Mike

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• Jamie Oliver Trying to Get America's Fattest City to Slim Down (Slashfood)

  Sep 21st 2009 7:01PM I watched "Jamie's School Lunches" and passed it on to a few friends. Changing a whole town's eating habits might be a bit pushy, but his efforts in the schools were pretty amazing to watch.
  
  While teaching kids nutrition ( and feeding them well ) might not just give them a good basis to go forward with as they grow up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it spilled over to their homes and parents as well.

• Bourbon and Burritos at Carl's Jr. (Slashfood)

  Mar 20th 2009 3:34AM I wandered through the CJ's drive through today and it was the first I'd seen of the Bourbon burger. It came with crunchy onions and pepperjack and looked good so I tried it. The "eat responsibly" and "0 proof" was kinda cute.
  
  The sauce itself was vile. Usually fast food is just benign, not horrible, not great, but this was bad. The closest thing I could think to describe it was "fake alchohol taste". There was some odd medicinal undertone that made me thing they were trying to make it taste like they'd added a good shot of bourbon to the sauce just before they served it. I won't be trying it again.
  
  Now I did like the onions and do like pepper jack. It might not be a bad thing if you subbed the BBQ sauce from the Western Bacon Cheeseburger.

• Tell us About Your Holiday Meal! (Slashfood)

  Dec 27th 2008 2:04AM I was a little busy. Didn't have people over at the house, but visited friends and brought food.
  
  The original plan was ham. I had an FFA kid raise a Berkshire pig for me last year, so I had a fresh ham in the freezer. I put it in the brine just before Thanksgiving, put it in the smoker at Midnight Christmas morning to eat at 2PM.
  Turned out one of the guests doesn't eat pork. So I tried an experiment with a turkey dish. I hollowed out a couple small loaves of french bread, lined the inside with sauted onions,smoked onions and garlic, sage and other spices, then laid in long pieces of turkey breast and thigh. The whole thing was tied up with butcher twine, baked for about 90 mins. The effect was all the moisture lost by the turkey as it cooked being absorbed by the bread which also got crisped by baking. Kinda like turkey on the inside of the stuffing.
  To go with the meats were a glaze for the ham made of sugar, honey, chicken stock and home-smoked chipotle. The turkey had a gravy from stock made from the Thanksgiving turkey.
  
  Somewhere along the line we decided on crab puffs for an appetizer. So in-between packing the rest of the food to go I made the pate choux puffs while the friends hosting the dinner made the crab filling to fill them when I got there.
  
  Everyone got a bit of ham in their doggie bags, some got the 2nd turkey we didn't eat. I brought home probably 12 lbs of ham to vacuum pack and put away in the freezer for later.
  
  My best Christmas present: Father and son arguing over who carried the ham home since each didn't trust the other not to eat it.
  
  

• Memories of airplane food, an endangered species (Slashfood)

  Aug 11th 2008 10:34PM First class HNL-SFO, AA Platinum FF status:
  
  One of the selections was roast loin of beef. I asked for that. The the attendant asked "And how would you like your beef cooked sir?" I know I'd never been asked that question before ( or since )

• Chef Ramsay wants to fine restaurants for using out-of-season veggies (Slashfood)

  May 12th 2008 6:03PM I wouldn't be surprised if Gordon's comments were really intended to spur discussion rather than create more chef-criminals.
  
  The hard part in creating a law for this, or in making personal decisions, is that things aren't as cut and dried as the people who tend to yell about the topic would believe.
  
  For all the bad press it gets, long distance shipping is pretty darn efficient. So efficient that in some cases the fuel used / carbon footprint is better for something shipped where it grows more readily than if the same product were raised in the country to where it was shipped. Taken to extremes, imagine if the 100 mile diet people wanted bananas, pineapples and coffee that only came 100 miles from their home in Manchester. Maybe possible, with artificially heated greenhouses and lots of irrigation. It's already been suggested that apples from the southern hemisphere take less fossil fuel to ship them than to keep the local stuff cool throughout the year.
  Other than exotic products, some fruits/vegs/livestock might be raised in a more sustainable manner in an area that's warmer, has a longer growing season and requires less irrigation. If those products are less a burden on the environment, even with shipping taken into consideration, wouldn't they be acceptable? If taken to the extreme, it might be that tomato season is from Oct-March since the place that grows them best produces them then.
  This is where there's a bit of conflict between eating local and eating sustainable. It might be that local food costs more than shipped food from an environmental standpoint. If you're looking at it one dimensionally that is. Supporting local farmers, knowing where your food comes from, that's just as important, at least to me.

• New, improved fugu: now with less risk of death! (Slashfood)

  May 5th 2008 3:32PM If your whole profession was based on years of training to remove the toxic bits, you might be hosed if the new, not-toxic, fugu can now be prepared by any cook with a good filet knife.
  
  Even with non-toxic livers, going through the motions still keeps them employed. If the livers are deemed OK to eat, it's hard to justify their jobs.
  
  Besides the lip-numbing "almost poisoned" experience, the death-defying aspect of fugu has to be part of it's appeal. If it were really gone, there might be less call for it. Certainly the markup would be much less since you don't have to employ a fugu wizard to prepare it.

• Should Smirnoff Ice be considered beer or liquor? (Slashfood)

  Apr 27th 2008 11:03PM It has less to do with the tax man than it does to do with idiots.
  
  Smirnoff Ice in the U.S. is beer plus sugar. That makes it liquor? Only in the twisted minds of MADD or politicians trying to suck up to them.

• Should Smirnoff Ice be considered beer or liquor? (Slashfood)

  Apr 25th 2008 4:55PM Always amusing when people are so sure about something they really don't know much about.
  
  This is one of those things where people need to realize that just because the beverages are made with a certain type of alcohol where you live, doesn't mean it's the same everywhere. Also, if you haven't actually read the label you might not know what you're talking about.
  
  Mike's Hard Lemonade: Malt in the US, Vodka in Canada, Smirnoff Ice also. ( Actually type of alcohol varies across multiple countries )
  
  The Smirnoff Ice web site for the USA describes it as a "Premium Malt Beverage". If you tell the site you're in the U.K. it's described as made with Vodka.
  
  Perhaps Maryland has a special deal to get the Vodak based versions, but then again maybe those politicians are just idiots spouting what someone else told them without spending 5 minutes to verify.

• Pre-packaged, ready to eat produce. Have we gone too far? (Slashfood)

  Mar 24th 2008 5:05PM It's bad enough that the "baby carrots" weren't really immature carrots, but big ones whittled down to make them smaller.
  
  If the prepped, bagged fruits and veggies were sold in small single serving packs I might be willing to believe the bit about being an alternative less healthy snacks, but the bigger bags in the produce department aren't for that purpose.
  
  In the interest of saving a tiny amount of time, people are suckered into paying more for something that isn't as good. Cut up fruits and veggies usually don't keep as well as whole ones. If they do, there's a good chance they've been treated to keep them looking good in the store.
  
  You'll be better off peeling your own orange, slicing your own apple.

• Eat a tasty animal today (Slashfood)

  Mar 17th 2008 2:28PM The comments in the article seemed aimed at PETA, not vegetarians, a pretty big distinction. Is it unfair "picking on PETA" when PETA has called people who eat chicken complicit in a "Nazi-style" holocaust? http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=2896
  
  Is the alternative usage of "p.e.t.a." antagonistic to PETA? You bet. But PETA's raison d’être is to be outrageous and antagonistic, so in their specific case it seems reasonable.