K8memphis

You had me at, "1-mini shortcake biscuit perfumed with herbs de provence, lavender curd and blackerry jam. Call it a "blackberry sandwich" ahhh, mmmmm... Hope everyone is on the mend & feeling better.

Congratulations, Toledo Ohio, Kristen and of course Chef Yosses.

So do you think they pre-tipped? Anything like that work maybe?? I'm so not an expert, just wondering. I know I've been on business vacation like trips where everything that moved had been tipped in advance and the island frogs were primed to sing for us on demand. Coquis in Puerto Rico.

Yes they bake them there. By the way, the bakery is 5,000 sq feet. Too cool. There's a contest on Jane magazine for someone to get to intern with Duff for a week. You just sign up for it. I'll try to find the linkage...brb... link to contest

Oh I love this! Purely poetic! "Janitors are people too." Who knew?

Parsley or basil in the berry dessert? (I know cayenne and pepper are not herbs)

In fact, what about a plate of lasagna. A regular slice size could be a family sized serving of dessert or a dessert for two. And mini size could be serving for one. Mimic garlic bread and the salad and the lasagna and all of it be dessert. Maybe some raspberry balsamic or just raspberry vinegar reduced on some strawberries on a frilly lettuce. You could fashion rosemary shortbread into looking like garlic bread with some yellow food color for butter and sprinkle paprika on top. Oh man, we gotta factor in the Valentine thing too!!! Whoa, now my brain's really whirling.... I'm currently operating in the negative--I'm thinking a heart shaped box of meatballs covered in gravy to mimic a box of chocolates. That would be so cool though. Not for this challenge, but...Hey we're brainstorming...

Yet there are millions of strong, healthy young adults who grew up eating just that. I know plenty of families -- I mean, middle class people I went to law school with -- whose kids eat almost exclusively processed foods, starting with things like Pop Tarts in the morning, moving on to awful public school lunches, to various convenience foods for dinner, with chips, cookies and other snacks in between. They rarely eat a piece of fruit or a salad. And they're in great shape. Is it the best way to eat? Maybe not. But no matter how much you, Pollan and anybody else believes there's no nutrition in McDonald's food and that soda is going to kill our children, it's not a supportable claim. ← Let me assure you that a diet rich in baked goods, processed foods, Coke, Cheez Its & chips deep fried in stress eaten long enough will totally risk screwing your health. Oh for very sure it will. It did mine. I'm back on the right track-ish. Sometimes one cannot control outside stresses, mine almost killed me. I cannot eat that same previous diet without quick weight gain and generally feeling icky albeit richly rewarded with my sinful delicious delight. I can still eat chocolate, but add some flour though & I'm carrying it around in belly fat. Belly fat of course is the worst kind for cardio health. Coping skills alone are impaired by such a diet. No it's true for me. However our bodies do adapt to extremes because our bodies are so miraculous, but there comes a day when the toll from the excess becomes due and we pay in full. Dick Clark looked the same for 30-40 years because he ate so carefully. Looking the same (to me) is synonymous with not aging as much. Food totally kicks your butt-- beats you up. We're tough but we're not that tough. Food certainly affects longevity and produces or reduces the effects of aging. And also certainly that whole everything in moderation is the golden rule (Doc, it's not anything in moderation it's everything in moderation. ) ...guess I should read pages 8-12...

Where is Brian? Am I suposed to be waiting for him before I offer any more suggestions? Just let me know... Ok rosemary shortbread pizza with...what on top??? Berry sauce and white chocolate shavings for cheese. Now those could be real cute. (I actually have made imitation tomato sauce out of beets for pizza )

You mean the wiggly orange slices? Worse than that is, well it's American Swiss. It's wiggly white Swiss wanna be. They use it on the cheesesteak sandwiches at Lenny's. Double yuck.

Well, no but let me know when you're going to start popping eyeballs so I can leave the room...

I asked him if her daughters were there. He said, No Mom, nobody hot was there. (He's on his way from the airport right now!)

My kid got to help do a birthday party for Laura Bush this past year.

Aww how cool!!! I knew there was more to it than that. Every day? She's been working hard on this. An idea is to call the place in Chicago and ask them to sell you one. Maybe?

