Recently in Food Category

I experimented in the kitchen last night for the first time in a long while. Inspired by this recipe, I cobbled together a strange creation that my daughter miraculously ate some of, so I must commemorate the occasion with a blog posting.

I boiled some russet potatoes for a while and then sliced them. In the meantime, I also stir-fried some small pieces of cauliflower (I could have roasted them but I was in a hurry) which I then pulsed in the Cuisinart with a little milk and some cheddar and Gorgonzola cheeses. (Could have gone lighter on the latter, but nobody seemed to mind.)

Finally, I put the slices of potato on a baking sheet, spread some of the cauliflower/cheese mixture on each one, and topped them off with pieces of fire-roasted peppers from a Trader Joe's jar and some panko bread crumbs. Baked them in the oven at 425 for... I dunno, a while, until the cheese melted and the crumbs browned slightly.

Mimi looked at them suspiciously for a while, but then started taking bites, first of ours, then of hers.

Cauliflower quite simply rocks — it works so well in cheesy dishes and kids will eat it without noticing it!

Now I need to find a palatable recipe involving a green vegetable other than cucumber or avocado...

I've hated cafeteria-type places pretty much all my life. Grade school lunchroom, high school cafeteria, college dorm food, English dining hall (the worst!), on up to the lunchroom at my office... I just can't stomach the smells or the crowds, much less the food typically offered.

So I was skeptical about the restaurant in our local IKEA. The prices are so cheap, I figured it couldn't offer much in the way of flavor or atmosphere.

I'm happy to eat my words. Apart from the "million-dollar view" of the bay and freeway, the food itself was satisfying enough to please our toddler (pasta for 99, can't beat that!) and my husband (the buffalo chicken wrap and fries). As for me, I took a gamble on the gravlax, and it was remarkably tasty, especially when I grabbed a few crackers to eat with it (39 cents each). And bonus: cool IKEA decor and no nasty smells!

Now why can't IKEA start running cafeterias for all those other places? They could really turn things around.

This summer, I was on a British Airways flight to France where they handed out snack boxes an hour or two before landing. I blearily opened the box and found the following inside the lid:

In case you can't read it, it says:

The first production of a croissant dates back to 1683. That year, Austria was under siege by the Turkish Empire. In Vienna, the Turkish assailant found that time was slipping past and decided to dig an underground tunnel to enter the city.

The bakers were thanked and they decided to make bread in the shape of a crescent moon (symbol of the Turkish flag) and the croissant was born. 100 years later, Marie Antoinette (Austrian Princess who married Louis XVI) introduced the croissant to the French Aristocrats.

It was only at the start of this century that the butter puff croissant was created, and became the French national product in 1920. Now the croissant is one of the most famous breakfast items in France & the rest of the world.

It looks like English, it sounds like English, and yet after reading it over repeatedly I still cannot understand it. What was Vienna's problem that they could not resist a lone Turkish assailant? Could the inhabitants not have just bopped him over the head and taken his shovel from him? What was the role of the bakers? What were they being thanked for? What prompted them to suddenly make crescent-shaped bread? Is it possible they were "spanked" rather than "thanked"? How did the croissant become the "French national product" in 1920? What was the French national product in 1919? (Guess it beats the French national product of 1789, the guillotine...)

Oh, and what's with the random capitalization? And starting a sentence with "100" instead of "One hundred"? Come on, British Airways, your country invented English. Have some standards!

And now, I want to go eat a croissant. Humph.

In answer to the question "why is high-fructose corn syrup bad for you?", there's this study.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2007) -- Researchers have found new evidence that soft drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) may contribute to the development of diabetes, particularly in children. In a laboratory study of commonly consumed carbonated beverages, the scientists found that drinks containing the syrup had high levels of reactive compounds that have been shown by others to have the potential to trigger cell and tissue damage that could cause the disease, which is at epidemic levels.

The reason...

n the current study, Chi-Tang Ho, Ph.D., conducted chemical tests among 11 different carbonated soft drinks containing HFCS. He found 'astonishingly high' levels of reactive carbonyls in those beverages. These undesirable and highly-reactive compounds associated with "unbound" fructose and glucose molecules are believed to cause tissue damage, says Ho, a professor of food science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. By contrast, reactive carbonyls are not present in table sugar, whose fructose and glucose components are "bound" and chemically stable, the researcher notes.

I had some vague idea that the molecules involved were different or something like that, but I couldn't remember the details in any coherent way.

The HFCS industry can, and should, suck it.

Michael's cousin's pizza place gets a nice review in the Examiner.

Like...

WHY THE FUCK AREN'T THERE DECENT SUSHI DELIVERY SERVICES IN OAKLAND!?!?!?!!?!

Ahem.

Excuse me.

