all the little tidbits to make with it, but no basic recipe. So I found what looks right on Cooks.com.

My recall is that this pastry needs to be chilled at least two hours before working with it, then the more folding and rolling you do, the more flaky layers there are, unlike regular pie crust, which becomes tough with too much handling.

Anyhoo, Sugar

Cream Cheese Pastry

1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened
□   1 c. butter, softened
□   2 c. flour
□   3/4 tsp. salt

Combine cream cheese and butter. Mix until well blended. Add flour and salt; mix well. Form into a ball; chill. Divide dough in half. On lightly floured surface, roll out each half to a 12" circle. Place in 2 (9") pie plates, trim and flute edges. Prick bottom and sides with fork. Bake at 450 degrees for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Sausage Rollups

Make and chill pastry dough.

Simmer 2 doz. small link sausages in a few tablespoons cold water 4-5 min.
Drain, brown lightly.
Cool and cut into bite-sized pieces, about 1 1/2 ".
Divide chilled pastry in four pieces, roll each 1/8 inch thick. Cut in small rectangles just big enough to wratp sausage pieces (2" X 2 1/2" is about right).
Moisten one edge, roll up pastry around sausage, press edge to seal and pinch dough at ends. Place seam side down, on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in moderate oven (375F) 15-20 min. Makes about two doz.

And just because I love ya, I also looked up the other long-lost favorite, Dill-Cottage Cheese Batter Bread.

DILLY CASSEROLE BREAD

Printed from COOKS.COM

---

□   2 - 2 1/4 c. unsifted flour
□   2 tbsp. sugar
□   1 tsp. salt
□   1 tbsp. instant minced onion (optional)
□   2 tsp. dill seed
□   1 tbsp. dill weed
□   1/4 tsp. baking soda
□   1 pkg. active dry yeast
□   1 tbsp. softened butter
□   1/4 c. very hot tap water
□   1 c. creamed cottage cheese, room temperature
□   1 egg, room temperature

In a large bowl thoroughly mix 1/4 cup flour, sugar, salt, instant onion, dill seed, dill weed, baking soda and undissolved yeast. Add butter.Gradually add very hot tap water to dry ingredients and beat 2 minutes at medium speed of electric mixer, scraping bowl occasionally. Add cottage cheese, egg and 1/2 cup of flour or enough flour to make a thick batter.
Beat at high speed for 2 minutes. Stir in enough additional flour to make a stiff batter.
Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Stir batter down, turn into a greased 1 1/2 quart casserole. Cover and let rise until double in bulk, about 50 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until top is golden brown. Turn out of pan immediately and cool on wire rack.
Note early. Easy and great!

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P.S. I love the intertubes.

The Age Of Dread

The more information we have, the more we appreciate our fragility, a commenter observes about this riveting piece in Wired about the newest potential wheat scourge, a threat that could cause world-wide famine.
Never mind, science will solve it, right?

Mossoleum

Totally off topic. So far off topic, I may myself be becoming off topic. I am sooo sick of politics.
So, without further ado:
DIY o' teh week.
I'm not much on little home projects, but I might try this. This and the Thai coconut shrimp recipe a friend posted.

Coconut Shrimp
.

Thai Coconut Shrimp
1 1/2 Cups Coconut milk from a can (not a whole can I don't think.)
2 Tablespoons sherry or saki
1 1/2 teaspoons Sriracha or similar chili sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Mix the above together for sauce. Taste it to see if it has the right amount of zip for you. Add chilli sauce if needed.

1 1/2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/2 Tablespoons water
Mix this by itself for a thickening agent for later. If you use light coconut milk, make a good mix of 1/3 C of cornstarch with equal parts water. I mix this much anyway just in case the whole thing doesn't thicken enough.

2 pounds shrimp peeled and deveined
2 Tablespoons oil (peanut preferred)
2 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon minced garlic (I like more.)
1/2 T or more minced fresh ginger root (I like more.)

Stir fry the above until the shrimp are pink, approximately 3 minutes.

Add the following:
1/3 C chopped fresh basil
1/3 C chopped fresh mint
1/3 C chopped green onions

Toss the above in the stir fry for about 15 to 20 seconds until the leaves just wilt.

Add coconut milk stuff and heat until it boils. Add the thickening cornstarch agent and stir until it gets a little creamy. If it's not, add a little more thickener.

Squeeze in some lime, and serve on rice or noodles. You can top with chopped peanuts or garnish with lime wedges. I just like to eat it.

Sushi Etiquette

Here it is for those of you who care. I do not. Sashimi, maybe.

You Can Eat A Meal At Ikea

Or make a feast there. That is, if you like their meatballs. I personally do not. I liked my mother's meatballs. She made sour cream by buying cream and letting it sit at room temperature for a day or so. She called them Swedish meatballs. I don't think there were any Swedes or Scandinavians of any sort in our mutt-mix of a family.

Erm, About That Salmon

In many cases, fresh salmon has about twice the environmental impact as frozen salmon.