Umm, do you have a friend in the industry with a tax id? Btw- lots of points for getting this for your wife. Is she cool with dishes for her birthday??? Chocolate could go along with that nicely & a gift certificate for some shopping too.

Y'know white chocolate candy clay would make pretty spaghetti extruded out of something, well a pasta machine. oooh lasagna! berry filling and yada yada yada. Soup, hmmm, that's an interesting thought. Y'know I'm really diggin the lasagna thing--so many layers so little time.

I used to make fruit pizza with umm sweetened tofu and I guess it was a cookie crust (long time ago). Not sure about an herb...ooh, chocolate and cayenne!!! I love strawberries in salad. It rips up my stomach but that's not important to brainstorming. Black pepper would be good with that. Oooh I'm excited! Let the games begin!!!!

Health yes. Who would give up Cheez Its of their own free will? I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to read to the end of the article. If you have more time, you can read that he is not maligning a single food, but is concerned about our general food lifestyle and its resulting health, social, and economic effects. He even argues that studies about single foods and nutrients are part of the overall problem. I thought this article was a pretty balanced look at the different issues with food science, politics, and the way we eat. Edited for spellage. ← No no no. I dug everything he said, I got it. He's so right on. It's an attention span thing on my part--too much sugar pre-50's creamed some of the brain cells. I was more referencing the current trans fat brouhaha and did not say it clearly. No I'm on his side and I'm glad he said it all. I'll read the rest. Skim anyway, wonder which nutrient aids brain regeneration haha just kidding... edited 'cause my quotes were crazy

I love food in all it's over processed glory. Cookies for breakfast because it's faster of course, unless one has time to stop at the bakery for a proper danish before their train comes. A liquid lunch to make up for breakfast delicacies and chips & sour cream for a comfort food supper. On days when breakfast was skipped, I would cook for lunch. Fried shrimp and fries of course. Hey sometimes I even peeled and cut the potatoes myself--hey, the value of fresh produce was not lost on me! I'd use iceberg lettuce on my minced ham sandwich on white, soft fluffy white. Remember Silvercup bread?? mmm. Cheez Its! I promise there's some kind of tractor beam that draws me to those bright red boxes of crispy cheesey goodness. What could be a sweeter life. So nowadays, here on the other side of 50 I am forced to eat ingredients. They really do taste good <sigh> but...oh for the good old days People have been setting off the fire alarm in the hall over this & that food forever. They should work so hard for world peace. I got to page 8 of the required reading and got distracted. What's the deal gonna kill us with radiated produce I wonder. Is that covered in pages 8-12??

Here's a good question. What is the advantage to having the government do this as opposed to traditional methods as described earlier that worked very well (whether justified or not).

Yeah ^^^ What he said ^^^ It's a market place fix. It works really well. Politicians need to be left alone to divise bigger and better ways of picking our pockets. Umm, you expect fat in cookies and french fries and etc. Did you expect sugar which is addictive in your pan release spray, peanut butter, potato chips (my other personal addiction) and pasta? C'mon, pasta? If the government wants to get the job done, why don't they interfere with the manufacture of the stuff, the cartels rather than the pushers and users. But still yet, the market can get it done. Doc, I waded through 7 pages of that link. I just know sugar is not my friend yet I make my living with it.

No worries. For sure there would be no pie crust without the water and the baking. I do find that finger method to be much less effective than a pastry blender. I've read recipes that say to add the water bit by bit like Mark is doing but I've never been able to see how that works to advantage with pie crust. To me it's diddling. One baker's 'never ever do' is the next baker's 'I swear by this', huh.

