Legend of the Corsair

Although I've never tried the sauce myself. I have many friends who swear by it and I am ready to defend their culinary choices. I'm posting the below b/c some people are seeing only a paywall while others are not encountering it at all and can see the article without problems. I don't know what the issue is with the website - and if it is just a matter of reading it on a mobile browser, or what. So. This post will self destruct in 24 hours or when I remember that I've got to self-destruct it. Okay?

Save Sriracha!
Save a beloved hot sauce from smelly politics
March 21, 2014|By Ernesto Hernandez-Lopez

Local politics in California has ignited fear for fans of Sriracha, an extremely popular hot sauce, created for pho, a Vietnamese soup, and now fancied for Asian, taco and fusion dishes, sushi and street food. Celebrities, home chefs, even workers from the mailroom to the top offices are fans. Sriracha lovers around the globe are closely monitoring the actions of a small Los Angeles suburb that recently went to court to stop its production. The small city of Irwindale, east of Los Angeles, argues that Huy Fong Foods, maker of Sriracha, a hot chili sauce, emits harmful odors from a new plant within the city boundaries.

( Read the rest behind the big curtain. )

On this, its sabbath... we shall celebrate with pasta, and sauce, and meaaaatbaaaaaalllsss!

Quinoa shell pasta
Roasted garlic napoletana red sauce
home made meatballs

Meatballs (for two):

preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Pray to FSM that wind storm doesn't knock out power. prepare baking sheet (I put foil on mine then spray with original Pam).

One pound grass fed 90% ground beef
appx 1/2 cup of gluten free italian seasoned bread crumbs (thanks Dee's!)
1 tsp roasted diced garlic
2 tbsp dijon mustard
two generous dashes worcestershire sauce
one dash chipotle tabasco sauce
One truly free range egg (the shell is a bluish green and the yolk is a dark orange color - mmmn, a chicken with bugs in its diet!)

Put all ingredients except ground beef in bowl. Gently mix together until you have a slurry. Add ground beef and squish together with freshly cleaned hands until well mixed. Form meatballs with a 1.5-2 inch diameter; place each one as formed, evenly spaced, on baking sheet. Put in oven when preheated. bake for 20-25 minutes.

Yum. Enjoy.

Until I found out I could bake them in the oven, I had almost declared myself too tired to make the meatballs. Huzzah for baking!

I'm a little late to the table on this, but I am celebrating the 100th passing of Julia Child's day of birth by watching "Julie & Julia" - don't forget to saaaaaave the liver!

Ohh. I think I may have some sherry somewhere in the house.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2012/08/remembering-julia-child.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Child

http://www.squidoo.com/julie-and-julia-soundtrack

Yes. One last thing. Don't forget the butter!


Bon Appétit!

One wonders if this product is real... Any of the people on my f-list in the London area want to find the on-the-ground store in Covent Garden and tell me if the chocolate anus is real?

via typefiend

I like how one of the testimonials is from a couple that held an Inappropriate Foods Party, to which I'm sure someone else brought the South Park Chef's Chocolate, Salty Balls.

What would any of you bring to an inappropriate foods party if you were to go to one of these shindigs? What would you consider an inappropriate food?

I am all of a sudden reminded of the second Indiana Jones movie... that dinner party scene...

Interestingly enough, there was a book I read recently: Illegal Alien by Robert J. Sawyer (C)1997 that posited a device that was used on the alien starship as their primary source of food. It was a "tube" of meat that slowly grew which they sliced pieces off of when they wished to eat. They used a single, long, flexible molecular chain connected by two handles to cut those pieces off, by the way... The tube was meat, but not an animal... a product of genetic engineering, having only what nervous system is required to support a very simple circulatory system. It is not alive; it feels no pain; it is simply a chemical factory, converting raw materials fed to it through a wall receptacle into edible flesh, balanced perfectly for the alien's nutritional needs. Wow. Science fiction, meet reality:





April 11, 2008, 9:13 am
Can People Have Meat and a Planet, Too?
By Andrew C. Revkin


The world has seen the first international conference on manufacturing meat. This is the process, tested so far only at laboratory scale, of growing pork, chicken, or beef through cell culture in vats instead of raising and slaughtering animals.

