Functional Ambivalent has a terrific, funny report on being a wine connoisseur.
I have failed, utterly, to come up with much more than a combination of these six descriptors: good, bad, ugh, cheap, expensive, free. The holy grail in my wine universe is wine that is good and free.
“[A] turkey raised more carefully than a Montessori student….”
Kim Severson in The New York Times.
This from Wired News:
Next time you feel compelled to clean out the pantry, don’t feel bad about putting it off.
A lot of the old food that’s gone beyond the manufacturer’s expiration date could still be edible for years or decades longer.
Such are the findings of food science researchers who recently subjected a panel of human tasters to samples of really old food. They discovered that artifacts like 20-year-old dried milk and 28-year-old rolled oats were still perfectly edible and sometimes even tasted OK.
At least some readers of NewMexiKen think that all oatmeal tastes like it’s 28 years old.
European Wine Fighting for Survival from Der Spiegel. An excerpt from this interesting article:
Löwenstein has written a manifesto that has caused an uproar in the industry, what he calls a “Manifesto of the Terroirists.” He complains about the “infantilization” of taste, about people who want their wines to be as fruity as “strawberry jam or chocolate syrup.” He also curses the addiction to mass-produced wine and a German law that measures wine quality by sugar content. He scoops up a handful of soil and crushes it in his hands. It’s “as if the sun had baked out the oil,” says Löwenstein.
Soil, climate, weather. These factors should determine what the wine will ultimately taste like, is Löwenstein’s philosophy. Not technology — after all, technology determines everything else. It’s a philosophy that has earned him a reputation in the industry. A reputation as a troublemaker.
…
For Löwenstein, there are real wines and there are Frankenstein wines, and it looks as though the Frankenstein camp is currently gaining ground. Löwenstein has old fashioned ideas, and he wants to return to the past.
It may be the latest dieting craze, but there’s a lot of good sense in slowing down while eating.
Eating too fast puts your hunger at odds with your body’s metabolism. It takes time for the nutrients from food to get absorbed into your blood stream. When you eat slowly, you give your body time to tell you that it”s eaten enough.
Net result? You may eat fewer calories. Side effect? Slowing down lets you enjoy the tastes and flavors of your food and the companionship of your table mates.
For some reason earlier today NewMexiKen got to thinking about his very first day of work. It was Thanksgiving 1960. The place was the Cliff House restaurant in Tucson. At the time, the Cliff House was considered one of the best restaurants in town — great menu plus a wonderful view of the city from its foothill location on Oracle Road. The chef was known simply by his first name, Otto.
Thanksgiving was a very busy day at the Cliff House. I started at noon and got off sometime around 10:30. I was the dishwasher’s second assistant. The dishwasher, who on a regular shift worked just by himself, needed all the help he could get on Thanksgiving. He sprayed the loose residue off the plates and out of the cups and glasses and loaded the racks to go into the machine. The first assistant took the clean dishes out of the machine and got them back into circulation. My job was to clear the trays as the busboys brought them in, scraping the uneaten turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes off the plates into the garbage pail. For more than 10 hours. For $1 an hour.
I did well for my first day of work, being reprimanded only once — by Otto himself, no less. I was throwing out the uneaten dinner rolls instead of returning them to the bread warmer. In chefly like fashion he blew his top, but calmed down when he realized no one had told me differently (and I was a nice deferential kid whose mom was a waitress).
As the day went on into evening, however, this fine restaurant developed a mini-crisis. The Cliff House ran out of cranberries. Now there is one thing a restaurant must have on Thanksgiving and that is turkey. And there is one thing a restaurant must serve with turkey and that is cranberries (or cranberry sauce). And someone had miscalculated and none was left.
It was the dishwasher’s second assistant who saved the day. As the dirty dishes came in from the dining room I not only rescued the dinner rolls, I now also recycled the cranberries. From each plate I corralled the dark red glob and scraped it into a bowl. Periodically Otto would come over and switch out my trove with an empty new bowl. He’d take the cranberries I had reclaimed and scoop them (not so generously as earlier) onto some eager gourmand’s plate.
Amazingly I still love cranberries (especially cranberry relish).
… of Milton S. Hershey, born on this date in 1857. Hershey, who only completed the fourth grade, developed a formula for milk chocolate that made what had been a luxury product into the first nationally marketed candy.
… of Bill Monroe, born on this date in 1911. The Father of Bluegrass Music was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1993, Monroe was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, an honor that placed him in the company of Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles and Paul McCartney,
… of Mel Torme, born on this date in 1925. The “Velvet Fog” was a wonderful jazz singer, but his greatest legacy is “The Christmas Song” — “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”.
… of Sherwood Anderson, born on this date in 1876 in Camden, Ohio.
