Moopheus

I wouldn't pay more for the beef because I haven't had any for four years. Factory farming is only part of the reason I'm vegetarian. I chose it for my own personal reasons, and I don't force it on others. I give my cat regular cat food. I'm happy to let chickens be chickens and do their chicken things. I don't remember ever having a yummy Big Mac. But then, that $6 Big Mac might actually be a better Big Mac. But I get your point. I've met people who really don't seem to have any clue at all where food comes from; it just shows up in the market and they buy it. But it's true, once you try to 'pierce the market wall' as it were, it opens up a big complex nest of issues. Even if the best eggs I can get in my market aren't ideal, I'll still support the best farming practices I can with my dollars. Ultimately, that's the only way to get any change at all, even tiny ones.

You would presume--but even though I think most people are aware of salmonella in eggs, they're just advised to cook the eggs, and not think about why there's so much contamination. I know that 'free-range' and 'cage-free' don't necessarily mean ideal conditions for the chicken. But I don't think an extra dollar or two for a carton of eggs is too much to pay for better eggs, especially since cheaper eggs just mean that costs are 'externalized' to the animals, the workers, and the environment. Thanks for the info. When I call Egg Innovations, I've got a couple more questions for them.

He's a Maine Coon. After I've made cocoa he likes to lick the milk residue at the bottom of the pot.

That's actually a good point--if you sweeten your coffee that would make a big difference in how it goes with dessert. I usually have mine black; if it seems to need sugar that means the coffee's no good. And that really just goes for Western restaurants--in Asian restaurants (probably 80% of my dining out) I'll usually go with the tea.

Uh, basically, yes. Actually, I think they use a cutter. In the US at least, battery cages are still in widespread use, though they've been banned in most of Europe. The chickens tend to fight and peck each other when kept so close together.

Never been to an Olive Garden--I grew up in an Italian family, don't think I could stand it. Usually if I go to a chain restaurant, it's because I'm on the road and don't want to take the time to find something else--which I will do if I'm not in too much of a rush. The place that really weirds me out is Cracker Barrel--I mean, aside from the food (though I like the biscuits)--every one of them is exactly the same. Same building, furniture placement, displays, everything. It's kind of scary. I have eaten in some really terrible places avoiding chain restaurants, which I figure is part of the adventure of travel. On the other hand, I've had pleasant surprises too. But it does make you at least partly understand the appeal of the chain, at least in some places, for the locals. I ate breakfast in a Marie Callender's for the first time when I was in Vegas in May; it actually wasn't that bad, no worse than an ordinary diner. I also ate in a really bad diner in Vegas, so I had some comparison. Definitely one of the things that bugs me about chains, not just restaurants, is the homogenizing effect. You go someplace and it looks just like the last place you left, it looks like a mall. Why bother to travel if you're just going to go to a chain when you get there?

I would say this might be a scam--they are what they say they are, but kind of a cheat too. I.e., Egg Innovations, the company that sells these, does make a big deal about the cage-free eggs, except that a little digging reveals that the vegetarian eggs are not cage-free; they're caged hens (presumably to keep them from eating the bugs). In the fact the product description on their web site says that the eggs are "Produced by cage-free hens" but the FAQ sheet says that Vegetarian Eggs are "brown eggs produced by caged chickens fed a 100% vegetarian diet." Hmmm--could this be a deceptive marketing practice? I think I need to go and make a couple of annoying phone calls. It's unlikely that most of the egg-laying chickens in this country get anything close to a natual diet--it's hard to pick up a bug when you have no beak! The eggs I have in the fridge right now declare that "these hens are cared for now as they were since 1955", which I thought sounded pretty good even if a bit vague. It also says they're fed a natural feed free of animal fats. Though I suppose that wouldn't necessarily exclude the random bugs and things the chickens would find in the yard. That doesn't bother me at all, and I'm a vegetarian. I just want the chickens to go about their chicken business and give me good eggs.

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss your cookies goodbye.

That's absolutely true--I work in publishing, so I know just how true it is. But the flip side of that is that when a public figure is basically telling lies in public, one can stand up and say, that's a damned lie (at least for now), even if it's not something that appears to be very important. And that is also a good thing. Though I don't think that eGulletteers would consider food, nutrition, and health to be unimportant.

Why not both? Coffee with dessert is good, coffee after dessert is also good. Assuming, of course, that the coffee is good. But then, I don't drink, so I often find myself having coffee where others might have wine or beer. Like if you substitute 'coffee' for 'wine' in LJC's list, that's not unusual for me. And no, I don't really give a damn if anyone thinks that's weird.

I just got off the phone with an All-Clad customer service person who told me that All-Clad uses a more slender handle on the new pans, and now all the lines use the same handle (not the case before). But as far as she knew, the material in the body of the pan itself was the same as the old pans, and there should be no performance difference. She claimed the new handles stay cooler. I didn't ask her about the pans made in China. It was clearly not the first time she'd heard a question about the lighter pans. She also told me that the pans are not polished to the same mirror finish because they actually got a lot of complaints from people afraid to scratch the shiny new pans (like me).

It's true that you could say that it's "just a bad cooking show" and move on; there are worse things in the world. She isn't even the worst thing on TV. Maybe not even the worst thing on Food TV (Iron Chef USA is a close second). Her influence is actually pretty negligable compared to say, Bill O'Reilly. But one can still be offended by the perversion of a cooking show into something not just unhelpful but arguably harmful. The premise of her show is that cooking is hard, time-consuming, and expensive. So don't do it. It's cheaper and easier to use packaged, brand-name goods, and it's just as good. This is basically a lie. And people believe it. They think Sandra Lee is helping them deal with their busy lives when she's hornswoggled them into harming themselves for the profit of others, just the lowest form of hucksterism. And I don't know of any other cooking show that does this--even the lamest of them are still telling their audiences, you can do this, try something new, enjoy good food. And that's before the hypocritical and condescending elements is considered. Do you think she eats this way herself? She's making good money from her books and TV show; her husband is a wealthy man. Do you think that if they were to have, say, a dinner party for his business associates she would serve them an acorn-laced kwanzaa cake? She clearly doesn't give a damn about her audience beyond what's in their wallets.

