February 5, 2009 at 4:07 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: cheese, delicious, flavor, food, yum
I love cheese. I love it so much that to this day, I can overeat enough of it to make me almost sick. I love it so much that I kept a stock of the locally produced compressed milk pellets on hand to sate my cravings, even though they barely tasted cheesy. Even cheese food is a wonderfully delicious product to my taste buds.
As a cheese lover, I’m always ready to try new shapes and flavors. Most recently this took the form of a something-or-other round with cranberries in it. What could be more delicious than cheese? Cheese with fruit, of course! Yum. After sharing more than half a round with Corina, I was able to convince myself to stop consuming, but it was difficult. It was, after all, a sweet, crumbly cheese – what could be better for dessert, for a perfect cap to any meal? And after the cap, how about a recap? I still get shivers just thinking about it.
If there’s one thing both thinking and deliciousness lead to, it’s research. So, after a cursory interweb browse, I feel pretty confident that the cheese we consumed so rambunctiously was a Wensleydale. Wensleydale comes from Yorkshire, specifically the town of Hawes. I feel like I should now be talking with a Secret Garden accent. It has a supple, crumbly, moist texture (check) and a flavor that suggests wild honey (double check) balanced with a fresh acidity (quoi?). What is ‘fresh acidity’, anyway? And how does it relate to this totally delicious, totally sweet cheese? Those cheese tasters and their weird ideas of flavor. it’s almost as bad as wine connoisseurs.
The cheese comes in a range of sizes, the smallest of which is a a wax-covered round called a ‘truckle’, which evidently comes from the phrase ‘truck a wheel’ and can refer to the pulleys in a block or the wheels of a truckle or trundle bed, or any small wheels or casters. The word ‘truckle’ can also mean ‘to submit’. Ah, my little obsequious cheese! Finally, this cheese is ’suited to combination with sweeter produce’, commonly cranberries. In England, they also eat it typically with fruitcake or Christmas Cake, which I can barely think about. Those crazy little islanders…
Leave a Comment
January 12, 2009 at 11:27 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: disease, food, King Nut, poison
The recent salmonella outbreak has now supposedly been traced to King Nut peanut butter, which evidently is not responsible for any of the ingredients it usued to produce its butter and other products. In addition, none of its products are sold directly to consumers – the King Nut brand is only available through food service. So if you’ve had restaurant or cafeteria peanut butter recently, you might be at risk, but store-bought Skippy is still basically reliable (thank you, Annette Funicello).
I am also eager to report that Massachussetts ranked in the top five for number of reported cases, along with California, Ohio, Michigan, and the surprise salmonella guest, Minnesota, which reported 30 cases. As for the 8 states that are supposedly salmonella-free, I am happy to say that, as anticipated, Alaska and Hawaii and Montana are all on the list. Also making the cut are New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Florida.
Leave a Comment
November 5, 2008 at 3:34 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: food, health, poison, wrokplace safety, yum
I had no idea, but evidently microwaves can do more than just turning your Styrofoam toxic or enlarging Peeps (the only good Peep is a dead Peep). There is at least one consumer case now of microwave popcorn fume inhalation which may have caused lung disease. of course, the conclusion is uncertain, but so far there is no other explanation other than diacetyl. If you work in a popcorn factory, the risk might be higher than you want. For the rest of you popcorn lovers? I’d say you can still eat your popcorn – just don’t inhale. Or it might be a good time to convert to air pop…
Thanks, Josue, for the tip (via Green Steam).
Leave a Comment
September 30, 2008 at 11:35 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: environment, food, government, produce, tracking
As of today, the new COOL (Country-of-Origin Labeling) law goes into effect. Basically this means that any fresh produce sold in the US must have a label declaring what country it’s from. The government is giving growers until spring before beginning to fine them, but you should at least begin to see the new labels at stores. More details about the law and its implementation can be found here.
And that’s great. I think it will promote consumer awareness and help alleviate some of the worries of food scares and give us a little more information about where our products come from. But I want more. I was thinking that I want to know when my organic radishes are from the farmer two miles away and when they’re from Texas. I want to know where my veggies have been shipped before they came to me, and where they might have stopped in transit, and how long it took them to come. Ripeness is an issue. Health is an issue. Environmental impact is an issue. I want to track that.