My colleague Mark Bittman wrote a fine piece recently about the greenhouse-gas consequences of conventional meat production. Others have explored the environmental and ethical impacts of factory and feedlot farming. Manufactured meat, in theory, provides an end run around these issues. What if you can have your meat, be ethical, and environmental, too? (And presumably they’ll engineer the bad fats out as well….)

The three-day meeting of the In Vitro Meat Consortium, held at the Norwegian Food Research Institute, is wrapping up today. (They might want to do something about that name.) It brought together biologists, engineers, government officials and entrepreneurs seeking – for both environmental and ethical reasons – to move from animal husbandry to technology as a means of providing the kind of protein people crave in a world heading toward 9 billion ever more affluent mouths.

A paper presented at the meeting concluded that, for the moment, the costs of cultured meat can’t come close yet to competing with, say, unsubsidized chicken. (A pdf is downloadable here.) The paper noted the reality of the climb up the protein ladder as countries move out of poverty, with global meat consumption at about 270 million metric tons in 2007 and growing at about 4.7 million tons per year.

It laid out the theory: “The environmental impact of meeting this forecast demand from existing livestock systems is significant. Cultured meat technology offers an alternative production route for a proportion of this consumption. This would then allow a downsized livestock production system to continue to be ecologically sound and to meet basic animal welfare needs.”

The group noted that costs for research, large-scale testing, and public relations will be significant, and anticipated that governments and nonprofit groups would chip in. That seems idealistic, at best, in a world with deeply entrenched interests linking ranching, the agrochemical industry, and giant restaurant chains.

But one could envision someday a model, say, of a solar-powered facility in southern California or Singapore basically turning sunlight and desalinated seawater into growth medium and then tons of cruelty-free, sustainable nuggets of chicken essence. (The promoters of this technology don’t envision anything, for now at least, beyond nuggets and ground meat. No filet mignon.)

For the moment, startup costs aside, the conferees concluded that unsubsidized chicken-raising still comes in at half the price. But the century is yet young.

I asked a few folks about facets of this, among them Peter Singer, the ethicist at Princeton who’s written for ages on animal rights and environmental values on a finite planet.

For those seeking an end to animal slaughter for human sustenance, is this kind of a cheat, I asked?

“Not necessarily,” he said. “My interest is in ethics, but whatever works best. If it is harder to move people on ethical grounds than it is to provide a sustainable humane substitute, I’m all for the substitute.”

I then went to my bellwether of techno-optimist thinking, Jesse Ausubel, the director of the program for the human environment at Rockefeller University. He said there is no reason to doubt that a long-term trend toward more concentrated food production will eventually lead to manufactured meat.

In fact, he said, there is essentially little choice on a crowding planet to pursue technological solutions to feeding ourselves, shifting away from carbon-containing fuels, and otherwise limiting our ecological imprint. Human nature is probably harder to change than technology, he said.

“If behavior and technology do not change, more numerous humans will trample the earth and endanger our own survival,” he told me. “The snake brain in each of us makes me cautious about relying heavily on changes in behavior. In contrast, centuries of extraordinary technical progress give me great confidence that diffusion of our best practices and continuing innovation can advance us much further in decarbonization, landless agriculture, and other cardinal directions for a prosperous, green environment. For engineers and others in the technical enterprise the urgency and prizes for sustaining their contributions could not be higher. Because the human brain does not change, technology must.”

What do you think? Can we change human nature? Should we?

Several years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
approved a process called irradiation [http://tinyurl.com/yt7fbb] for
protecting meats, fruits, vegetables and spices from disease-causing
bacteria. Irradiation uses gamma rays, electron beams or X-rays to
break up bacteria lurking in mass-produced food.

