Food companies created the labels as an easy way to find healthy foods in the grocery store, but drew criticism when it appeared on mayonnaise and Froot Loops, the paper said.
Test your ketchup, mustard, and relish knowledge with our Condiment Quiz on Slashfood. Is ketchup considered a vegetable by the USDA and what are anchovies a key ingredient in? Find out here.
Condiment Quiz
Which of these restaurant chains is famed for its creamy, pungent
I was around five years old the first time I had a steamed artichoke for dinner. They were a favorite of my parents' and so we'd often eat them for dinner, dipping the leaves in melted butter and then finishing the meal up with some salad. However, sometime around my high school years, they fell out of favor (I think my mother couldn't handle the volume of butter our family of four required to make them palatable).
While I was in Portland last week, I picked up three nice looking artichokes and took them back to my parents' house, in order to re-live old times and satisfy a longtime craving. We steamed them for about forty-five minutes, until they were fork-tender at the stem. While they cooked, I stirred a few tablespoons of Best Foods (Hellman's on the east coast) Mayonnaise together with a pressed garlic clove and some lemon juice, in place of our traditional butter dip.
Sitting around the dining room table, we quietly ate our artichokes, scraping the tender bits at the bottom of the leaves off with our lower front teeth and commenting occasionally on how good they tasted (we all determined that the mayo sauce was far tastier than the old butter dip). My parents both reminisced about their first artichokes (my mom was in high school, while my dad grew up eating them) and we ate them down to the stem (scraping out the prickly bristle under the leaves).
I've been thinking about artichokes since I got back to Philly and I do believe that they'd make a perfect starter to a mellow New Year's Eve meal. They're easy (steam in a pot with a couple of inches of water until they're tender), they're delicious and you get to eat with your hands. Add some bread, a light soup or salad and a simple dessert and your dinner is complete.
Don't have enough mayonnaise in the refrigerator for a recipe you're working on right now? Don't fret. Check out these easy substitutions that you probably have on hand!
From The Heinz Book of Meat Cookery (1930), HJ Heinz Company
I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.
Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.
The wonderful benefits of industrial food! According to a recent New York Times article, it turns out that vinegar and a mix of other ingredients make the majority of commercial brands of mayonnaise protect against food spoilage. So, this summer, when you make sandwiches for a picnic, you can use plenty of mayonnaise without wondering whether or not it will cause food to rotten and cause food poisoning.
During the summer, many of us get concerned that in the scorching heat food will turn on us. And so, considering the fact that one of the ingredients in mayonnaise is uncooked egg yolk, it makes perfect sense that we'd assume that mayonnaise can cause diseases, like salmonella. Of course, one needs to differentiate between the mayonnaise you make at home and the one you purchase in the grocery store. But, so long as the eggs are pasteurized and you make sure to use vinegar, another basic mayonnaise ingredient, you will be fine!
So, this summer, do not fret over mayonnaise! Make your own mayonnaise! Foods that cause food poisoning are often made up of low-acid ingredients and involve improper storage and handling.
A while, back, I wrote a post on emotionally-based food aversions -- both my own (tuna noodle casserole), and those of loved ones (scrambled eggs, mayonnaise, garlic). Little did I know this was going to open up Pandora's icebox. More than 75,000 people weighed in on our "What food hits your yuck button?" poll, and the comments thread is at the time of this writing, 1668 strong and counting. It seems that folks have just been looking for a place to spill their long-stewing food loathings, so we've counted down the top 20, weighting them for poll votes, number of mentions in comments, and level of vitriol incurred.
Want to keep the conversation flowing? See the initial post, or hurl forth in the comments below.
As promised, here's the post about flavoring that tasty and quick mayonnaise you've just whipped up. Coincidentally, a few of you mentioned some of the flavors I was planning on discussing. In the Ricardo feature, there are a number of simple flavor additions in order to get: Indian-style, aioli, remoulade, and American-style.
I whipped up a lazy version of the aioli, above. It's the first time I got to use my freshly grown herbs (delicious chives!), but I had no garlic, so I used my trusty garlic powder as a cheat. It was tasty, easy, and was oh-so-good whipped up with chunks of turkey for a super-speedy turkey salad sandwich. I also whipped up some harissa from the Fresh cookbook and added that into the mix for American-style. That was also quite tasty in a one-potato salad, although I had to cheat on the spice roasting, so it wasn't quite right.
Check out the specifics for the mayo additions after the jump. And please -- weigh in with your own!
I adore mayonnaise (to the point that I once made a meal of just bread and mayo). I love it on sandwiches, and even more on fries. I don't even mind if it's the fake light stuff, as long as it's not the evil Miracle Whip (go here for a rant I couldn't say better myself). However, I have a confession: With all the food I've made, and fresh tastes that I love, I never made my own mayo until this week.
Ricardo inspired me. In the latest issue of his magazine, he's got a Classic Mayonnaise recipe, and then a selection of ways to make it into something even tastier. But for now, let me focus on the white stuff. This recipe was quite good, to the point that I will have to refrain from making more and more and becoming a fat, gelatinous beast hungry only for more oil whipped up with eggs.
