lperry

My BF has problems with cow's milk cheeses, and I would like to know if there are any sheep or goat milk cheeses out there that would be good for melting into a traditional-type fondue. I've found a few recipes online, but they aren't for the white wine, melty cheese, touch of garlic fondue I want. And I don't want to live in a fondue-free world. Is there a cheese expert out there who knows of an alternative to Emmentaler and/or Gruyere? Thanks- L

I don't know how accurate this site is, but here is a nice explanation of the difference between Madagascar (Bourbon) and Tahitian vanilla. They claim that these are two different species. -L

Did anyone else notice the "Absolutely No Food Allowed" sign in the background?

^ I've grown it in a pot with good results. If you have extra, it will also keep very well if you peel it and cover it with a high-proof neutral spirit. I had some in a little glass jar in the fridge like that for months. After a few weeks, a spoonful of the liquid will add color and flavor just like the grated flesh. -L

I have made this one twice, (Click) and it is wonderful. -L

I had an Atlas that I ended up giving away because it didn't produce what I wanted. Extruded 00 flour pastas were floppy and the ends would seal shut when I cut them off, and the semolina flour ones I tried were grainy and not very good. I experimented a lot with moisture levels and types of flour with no success. This is in direct contrast to my Atlas rolling machine that makes fantastic, tender pasta. I've read that you can't get pasta very firm with home machines because the pressure is not high enough to deal with semolina flour. I don't know if this is true or not. -L

I didn't know. I admire the cocktail forums from afar. Thanks for the ideas.

*bump* I brought a large, rose scented geranium inside this winter expecting it to go dormant, and it proceeded to grow and sprawl all over the floor. I couldn't bring myself to throw out the cuttings (it felt too much like wasting food), so now I've got a jar on my counter with the crushed leaves steeping in some vodka. I'm hoping to add the "extract" to berry jams later this spring and summer to add a nice floral top note. There's also a jar of Meyer limoncello finishing in the kitchen, and I plan to experiment with combining the two. I realize it's an odd time of year to ask, but is anyone doing anything interesting with scented geraniums?

I wondered if there were a black market for high-end wines. So does that mean that the thieves either 1. had a buyer who financed the operation or 2. are really dedicated wine lovers?

I'm not understanding your response. I proposed an argument for those who believe there is a health problem that is related to diet using what I said up front was an overly-simplistic example. If you don't believe there is such a problem, of course you will disagree. I was not trying to belittle people who are reliant on medication.

That's how I feel as well. If you believe 1. there is a growing problem of poor health among Americans and 2. it is diet related, you have to decide where to look for the cause. Going back to the corn chips/Pringles issue (just for the sake of an overly-simplistic example), we know that people have been eating whole grain corn, oil, and salt for thousands of years without ill effects. While freeze dried potatoes were common in ancient Andean diets, they were whole potatoes. People have been eating refined, desiccated, dehydrated potato flakes for a couple of decades. So if this trend is a couple of decades old and is nutrition related, where is the logical place to look? Probably at the foods that have come into widespread use in the past few decades. No, we don't know for sure that these foods are necessarily terrible for us, but it seems like a sensible place to start. From my point of view, I'd rather not take the risk. I want to live to a nice old age and not be taking piles of medication.

Is your wine under lock and key? I'm investing in the wrong bank! The NYT article

He did go after the processed, packaged "health food." I will admit to having a box of Barilla Plus Healthy pasta in my pantry. I picked it up because of the Omega 3 label. Hook, line, and sinker, I suppose. Next time I'll just go for the whole wheat.

^Also true. The concept of "whole foods" was brought up again and again. I can't imagine, though, that anyone would honestly consider chips a staple in a healthy diet. Even the people who manufacture them call them "snack food." But I also admit, I eat very differently than most Americans. I just looked in my pantry, and the "un-whole" foods I have in there are crackers, pasta, various condiments, and my chocolate stash (the uber-processed indulgence). Must be time to go shopping. Thank you for your posts, Ludja. I enjoy reading them.

I think that the Pringles of the world weren't really what Pollan was after. I think it was the Snackwells and the Lean Cuisine and all the foods that profess to have this or that ingredient that might just lower your cholesterol, keep you regular, or make you live two days longer because science told us so. Eating simply and letting all of this noise pass us by in an already noisy world will add greatly to our enjoyment of food, and, therefore, of life. That's what I got out of the article.

One of Pollan's main points is that scientific studies on nutrition are well intentioned, but rife with confounding factors. It will take many years to sort things out, and following findings bit by bit and trying to modify your diet thisly and thusly really sucks the fun out of eating. I think FG (please correct me if I am wrong), that you have professed opinions against the validity and reliability of scientific studies in the past. If you feel happier and healthier eating organic stone ground blue corn chips, by all means, do it. If Pringles make you happy, go for it. Moderation, I think, is important. The bottom line, though, is that Pringles are nasty. As for quasi-religious, yes, I think. Absolutely and unapologetically. Culture, personal identity and food are so closely related that I think religion is a reasonable analogy. So much other than sustenance is tied up in food - just look at the passion that a single article brings forth. If it were not quasi-religious, I doubt this site would exist. -L

I've seen this trend firsthand. I have a friend who is very overweight and tells me that she is not worried about weight-associated illnesses because she is young. By the time she gets diabetes and has a heart attack, scientists will have found a cure. On the other side of this, she skips from one fad diet to the next and one diet center to the next, but never loses weight. There are so many interwoven issues and contradictory factors at work. I like Pollan's advice because I live the way he suggests. I think fresh food and exercise make my quality of life that much better now and will continue to do so into the future. And that assessment includes both health and enjoying life because the two, for me, are not separate issues.