I think we'd have to do that one live and in-person...

Tonight's dinner was red lentil soup with saffron and garam masala.

Today I went into a houseware shop that sells All-Clad, and out of curiousity I hefted some of the sample pieces of the LTD All-Clad, the same kind that I use at home daily. Like Marie-Louise, I definitely noticed a difference. I don't think we're all imagining this. They're lighter. I also noticed that the interior was not polished smooth and shiny the way mine were when new. This may be fairly recent--I added a piece to my set a couple of years ago that was made the same as my old set. The new KitchenAid mixers are also definitely lighter--I think they're using plastic gears.

Maybe that explains my one and only Arby's experience, a few years back on the road in Ohio. Driving to Chicago with a couple of friends, we stopped to eat at an Arby's, and I had this "sandwich" with "fries" and "coffee." I remember sitting there, and we were putting the "food" into our mouths, chewing, swallowing, and so on, but completely without the normal sensations of eating. There was no taste. Not bad, not good, nothing at all. We left, not entirely sure we'd had lunch. It was kind of surreal.

LOL, then again considering how many people buy cookbooks and don't ever use them... I can imagine this having a lot of appeal to moms who hate to cook but feel guilty... Reviews like that are basically preaching to the converted--no one reading it was going to buy the book anyway. She sells because she's on TV. Can't help but notice that just about everything visible in the kitchen is KitchenAid. Kind of makes me wonder what their arrangement with the show is. If you sneak over to Foodnetwork.com you might be amused that her "fan" board has been pretty much hijacked by folks who want her off the air. It seems that pretty much anyone who actually likes, well, food, finds her pretty horrifying.

Dexter makes those knives both with the stain-resistant steel and also in high-carbon steel. If yours is high carbon--it'll say so on the side--some staining is not unusual. Mine has a blue spot on it now too. I don't think it's a big problem as long as you clean and dry the knide after use.

Sets are not necessarily a great idea unless you're really going to use all the pieces. Better to ask for specific pieces that you're actually going to use. One thing about All-Clad--it's pretty tough. I've never used Calphalon so I can't compare, but I don't expect my All-Clad to wear out in my lifetime. I don't use non-stick coatings.

Perversely, it is money she doesn't really need--she's the "trophy wife" of the wealthy CEO of a $5 billion home construction company. She does this out of the pure, rotten, evilness of her heart. For all of the general lameness of many of the shows on Food Network, I think this is the only one where the motto of the show would be "Eat Sh*t and Die!" It's true that one doesn't really expect a whole lot in the way of quality from commercial television, but Sandra Lee is actively harmful and deceitful, just another way to convince people they need to be dependent on the producers of industrial food products.

When I'm watching a movie or video at home I like to have Sno-Caps. It's just a thing; it's the only time I eat them. Malted milk balls are another favorite occasional treat. And Atomic Fireballs. Also an unusual Japanese candy called Super Lemon, which is lemon flavored with a layer of citric acid powder on the outside. There used to be a similar Super Cola candy, but it seems to be gone now. If you can't find any Three Musketeers it's 'cus I've eaten them all. When I was just out of school and had no money (as opposed to now, ha, ha) my friends and I liked to go to the old Borden factory in Cambridge (MA) and buy factory seconds for $1 a pound. It doesn't get much lower than that, really. Sadly, Necco later bought the factory and closed the factory store.

I cook at home a lot more now than I used to. I've worked at home for the last two years and my wife has a long commute, so I do all the cooking, probably 4 or 5 times a week. Terra doesn't like to have leftovers, so I usually eat them for lunch. On weekends things get kind of lax. We don't go out for dinner that much, though weekend brunch is a regular thing for us. But I like to cook and I'd way rather be in the kitchen than on the subway. One of the reasons I haven't gone looking too hard for another office job. Not that I'm making a gourmet meal every night, and when I make sauce or soup I make a lot so I always have something in the freezer for busy days. Though I bake less than I used to, since not having an office job means having fewer people around to eat the excess.

It's not necessary to check very far to know that--that's one of the most fundamental facts about low-carb dieting. It's how they 'work'--forcing the body to burn fat by depriving it of carbs. That this produces toxins damaging to the kidneys was generally not emphasised by Dr. Atkins. I think most nutritionists these days would recommend not trying to lose faster than that, for basic metabolic reasons. But that rate of loss can be achieved simply by not overeating and getting moderate excercise; no special diets required at all. As far as I can tell, no diet scheme has ever really done better than eating a nutritionally balanced diet, not overeating, not eating too much junk food, and getting off your ass once in a while. Which is exactly what I plan to do as soon as I finish off the nine-pound slab of chocolate I've got in the fridge.

I also bought a Dexter-Russell Chinese chef's knife after reading a couple of recommendations for them in Chinese cookbooks. I now have two--the 7x2" blade and the 8x3". I use them for practically everything, and rarely touch my old German knives (Henckels) any more. Dexter now makes a santuko-style knife, both with the plastic handle (cheap) and wood handle (expensive), though the actual blade is the same on both I believe. I have that too, though the 7x2 knife does most of the work.

Really? I had some of those ersatz sausages just this morning. I thought they were made mostly from nonmagical vegetable proteins, but I could be wrong; guess I'd better go back and check the package.