When I was a kid, my mom did all her grocery shopping at the Co-op in North Berkeley. Nice place, from what I remember. It has long since become a fancy-schmancy Andronico's. Sure, the Cheese Board is doing a brisk trade, but the idea of grocery store as cooperative enterprise is long past.

Except where it isn't.

Fledgling Grocery Pledges Quality Goods at Affordable Prices

Berkeley, CA (August 1, 2006) - A group of local Berkeley and Oakland residents is launching a food cooperative, the Berkeley Cooperative Grocery (the CoG), in early 2007. The CoG’s mission is to serve residents of the Bay Area by offering reasonably priced food and products that are sustainably sourced.

Quality and affordability are the two main tenets of the CoG. Its founding members state that “The CoG believes that every person has the right to affordable food and goods that are healthy and sustainably sourced.” Further, they proclaim that such food and products “should not be the choice of a few, but an affordable standard for every individual.”

The average for-profit grocery routinely marks up organic items as much as 100% above wholesale. As a nonprofit, the CoG plans to sell the same high-quality brands as other health- and environmentally minded stores at a much reduced markup (only enough to cover operating expenses).

How can it afford to do this? Traditional groceries spend about 70% of their revenue on labor. At the CoG, every member will be required to work approximately 2 1/2 hours a month in areas such as purchasing, stocking, child care, marketing, and Web maintenance. This keeps payroll expenses to a minimum and permits the co-op to offer products at a substantial savings. The goal is to have at least 75% of the co-op be run by members, with a staff comprising no more than 25%. The CoG also plans to accept food stamps and offer low-income membership investments once the store is up and running.

Requiring members to work not only keeps payroll expenses to a minimum, it also reflects a democratic system. In a true co-op each member gets one vote on every major decision, so it stands to reason that the workload be shared equally as well. In addition, says board member Shannon Kelly, “A sense of community and cooperation is gained from each member contributing to the co-op. Members take pride in the cleanliness of the co-op, get involved in suggesting new products, and feel as though their contributions are actually making a difference in their store and in their community.”

Members must also pay a one-time $25 fee and make a $100 investment to the co-op, which is refundable if the member chooses to leave the co-op (the investment may be paid in monthly installments). These charges cover overhead, administrative costs, supplies, and facilities.

The $100 investment may be too steep a barrier for a lot of people, unfortunately... neat idea though! I hope they succeed. (If the prices are good enough, I'm going to be tempted...)

Donut peaches are good! I've been having trouble finding really flavorful peaches so far, but I bought a few of these funny squished-looking fruits a few days ago. Great flavor, small and easily removed pit. Who knew?

I live near a wonderful grocery store. Independent, locally owned, great, friendly employees, good selection, and I don't have to drive to get there. One fly in the ointment: the prices on produce are, shall we say, a mite steep. Organic nectarines were $5.39 a pound the other day. They sell mache for $5-something a bag. Ouch.

So I did something different: I got in my car, headed southeast on 580, and got off on Fruitvale. My destination: the new Farmer Joe's Marketplace. I had heard about the original Farmer Joe's for years, but inertia kept me shopping closer to home (or at Trader Joe's.)

My verdict: easy to get to, pleasant store, good produce selection, and MUCH better prices. Small avocados: four for a dollar (and not all that small, either.) Organic plums: $1.69/pound. That bag of mache? $1.89 for a bag (and that's before the 35-cent coupon was applied to it!)

Non-produce items, however, were about the same price as at Piedmont Grocery. Annalisa beans (Italian, come in glass jars instead of cans) were $1.29 a jar at Farmer Joe's as opposed to $1.25 at Piedmont. Plus, they didn't have the strange veggie bacon from Morningstar Farms which I've become addicted to (don't ask.)

Anyway, I'm sure I'll still end up going to Piedmont Grocery (no driving!) but for stocking up on fruits and veggies, I'm hitting the highway.

About a year ago I was carping on this blog about how unusable the Chowhound website was. Its wonderful restaurant reviews by devoted foodies were buried in an ugly disorganized mess of a website. Well, no matter, I decided. I would search Chowhound via Google, and bypass most of the clutter. So for a long time, my searches consisted of ones like this:

"dim sum" "New York" site:Chowhound.com

and I passed this tip along to anybody who was looking for a good place to eat.

Then sometime last weekend, I tried it again, clicked on the link, and got a "page not found" error with a new Chowhound logo I'd never seen before. Curious, I went to the home page of Chowhound.

What a shock! Gone were the lengthy explanations, the ugly backgrounds, the proliferation of fonts and colors, and the general clutter. In their place was an attractive, simple grid of a page... and a search engine that appeared to work!

Apparently, CNet has bought the site, and they worked their design mojo on it (and frankly, I think it's much more attractive than CNet's own site.)

Bon appetit!