I propose the Tracking and Management System. I want to know where my stuff went, where it came from – including a little blurb about the farmer – and how long it took to get there. I want to know details of its shipment, including how far it travelled and at what environmental cost. Lastly, I want to know the conditions of its transport – was it sent in a refrigerated box? Was it overheated? Unintentionally frozen? I know they’re doing this sort of tracking now with wine, and I know for more commodity items, it’s probably less fiscally feasible. But still, I want it – and I think it’s something other consumers, even at a more speciality store level which would provide this kind of information, would want it.
2 Comments
September 16, 2008 at 11:37 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: eating, fanciful, food, gods, rain, storm
There are few things in life I like more than a cookie. Just say the word – “cookie”. It even sounds like it’s filled with goodness. I love that my boss and other office minions delight in providing me with a daily cookie fix. I love that the word is a source of humor either by itself (if you’re Shannon) or in various jokes involving tossed cookies or cowboys. I love that Jason comfort-foods me with them. For any of you who’ve ever read (or had read to them) the story Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, you’ll notice that cookies are one of the foods that never becomes a problem in falling from the skies. Why? Because cookies are simply never bad.
Which brings me to my next point – why are we not awash in a sea of cookie provender from benficent gods above? As cookies cannot cause floods, they would be more useful than excessive rain. And don’t I (Don’t you, ALL of you) deserve a cookie? I think I do. But how does one bring about a hail of cookies from the sky? Have we already angered the cookie gods in some way we don’t know about? Does our cloud-dough lack substance? Did somebody leave out that pinch of salt that would provide an instant cookie downpour?
I cannot say. But, I think, it would be advisable for those of us without cookies to begin an immediate cookie dance to bring down the cookies from the sky once again. Couldn’t hurt, and provided no one breaks themselves, it would at least be entertaining.
Leave a Comment
June 5, 2008 at 9:51 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: discovery, food, history, legend, myth, story, tradition
I like raw oysters. Only since moving to Boston did I realize I like them. In Indiana, oysters just aren’t as prevalent, and while I like seafood, somehow I never got around to trying them. Now I love to hop up to Summer Shack after a long week and grab a pitcher of Fisherman’s Brew and a nice little selection of oozy goodness. I generally try what they have on hand, learning the names of different types and maybe even something about the part of the coast a particular oyster comes from.
Wellfleets are pretty good. The Wellfleet Oyster Fest describes them as ‘long and strong-shelled. Experienced tasters know that they are plump and clean with a distinctively good balance of creamy sweetness and brine.’ But I’ve never been to Wellfleet, MA, and didn’t even know they had a lighthouse, until now.
It is interesting to me the way local legend grows up around a particular event or circumstance. It must have been true that someone in Wellfleet knew the fate of the lighthouse at the time it was moved. The amount of effort it must take to move a lighthouse from one coast to another, even disassembled as some think it was, must have meant the local population was well aware of the movement, even if they were unaware that the lighthouse would eventually end up on Point Montara, CA. Someone must have written the letters that are now coming to light as evidence of the movement of the lighthouse. Local rumor may have eventually spewed forth the idea that the lighthouse was merely disassembled and not transported, but what of those ‘in the know’? Is there some reason they would not want the town to know that their lighthouse was still being used (and is still being used today) somewhere else? Or did the townspeople themselves simply prefer to allow the truth to fade into past and legend.
It is odd the ways truth and story blur in local tradition. In Talcott, WV, it is often said that after his titanic battle with the steam engine, John Henry came home to his wife, had a quiet dinner, and passed softly in his sleep, his big heart finally giving out from the strain of that struggle. In Ireland, Oisin lives to tell his tale to the future, perhaps even to Saint Patrick. We are drawn to the poetry of the moment, and who would rather not see their beacon of light sinking slowly beneath the waves forever, rather than used for purposes not their own on some distant shore?
Leave a Comment
June 4, 2008 at 9:16 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: food, health, illness, news, responsibility
As Americans, most of us live distant from our foods. I’m not talking about prepackaged, processed foods or even raw meat, but even fresh produce. We don’t live close to it, or see the steps it goes through to get to our stores, and yet we expect it to be fresh and ripe when we buy it. We expect our Sunkist oranges to look fresh, our Dole lettuces to be bug- and wilt-free. I was aware of this most clearly in China, where veggies come fresh with both creepy-crawlies and nightsoil fertilizer. In China, you really wash your foods good, and you don’t often eat anything raw.