[Anderson] is best known for his short stories, “brooding Midwest tales” which reveal “their author’s sympathetic insight into the thwarted lives of ordinary people.” Between World War I and World War II, Anderson helped to break down formulaic approaches to writing, influencing a subsequent generation of writers, most notably Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Anderson, who lived in New Orleans for a brief time, befriended Faulkner there in 1924 and encouraged him to write about his home county in Mississippi.
— From the Library of Congress, which has more on Anderson.
NewMexiKen still thinks the Charles Shaw Merlot wasn’t bad — at least not for $3. The Cabernet Sauvignon (2002) is, however, awful, though I may have to drink some more to be certain. It’s just possible it will taste better as the evening wears on.
NewMexiKen’s list of the top ten reasons to chose another restaurant if you want to impress your date or customer:
10. You pay before you eat
9. You pay after you eat, but you stand in line and pay a cashier
8. More men eating with caps/hats on than those without caps/hats
7. The piped-in-music is louder than the TVs
6. Soup served with soup spoon already in soup
5. They fill the condiments while you’re at the table
4. Menu includes photos of the food
3. Menu includes samples of the food stuck to pages
2. They wipe your table with a wet rag
And the number one reason to chose another restaurant if you want to impress your date or customer
They wipe the seats of the chairs with the same rag
(First posted a year ago.)
There’s been lively discussion about Charles Shaw wines of late (perchance made more lively by some very active partakers of the wine). If you find yourself wondering what’s all the fuss about, you’re not alone. Charles Shaw is actually a table wine—a nice, easy drinking wine sold exclusively at Trader Joe’s stores. The real draw for this wine is its rather humble price tag. The price is so low, some have deemed it “Two Buck Chuck.” We’ll get into the pricing later as not all of our stores are able to have that wondrous $1.99 price.
The Buzz About Charles Shaw Wines from the Trader Joe’s website.
It’s “Three Buck Chuck” in New Mexico, but I’d say about the best $3 wine you can find that comes in a bottle with a cork. And, while there’s only one Trader Joe’s in New Mexico for the moment — in Santa Fe, of course — another is opening this winter in Albuquerque.
Basically, Coke Zero starts with the cola formula of Coke Classic and uses aspartame and acesulfame potassium as the sweetener instead of sugar. Sounds like a sure winner to me.
Diet Coke, the world’s No. 1 diet cola, uses a formula more similar to New Coke (remember that wrong turn?), which is really old forgotten Coke since they trash-canned New Coke nearly two decades ago.
Which raises the question, why has it taken Coke so long to make a diet version of Coke Classic? Who’s making the decisions at Coke … a California jury?
Trying to understand Coke logic means getting into the mind of corporate America, and you don’t want to go there. If you’re a Classic Coke fan and looking for a diet drink, just be happy they’ve stumbled on Coke Zero. Don’t ask questions.
Coke Zero has no bitter aftertaste that some drinkers find with diet colas. Some taste-testers noticed a distinctly cinnamon tinge to Coke Zero, but frankly, it tasted like a regular Coke to me.
Ken Hoffman, Houston Chronicle
More from Consumer Reports:
Yogurt has a reputation as a health food for a reason: It contains “friendly” bacteria that take up residence in your intestines, where they may help relieve symptoms of common digestive disorders, rev up the immune system, and perhaps provide other benefits.
They rate as best Breyers Fruit on the Bottom Lowfat or Colombo Light; among smoothies they like Breyers Creme Savers and Dannon Light ‘n Fit.
A Brazilian woman sent a poisoned pizza to a teenager she had a crush on, which landed the teenager, his six schoolmates and their teacher in the hospital in grave condition on Friday, police said.
An Australian prison siege ended Monday after a group of inmates agreed to release a guard they had held for two days in return for a delivery of pizzas, prison officials said.
Eat your way to the bottom of almost any bag of popcorn, and there they are: the rock-hard, jaw-rattling unpopped kernels.
The nuisance kernels have kept many a dentist busy, but their days could be numbered: Scientists say they now know why some popcorn kernels resist popping into puffy white globes.
It’s long been known that popcorn kernels must have a precise moisture level in their starchy center – about 15 percent – to explode. But Purdue University researchers found the key to a kernel’s explosive success lies in the composition of its hull.
Unpopped kernels, it turns out, have leaky hulls that prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for them to pop and lack the optimal hull structure that allows most kernels to explode.
AP via The Albuquerque Tribune
“People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.”
The lede in a report in The New York Times
Don’t we all have the same risk of death?
Tom visits Max & Erma’s, a chain restaurant — America Scares Me: Why I Don’t Go Out Much. His assessment is right on: it’s about selling, not serving.
After years of telling athletes to drink as much liquid as possible to avoid dehydration, some doctors are now saying that drinking too much during intense exercise poses a far greater health risk.