There are few changes I'd make, like using a mixture of vinegar and lemon, and perhaps a different oil with a more subtle or desirable flavor, but otherwise, this is great! Check out the recipe after the jump, make your own now, if you haven't, and please be sure to comment about what flairs you add to the mix to make the perfect-tasting plain mayo.
In addition to marking the unofficial start to summer, Memorial Day also kicks off the beginning of mayonnaise season. This interesting article details the history of mayo, singing the praises of this frequently used, but often under-appreciated supporting player.
New York chain Good Burger comes to Philadelphia, touting natural beef, hand-leafed lettuce and cooked-to-order patties. I actually ate there last night and must admit, it was a pretty fine burger.
Want to see how far American cuisine has come in the past 40 years? Check out the Mid-Century Supper Club on Flickr, where members lovingly recreate heinous 50s and 60s dishes like hot dogs suspended in aspic and olive-studded sandwich loaf. Dishes are served in retro crockery; some are even posed in front of their inspirations, photos from vintage cookbooks and 1962 issues of Good Housekeeping.
I am particularly fond of the higher-concept items, such as the "Three Men in a Boat" - baked potato boats with button mushroom sailors and American cheese sails - or the banana "airplane" - a banana with chocolate wafer wings, flying through whipped cream clouds. Time to tie on an apron and bust out the Jello.
I grew up on the west coast, where Best Foods mayonnaise reigned supreme. It was always a little confusing to me when we'd come east each summer, to discover that mayonnaise changed its name to Hellmann's as soon as you crossed the Rocky Mountains, but I learned to accept the inexplicable shift as the contents of the container were so familiar and tasty.
Back in those days, while I pondered at the length the two names my mayo wore, I never spent any time thinking about the eggs that were used to make the creamy emulsion. However, in Britain, thanks to the actions of Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittenstall, Hellmann's is changing their ways and shifting production to use free-range eggs. The transition has been in process since 2006 and by this summer, people will be able to obtain Hellman's Mayonnaise made with free-range eggs.
My only question is why isn't Hellmann's making the same switch in the US? I'd be more inclined to buy their product (these days I tend to go with Trader Joe's mayo or make my own) if it was made with free-range eggs.
Recently, I mentioned to my mom that I had an eggplant in my fridge that needed to be used. She started telling me about a recipe that a friend had given her back when she was first married for broiled eggplant. She remembered it being delicious. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention when she told me about it, because if it had been that good, why was it not part of the menu rotation when I was growing up?
The original eggplant got put to other purposes, but this weekend I picked up two nice, firm, white eggplants this weekend at the farmers market, and so this recipe started niggling away at my consciousness again. I put it together tonight and nearly wept at my first bite as it was tender and sweet and crunchy and wonderful. I called my mother up as soon as my plate was clean to ask her how it was possible that she had known of this preparation for nearly 40 years and I was only eating it tonight. In some sense, I'm grateful for her recipe amnesia, if only because it contributed to a fun recipe discovery tonight. If you like eggplant, don't wait 40 years to make this dish.
And I guess I should clarify by what I mean by "fat-free foods." I'm not talking about foods that are naturally fat-free, such as celery or water (those are the first two examples that come to mind). I mean foods that usually have a fat version but also have a fat-free version. On to the list (and yes, I'm well aware that fat-free doesn't necessarily mean healthy and can often be higher in sugar).
1. Fat-Free Milk: If you had asked me ten years ago that today I'd be drinking fat-free milk instead of whole milk, I would have thought you were crazy. But I love it, and in fact, can't even drink whole milk anymore. Tastes too thick and heavy for me.
On a day that is notorious for junk food, snacks, and deep-fried everything, it's sometimes difficult to slip some vegetables into the mix. Coleslaw is a little deceptive since it is so rich-tasting and creamy, people tend to forget it's packed full of things that are good for you.
Though I tend to make everything from scratch, for an event like Super Bowl I recommend saving yourself the time and effort and just buy the pre-cut coleslaw mix at the grocery store. You could spend a lot of time grating cabbage and slicing carrots, but really, the end product is about the same. Besides, if the bagged stuff is good enough for Paula Deen, it's good enough for me. That said, I refuse to buy a pre-made coleslaw dressing. Sometimes you have to pick your battles.
I grew up on the west coast, where Best Foods mayonnaise reigned supreme. It was always a little confusing to me when we'd come east each summer, to discover that mayonnaise changed its name to Hellmann's as soon as you crossed the Rocky Mountains, but I learned to accept the inexplicable shift as the contents of the container were so familiar and tasty. 
And I guess I should clarify by what I mean by "fat-free foods." I'm not talking about foods that are naturally fat-free, such as celery or water (those are the first two examples that come to mind). I mean foods that usually have a fat version but also have a fat-free version. On to the list (and yes, I'm well aware that fat-free doesn't necessarily mean healthy and can often be higher in sugar).
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