While consumers expressed little interest in purchasing irradiated
foods, which must be labeled as such, the FDA recently proposed
changing the rules governing how irradiated food is labeled.
Currently, it must be labeled as "Treated by/with irradiation" and
with a radura symbol. Under the proposed rule, manufactures would be
allowed to replace the word "irradiation" with "pasteurized."

A public comment period on the changes is open until July 3, 2007.
You can write the FDA [http://tinyurl.com/2hmy5r] about irradiated
foods, or use the Organic Consumers Association's online form
[http://tinyurl.com/yuauv4].

Here are answers to commonly asked questions about irradiation:
Does irradiating food make it radioactive?

No. There are three different methods used to irradiate foods, and
while one of them does involve the use of nuclear radiation, none of
them render the food itself radioactive. Each method uses an energy
source, either gamma rays, x-rays or electron beams, to produce high
frequency energy that breaks the chemical bonds in cells that are
essential for cell growth and reproduction.

Gamma rays, made with radioactive cobalt or cesium, are used more
often than the other methods; however, the food never comes in contact
with the material, so it can't become contaminated in that way.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
[http://tinyurl.com/yvedhu] , too much of this radiation can make
some of the atoms in the food unstable, (aka radioactive), but the FDA
limits the amount of energy that can be used to prevent this from
happening. Currently, the process has been approved for meat and
poultry, spices, as well as certain fruits and vegetables.

Will eating these foods harm my health?

No one really knows for sure, because there haven't been any studies
conducted on people who have eaten irradiated foods over a long period
of time. At the very least, irradiated foods are slightly less
nutritious, since the process destroys nutrients such as thiamine (an
essential B vitamin) and also vitamin C. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture [http://www.usda.gov/] claims that this loss is
insignificant, which isn't surprising since it's the same position
they've taken regarding the nutritional decline of our food supply
overall.

Among the concerns voiced by George Tritsch, research professor
emeritus at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., and
others is that bombarding foods with gamma rays creates free radicals,
the unstable molecular fragments that go about our bodies crashing
into cells as they search for an unimpaired molecule to render them
stable again. In addition, certain fats subjected to irradiation
produce potentially carcinogenic byproducts, such as formaldehyde and
benzene, although many scientists dismiss this concern because
similar compounds are created during ordinary cooking processes.

"I was able to sublet a huge room for $500 a month in the 200 Street area Dikeman st. the end of Subway A before hitting the Bronx, 30 minutes from middtown. I loved it there, my roomate was an old lady who had a dog. She allowed me to cook and even invite friends I later made for dinner."

from here.


Bwahahahahahahaha! I wonder if they had fava beans and a nice Chianti too.

December 11, 2006
Times Sq. Ads Spread Via Tourists’ Cameras
By LOUISE STORY

Advertisers have long been drawn to Times Square as a valuable place to reach consumers, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for space on billboards and blazing video screens.

But recently they have discovered that down on the ground, new technology has given low cost, face-to-face marketing campaigns something of a cutting edge as consumers spread their messages on the Internet.

Take the recent display of public toilets set up by Charmin bathroom tissue: Used by thousands in Times Square and viewed by 7,400 Web users on one site alone. Or Nascar’s recent display of racecars; videos of the event have been viewed on YouTube more than 1,800 times. More than 60 people wrote about the event on their blogs and 60 more spread the word — and pictures — on the Flickr Web site.
( Read more... )

So I decided to break out an old appliance, squirrelled away in a cabinet... to make the most amazing lunch evah! I had totally forgotten about this little item, until I stumbled across a Hello Kitty version of it over on Cute Overload. Mmmmn. Pepper turkey with swiss and cranberry sauce, toasted into those little triangles! Of course, I had lost track of the instructions. I had no idea if my experiment would work - or explode in my face. Hence, the Googling of Toastmaster Snackmaster, where I found THIS:






Toastmaster Sandwich Maker
by David P. Kleinschmidt

The Toastmaster Sandwich Maker has one purpose in life. It grills cheese sandwiches. Its operation is simplicity itself: Clamp it around a raw grilled cheese sandwich, wait four minutes and pull out a cooked grilled cheese sandwich—no fuss, no muss. (Actually, there is rather a lot of muss if you use too much cheese. It kind of oozes out the sides of the machine and gets in the electrical work and you can never quite escape the smell of molten Brie. But I digress.)