An increasing number of athletes – marathon runners, triathletes and even hikers in the Grand Canyon – are severely diluting their blood by drinking too much water or too many sports drinks, with some falling gravely ill and even dying, the doctors say.
Whether your goal is more energy, a happier bod, or a competitive edge for work and play, our seven steps will change the way you think about food.
Veronica, official daughter-in-law of NewMexiKen, sent me a link to this intriguing article about Bill Keaggy and his fascination with other people’s grocery lists. The article appeared in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.
The collection, which now numbers more than 500 lists, is strangely addictive.
The lists elicit twofold curiosity — about the kind of meal the person was planning and the kind of person who would make such a meal. What was the shopper with vodka, lighters, milk and ice cream on his list planning to do with them? In what order would they be consumed? Was it a he or a she? Who had written ”Tootie food, kitten chow, bird food stick, toaster scrambles, coffee drinks”? Some shoppers organize their lists by aisle; others start with dairy, go to cleaning supplies and then back to dairy before veering off to Home Depot. A few meticulous ones note the price of every item. One shopper had written in large letters on an envelope, simply, ”Milk.”
See the actual lists here.
”You can see their lives from these lists even if you haven’t been in their houses,” Keaggy says.
Which bodes poorly for the the individual who wrote: ”Shell corn, bind holder, belt, knife, coolers, map, cellphone, hunting license, say goodbye to wife, kill deer, Mt. View Motel, kill deer.”
From Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:
Asked what comes to mind upon hearing the phrase ”chocolate cake,” Americans were more apt to say ”guilt,” while the French said ”celebration”; ”heavy cream” elicited ”unhealthy” from Americans, ”whipped” from the French. The researchers found that Americans worry more about food and derive less pleasure from eating than people in any other nation they surveyed.
Compared with the French, we’re much more likely to choose foods for reasons of health, and yet the French, more apt to choose on the basis of pleasure, are the healthier (and thinner) people. How can this possibly be? Rozin suggests that our problem begins with thinking of the situation as paradoxical. The French experience with food is only a paradox if you assume, as Americans do, that certain kinds of foods are poisons. ”Look at fat,” Rozin points out. ”Americans treat the stuff as if it was mercury.” That doesn’t, of course, stop us from guiltily gorging on the stuff. …
Perhaps because we take a more ”scientific” (i.e., reductionist) view of food, Americans automatically assume there must be some chemical component that explains the difference between the French and American experiences: it’s something in the red wine, perhaps, or the olive oil that’s making them healthier. But how we eat, and even how we feel about eating, may in the end be just as important as what we eat. The French eat all sorts of ”unhealthy” foods, but they do it according to a strict and stable set of rules: they eat small portions and don’t go back for seconds; they don’t snack; they seldom eat alone, and communal meals are long, leisurely affairs. A well-developed culture of eating, such as you find in France or Italy, mediates the eater’s relationship to food, moderating consumption even as it prolongs and deepens the pleasure of eating.
From Reuters via CNN.com —
A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday.
“We noticed a bear sleeping on the common lawn and wondered what was going on until we discovered that there were a lot of beer cans lying around,” said Lisa Broxson, a worker at the Baker Lake Resort, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.
The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers’ coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds.
It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge.
Wildlife agents chased the bear away, but it returned the next day, said Broxson.
They set a trap using as bait some doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer. It worked, and the bear was captured for relocation.
For that matter, they could have captured NewMexiKen with doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer.
Unpleasant development — finding ants in the peanut butter jar just after eating the sandwich. Oh well, harder on them than on me I guess.
But how’d they get in there? The jar was closed. Guess they had my 18-day absence to execute their diabolical plan.
From CNN/Money:
Once the fried dough embodiment of hot and fresh, Krispy Kreme has transformed its original glazed doughnut into a new frozen beverage for summer.
The chain introduced a new line of frozen drinks Wednesday, including frozen original kreme — a drinkable version of the company’s signature doughnut — raspberry, latte and double chocolate.
Customers can also add coffee to the kreme and double chocolate.
NewMexiKen saw this article in The New York Times earlier in the week and meant to post it then.
Ultimately, it’s not the carbohydrates — or the next unsuspecting food group that will come under attack — that will make us overweight. It’s our relationship with food and our lifestyle. In other words, how we eat is just as important — if not more so — than what we eat.
Maybe that’s the ultimate cooking lesson. In general, Italians take their time when they eat. Many businesses in Italy still close in the middle of the day for three hours to allow for a leisurely lunch. Family mealtimes are sacred. Cooking for one’s family becomes an act of love. Family meals allow for conversation and strengthen the family bond. The antithesis of the Italian eating style is fast food and “eating on the run,” where little attention is given to what is being consumed and the quicker one is done, the better. There is a physiological benefit of eating more slowly, too: your body senses that food has reached the stomach and shuts off the feeling of hunger before you overeat.
The whole article is worth reading.