When I was at my parent's house in Florida over Christmas, the Meyer lemon tree was loaded, and we were trying to come up with ideas, so I started some limoncello. Mine is in the "mellowing" stage right now, but I've tasted it and it both smells and tastes strongly like sweet, drunken, Meyer lemons. I'm wondering what we did differently. I went out to the tree, picked the lemons, washed them, and zested them with a vegetable peeler. I was worried a microplane would send the oils all over the place and not into my jar. The lemons were smallish for Meyers, somewhere between the size of a Valencia and a Navel orange. I used twelve lemons and one lime to 750 ml of 100 proof vodka. After I put it in the jar, I read to the end of the thread and saw that yours had not turned out like you wanted. I got worried that I had wasted time/lemons/hooch, so I left the peel in the alcohol for six weeks. Like yours, the peel never turned white, just sort of tan/grayish. The liquid was that same "urine" color. Last week I filtered it, added 350 ml of 1:1 simple syrup and 500 ml of 100 proof vodka. When I tasted it and the lemon flavor was still really strong, I added to make a total of 500 ml of syrup and 750 ml of vodka - so, basically the original recipe posted by Katie (many thanks to Katie for that). After a week of sitting with the sugar, it's really lemony with that distinct Meyer complexity, very sweet, but still with a bit of alcohol harshness. Granted, I didn't taste it cold, just out of the jar on the counter. So I'm curious what the difference might be. I thought it could be a freshness factor, but you said your lemons were really fragrant. Could it be steeping time? Quantity of peel maybe? I have a picture of it steeping that shows how much peel I used, I've never done the photo thing, but I'll give it a shot. -L Edited to add image.

If you are still looking, I found them at the Harris Teeter on Columbia Pike. My last runny eggs were over wilted spinach on toast, dressed with a little olive oil and balsamic and sprinkled with coarse grey salt. I need to get some truffle salt.

Wow. I missed a lot while I was at work. Thanks, Carrot Top, for the corn story. I'm going to look at it with my own biases and interpret it as a Mom who is short on time, but given the choice, would prefer a nice ear of corn (albeit, raw) over a candy bar. Where is that food replicator..... I also want to go back to something that has sort of drifted in and out of the discussion, and that is the quality of our great great great grandparents' diet. I didn't interpret Pollan's stance as promoting that diet, just promoting the whole foods in it from a nutrition standpoint. For example, my ancestors are Irish. It would probably not be such a great thing for me to subsist wholly on potatoes. However, a potato is nutritionally superior to a box of instant potato powder. Tastes better too. After reading everything I missed today, I'm also trying to find common ground among the people here, so here goes. 1. Food is good. 2. We should enjoy life. 3. Sometimes it's hard to get good food, and that can keep us from enjoying life to the fullest. What constitutes "good" food, who should provide it, what their motives might be, and whether or not there really is a nutritional "crisis" seem to be the dividing factors. And those points bring us to the most mentioned common ground issue: 4. Ain't nobody gonna tell me what to do.

For me it was fresh corn. When I was a kid, my grandmother would put the pot on to boil and then send me and my cousins out to the field to pick the sweet corn. We would dash out there laughing, pull the ears off the stalks, and run back to the kitchen arriving breathless with our prize. Minutes later, we would be eating that corn, and it was sweet, full of flavor, and meltingly wonderful. Summer never comes soon enough!

I'm curious why the last few posts reflect much of Pollan's stance but then seem to be anti- the article in question. Has everyone read the assignment?

At the risk of ruining a good rant, the author both illustrates and supports your point of view in the article I cited. For this reason, I thought perhaps it might result in a different sort of discussion. Ah, well.

Interesting. Edited to say why I think this article is so interesting: There was a bit piece in Slate magazine a few weeks ago in which the author argued that fat is going to be the next tobacco. He portrayed an Orwellian world in which complete strangers will order you to drop the french fries. As I recall (I'll try to find it again), the overarching issue was one of rising health care costs and who should bear the responsibility for paying for obesity-related diseases. Now there's a topic for discussion. Edited yet again to link to the article. Slate article

Here's a brief and highly generalized explanation of my point of view. If we use the Omo remains from Ethiopia as a benchmark, modern humans have been around about 190,000 years. Agriculture began in various regions of the globe around 10,000 years ago. Depending on how you view time, this date is a long time ago, or relatively recent in our history. For the next few thousand years, people processed their food, but did not refine it. Think stone-ground corn and wheat. Skipping ahead, in about the past 100 years we began to produce highly refined foods like white rice and white flour from wheat. Initially, these products were prohibitively expensive, so were used mostly by the wealthy few. White foods even became status symbols. The widespread use of highly refined foods by the general public, however, is very recent in our evolutionary history - we're talking decades. From this point of view, we are experimenting with something new. Whether or not it is going to be our downfall, well, that's the debatable part, isn't it. Edited to say: What Doc said.