Snack O' Teh Week

 Recipe
1. Go to store
2. Buy some grapes
3. Freeze 'em
4. Eat 'em

Stop Eating Fish?

It's written in tabloid, semi-hysterical style. And rightly so.

Today, governments provide nearly $30 billion in subsidies each year--about one-third of the value of the global catch--that keep fisheries going, even when they have overexploited their resource base. As a result, there are between two and four times as many boats as the annual catch requires, and yet, the funds to “build capacity” keep coming...

But eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee.

There's hope, though, in the last paragraph. If governments start behaving responsibly. Yeah.

Cannoli!

I ate my first cannoli while visiting friends in Chicago. They lived down the street from an Italian bakery.
Crazy Legs Conti won this year's cannoli eating contest during NYC's celebration of the feast of San Gennaro. He ate 20 in 6 minutes, but I think this picture is from an earlier year, because the image I saw on the Dish had him in Mickey Mouse ears.

Easiest Pie Chart Evah!

From Laughing Squid via The Dish.

Bad Farmer, Bad Farmer

Not every well-intentioned person agrees with Michael Pollan (who I personally love for Botany of Desire)
but this guy is worth attending to because he knows whereof he speaks.
Sample:

Biotech crops actually cut the use of chemicals, and increase food safety. Are people who refuse to use them my moral superiors? Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons. The biggest environmental harm I have done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river. 

Yeah, I know it's from the American Enterprise Institute's magazine American. But Obama is a model for listening to the opposition, and I only caught the guy in one slightly misleading thing, the hypothetical deployment of 7,500 trucks filled with manure to Missouri is not anything anyone but he has envisioned. He does it for rhetorical purposes.

UPDATE: Scratch that. Sigh. Okay, somebody who actually read Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma weighs in at The Dish, which is where I stole the above from.

This has got to be your worst post that I've read, Patrick, and not worthy of the Dish. The very book that's being attacked here refutes almost every argument presented. Did anyone actually read the damn book? This author is a vicious and willfully ignorant denialist, and his supposed indictments of Pollan are so tone-deaf that I find it almost impossible to believe he even read this pragmatic, sensible, and well-supported book.

Eating In Port Townsend, WA

Sweet Laurette's by day, Brassica by night presided over by this guy.

Warning: You Have Been Poisoned

I read this a few days ago, but it sunk in the second time around.

Nitrites and nitrates belong to a class of chemical compounds that have been found to be harmful to humans and animals. More than 90 percent of these compounds that have been tested have been determined to be carcinogenic in various organs. They are found in many food products, including fried bacon, cured meats and cheese products as well as beer and water. Exposure also occurs through manufacturing and processing of rubber and latex products, as well as fertilizers, pesticides and cosmetics.

Nitrosamines are formed by a chemical reaction between nitrites or other proteins. Sodium nitrite is deliberately added to meat and fish to prevent toxin production; it is also used to preserve, color and flavor meats. Ground beef, cured meats and bacon in particular contain abundant amounts of amines due to their high protein content. Because of the significant levels of added nitrates and nitrites, nitrosamines are nearly always detectable in these foods. Nitrosamines are also easily generated under strong acid conditions, such as in the stomach, or at high temperatures associated with frying or flame broiling. Reducing sodium nitrite content reduces nitrosamine formation in foods.

Nitrosamines basically become highly reactive at the cellular level, which then alters gene expression and causes DNA damage. The researchers note that the role of nitrosamines has been well-studied, and their role as a carcinogen has been fully documented. The investigators propose that the cellular alterations that occur as a result of nitrosamine exposure are fundamentally similar to those that occur with aging, as well as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Type 2 diabetes mellitus.

...De la Monte states, "If this hypothesis is correct, potential solutions include eliminating the use of nitrites and nitrates in food processing, preservation and agriculture; taking steps to prevent the formation of nitrosamines and employing safe and effective measures to detoxify food and water before human consumption." 

We Are (What We Are) Because We Cook

Slate review:

That is the bewildering, but brilliant, idea proposed by Richard Wrangham, a Harvard-based biological anthropologist. In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, he proposes that the big breakthrough of almost 2 million years ago that generated another 1,000 ideas and changed who we are forever was this: Drop food in fire, eat it.

...Women, he observes, do most of the cooking in most societies (he describes it as a historic phenomenon, not a biological necessity), and the division of labor around food could have been the beginning of the marriage contract and the prototypical human household. If this is the case, Wrangham argues, marriage is not a primitive contract to ensure paternity, as most anthropologists would argue, but primarily an economic contract.

...There is nothing wrong with free-range eggs, farmers market preserves, or the slow-food movement; complicated cooking and leisurely eating are wonderful pastimes. But come 8 p.m., the natural thing to do is drop food in microwave, eat it, and then go read a book.

Grow Your Own Food?

I've been thinking that if I stay here, I'll do some, even though it has to be harvested.
Anyways, this is all the rage again. FYI