Don’t get me wrong, I love fresh veggies, but there are certain unavoidable health risks with very fresh, unprocessed produce. Take the recent spread of salmonella from tomatoes. People are becoming sick not because they weren’t taking precautions and washing their food, but simply because they were eating something raw that they thought was safe. Ultimately there is going to be a ‘culprit’, some poor individual who didn’t wash his hands or is otherwise responsible for not taking safety precautions. But sometimes I wonder if we’re not asking for too much. Should we be guaranteed the safety of fresh, raw produce? Or is the cost too high? Should we all go back to keeping our own gardens? Or should we be more careful about eating raw products that we cannot guarantee the safety of? Should we all be buying from local small farmers anyway?
All I know is that every tomato I’ve got is going into tomato and egg soup (think egg drop, except better and with actual flavor), rather than for fresh eating.
Leave a Comment
May 20, 2008 at 12:26 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: drink, fantasy, food, frustration, job
It is a legend of my office that at one time, we had a 12 cup coffee maker that rebrewed regular throughout the day. There are various stories of people not making a fresh pot, people not cleaning and letting the coffee mold, and people generally being rude and somewhat inhuman to each other. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that. However, the current solution of Keurig one-cup brews, or K-cups, is not an elegant one. The coffee inside each package is pre-ground and generally stale, despite a ‘freshness’ seal. Most of the flavors are either too strong or too weak (where’s my medium roast?!?). Finally, the K-cups brew what seems to be 7 oz., an amount that is perfectly the wrong size for one or two brews in my 12 oz. mug. I need like one and a half brews of K-cup.
But there is one thing I’ve discovered that not even K-cups can foul up – white hot chocolate. Liquid warmth beyond the understanding of mortal man, it comes out a little foamy, reminiscent of marshmallows and downy pillows. It’s like a hot cloud of wonderment.
McDonald’s may have its persuasive hooks in the world with copious amounts of salt, fat, sugar, and other horribly bad things, but Keurig will now always have a deeper hook in my heart.
Leave a Comment
May 19, 2008 at 12:23 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: disaster, food, fun, news, yum
Some of you may be familiar with the singer Harry Chapin, who does a variety of more ridiculous songs for adults. I know him via his brother Tom, who was my childhood substitution for Raffi. Anyway, one of Harry’s songs that I delight in is ‘30,000 Pounds of Bananas’. Just picture it – a truck losing control outside of Scranton, sacrificing its load to the demon of bad breaks on a treacherous road. Now replace the treacherous road with a relatively flat and straight one, and substitute the bananas with 14 tons of Double Stuf Oreos, and you have today’s news.
While I find it ridiculous to envision literal TONS of cookies stopping traffic, there are other questions. What happened to the driver? Did he lose control? Was he injured? Did he have to eat his way out of tons of cookies after the spill? The article claims none of the cookie bags ripped open (yeah right), but even for those cookies still in bags, are there legal issues to selling them after the spill? Nobody likes crumbly Oreos. Personally, i think the company should sell the goods at a discount. Who knows what kind of invisible damage could result from the spill? There could be a complete loss of structural integrity, resulting in dissolving cookie if I try to dip it in milk. I vote, if not for a discount, at least for a random dipping test of the cookies spilled, just to check. I would guess there are very few who like oreo cookie floaters in their milk, either.
Thanks to Kate for the article and keeping me up to date on the Midwest (woohoo!).
Leave a Comment
May 7, 2008 at 9:00 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: environment, food, medicine, resource
In my days as a ‘current events avoider’, I still managed to a fear of the loss of honey bees. As the greatest, most diverse , and most widespread pollinator, we owe this little creature just about everything we eat, grow, or wear. Outside of the value of honey as a crop, beekeeping can provide additional income to those who travel with their hives to aid crop fertilization, making it a lucrative profession both in America and third world countries. But it seems like there’s always a threat to these ventures: mites, fungus, Africanized bees, or even pesticides.
A recent survey of 19% of the commercial bee industry in the U.S. showed losses of 32% over the past year. True, this survey investigated only the largest operators, but a general trend can be induced from the study. Just imagine if 1/3 of the people in your office died over the course of a year, or 1/3 of the businesses in your area were closed. Now imagine that, in addition to rising food prices and the scarcity of certain crops due to their use as biofuel, the loss of 1/3 or more of this year’s crop due to a lack of fertilization.
The most interesting part of the situation, however, is the loss of bees and entire hives to CCD, colony collapse disorder. Basically, the bees of a hive get fed up, or depressed, or disillusioned with the leadership of their hives, and wander off on their own. They die alone, the queen dies by herself, and honey production stops, starving off the next generation. Science has yet to determine a cause, but I have my own theory: we’ve taught them well.
5 Comments
« Older entries
