Category: Food
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Corn is not a Vegetable
Reuters Science News has a new story today reporting that the genome of maize has been sequenced, which reminds me that corn is a grain. It is a starchy carbohydrate. Like rice and wheat it could be cultivated to produce an abundant harvest that would feed villages and cities. It was a miracle food. It…
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In Defence of Food
In Defence of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto has received favourable reviews in the LA Times and the Sunday Times (of London), and is a bestseller at this point in time. Michael Pollan is an experienced journalist and writer. He reviews a fair amount of history and science in a short book. He tries to talk…
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Light Exercise
Link to an excerpt from Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease, a new book by Gary Taubes, published in New York Magazine, The Scientist and the Stairmaster. Taubes says that the idea that light exercise is a way to lose weight has been oversold. He agrees that…
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Tap Water is Safe Clean and Green
Is the sale of bottled water one of the great triumphs of marketing? When it turns out that Aquafina sells filtered tap water, what is the value of buying bottled water, as opposed to tap water, or filtering your own water? Buying many high end bottled water brands appeals to snob value – the idea…
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Free Range Chicken Snobs
Mick Hume, editor of Spiked, happily skewered Hattie Ellis, author of Planet Chicken in his review, Stop Planet Chicken, I Want to Get Off. He says that if she is able to view the production of abundant cheap food as a bad thing, her values are off. Ellis is not a vegetarian but she thinks…
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Olive Oil Weekend
My bottle of olive oil became dangerously depleted this weekend. I had run out of burger patties and had spied a box of what I took to be bison burger patties in Thrifties. It was a solid frozen block of ground, and has been in the freezer for 8 months since that regrettable purchase. I…
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Cheesy Goodness
When I traveled to Winnipeg last Christmas, I picked up the January 2007 issue of Discover Magazine, which is the annual stories of the year issue. At number 14, a medical story. In the February issue, Killer Fat. Both stories deal with the health effects of transfats – more precisely trans-fatty acids – and their…
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Baking Bread
Over the last couple of weeks, I have started to bake bread. It started with a resolution to pack a lunch, which I have not done consistently since University. It brings back memories of Men into Space (see also the Wikipedia entry) and the lunch box I carried to grade school.I was finding that I…
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Pizza Topping Trick
This may not be a great discovery, but it worked for me. I haven’t had good results with making my own pizza on a pre-made pizza shell. The topping usually doesn’t taste right. I don’t like frozen pizza because they use a lot some synthetic flavourings including a garlic oil on the crust, but I…
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Pasta Sauces – Clam, etc
Pasta and sauce is a good meal. There are many pre-mixed pasta sauces for sale, packaged in jars, cans and pouches – and the sauces aren’t often either bland or overseasoned. They tend to be sweet and heavy on basil and sweet-smelling herbs. I found a recipe in the Winnipeg Folk Festival Cook book that…