If you think it's revolting, why do you oppose the city doing something about it, that position makes no sense. Certainly municipal governments can br guilty of posturing at times but that isnt any rationale to turn a blind eye to what is a public health crisis. Politicians only care about getting re-elected, whether or not you ban transfats isnt going to make up the voters mind. It's much more dangerous to know it and oppose anything being done about it than to not know it at all. K8 MEMPHIS : Probably because you own a bakery and it isnt out of any concern for anything but your bottom line ? ← Hehehe, how could one so clever be so wrong. I wish I owned a bakery, my friend. Very simply, I oppose the city meddling. They should be concerned about drugs and can Johnny read and can he walk to the store without getting mugged. I have no problems getting rid of trans fats the way we usually pounce on food issues. People stop buying stuff. Owners scratch their heads, make a few changes, put up a sign "trans fat free' and away you go. The latest trend. Haute couture. Easy peasy. Tried & true. Then later we find out it really wasn't necessary. We've done it with all kinds of food including but not limited to margarine that replaced butter, then butter that replaced margarine, apples, coffee, carbs, etc. The government has enough things to eff up, we need to make them keep their fingers out of our pie. Whatever. Life goes on. Johnny can't read, he sells dope, mugs and gets mugged. But God forbid he eats a cookie made with shortening. Seems a little shallow doesn't it. Just for the record, I use some cake mix, and I'm not at all afraid of shortening, but my icings are all made with buttah. Wrong again. I'm not really a 'carrier.' I carefully choose which hills I fight on. The ban of trans fat does not rise to my level of engagement. Even if one disagress with this position, I hope that this starts making sense at least. Where your reasoning does start branching out into making sense is when you start talking 'bottom line'. There's nothing gets a merchant's attention like that can. Stop buying the products, they will catch on. It's no biggie.

Here's another thread about chefs supposedly whining about the ban. I was never real clear on who was whining.

I think it is also a concern and a discussion on the propogation of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in so many processed foods is an equally important topic of discussion although not directly related to the topic of this thread. A similarity between trans fats and HFCS is that they are a substitute or added ingredient to so many items that people may or may not be aware of. One difference to me is that it seems easier to limit ones HFCS or sugar intake by the food choices one makes. Transfats are more difficult to avoid since they are used in many processes, foods and goods that are not made at home and the items, for example, baked goods at the supermarket bakery, may not have labels on them. Even without a label, it is still pretty easy to know when one is making a choice to eat a "sweet" item. (This, despite the fact that HFCS is "hidden" in some other processed foods, like ketchup.) I think that there will be increasing attention focused on the amount and pervasivness of HFCS; it is a related but separate issue from whether artificial transfats are truly harmful and should be removed from foods. One thing that is also interesting is that it seems a great majority of people are willing to get behind bans on ingredients that are deemed carcinogenic. I am not sure how easy it is to correlate the exact risk and amounts of ingredients that will lead to cancer in an individual but the bans seem to be less controversial. For some reason, I guess that cardiovascular disease and Type II diabetes leading to heart attacks, strokes and other debilitating symptoms seem less threatening or more vague to people. My two posts on this thread aside, I'm not sure where I stand right now on whether a ban of trans fats is a good idea or not for Philadelphia or elsewhere and whether it would even lead to a desired goal. What is the magic substitute ingredient that would replace trans fats and what is its longterm effect on health? Ultimately I think a more drastic change in people's food choices are what will be most important. However, if it has been shown that artifical transfats are really so bad why should they continue to be allowed to be hidden in such a large spectrum of food that is sold to consumers? ← Trans fats are not hiding in produce for example (obviously). High fructose corn syrup is bad but it's a less expensive replacement for the sugar that's always been in catsup and bar-b-q chips and salad dressing and cereal and baked beans and spaghetti sauce and wheat bread, whole grain breads, (whole grain is 'better' for you, but it tends to taste like poo so let's add some sugar for palatability) ahh, peanut butter, in Kashi Go Lean 'health food cereal' there's evaporated cane juice (what the hell is that?) and Worcestershire sauce, the second ingredient in Lawry's seasoned salt is sugar, my friggin 100% pure vanilla has corn syrup in it, so I checked my can of Bake Ease Kroger brand easy release baking spray, it's got vanilla flavor which I'm sure contains some kind of sugar since my 100% pure vanilla does--in pan release spray?????? Umm Mueller's Multi Grain spaghetti's fifth ingredient is crystallized cane juice, et cetera et cetera et cetera. And I guess hfcs has even more devils in it but sugar has enough to be the original and therefore the umbrella bad substance of the century I guess. Sugar kicks trans fat's ass. No one is addicted to trans fats. And sugar is in everything. Can sugar (et al) be addictive??