I got one of these for Christmas one year while I was at college. Not being the kind of person who reads things—like the “instruction manual,” say, or even “the box”—the Toastmaster Sandwich Maker got rechristened The Snackmaster. But after a few poorly considered liverwurst and Tilsiter sandwiches gooped up the whole kitchen, it got re-rechristened The Snackblaster. But I digress again.

After I got back from break I was comparing loot with my roommates. I held up the machine like I was the messiah of some kind of Betty Crocker cargo cult. “Behold!” I proclaimed. “The Snackblaster!”

“What’s it do?” asked one of the nonbelievers.

“It makes grilled cheese sandwiches!”

“Oh yeah, we have one of those at home,” said one particular smartass. “But we call it a griddle.”

“No, no! This is a revolution in cookware. It turns grilled cheese sandwiches into grilled cheese sandwiches with patterns on them.” But they did not understand. They mocked and belittled me. And when they came home to the welcoming aroma of grilled salami and Gorgonzola, they mocked and belittled me harder, and with their noses pinched shut.

Years later, I was sitting in a caffé where they charge extra for coffee to pay for the second “f” in their name, when I noticed something familiar sitting in the refrigerator case. A selection of nine-dollar grilled cheese sandwiches—with patterns on them. I jumped to my feet and saw, behind the counter, the biggest Snackblaster in the world. Later I even saw one at Williams-Sonoma, but they called it an “Italian-Made Panini Press” and charged a hundred bucks for it. The Snackblaster had become trendy—vindication.

I called up my former roommate, who now works for the NSA, for the first time in five years. “The cookware revolution is here!” I shouted jubilantly into the phone.

“What? Who is this?” he asked.

“¡Yo soy Che Gruyera de las Snackatistas!” But I had to hang up quick to go clean up the dill havarti that was spurting out of The Snackblaster.

Pros: Turns grilled cheese sandwiches into grilled cheese sandwiches with patterns on them.

Cons: Shamefully, my NSA dossier now lists “Che Gruyera” as an alias.

Fair warning, anyone with any dairy issues should avoid the following. Sorry surelle. :(

Well, I inspired by shogunhb when he described his flair for food experiments, mixing of flavors and so forth. Couple that with surelle's post about comfort foods. The result is what I had for lunch today.

Mix mac-and-cheese with an alfredo sauce mix. That's right, all cheese packets are in play. I used two Shaw's brand mac-n-cheese boxes and a packet of Knorr Alfredo sauce mix.

Start big pot of water boiling.
When you pour the pasta in, start the alfredo sauce in another saucepan, preparing it as directed on the packet. ::insert picture of me stirring both pots at once::
The alfredo sauce should be just boiling (put it on another burner set to simmer) as the timer goes "ding!" for the pasta.
Drain pasta, dump back in pot, bring back to stove (keep from any of the burners though, yah?) and dump in marg/butter, milk, and cheese packet, stir (don't forget, you are timing the alfredo sauce with the occasional stirrings at this point). Alfredo sauce done, dump into already mixed mac-n-cheese mixture. Serve immediately to rave reviews.

Sweety went back for seconds. ::pats self on back::

Next time maybe I'll add shrimp and broccoli to the mix.

EDIT: I had originally intended to include this silly meme and then forgot. From psychoredhead07, who turns out to be a vivid blue.

semiotic_pirate

1. Copy and paste this into your journal:
<*font color="yourusername"> <*b>yourusername<*/b>
2. Eliminate the asterisks.
3. Replace "yourusername" with your user name.
4. See what color you are.