Patrick S

I tried the chocolate rice pudding. I used 3C of milk rather than 3.75 since others found the pudding to be a little soupy using the full amount in the recipe. I used the Manjari chocolate rather than the Guanaja. I also used just a little more sugar than the recipe called for. The rice pudding is great. I put the pudding in the serving glasses last night, and then scraped every last bit out of the bowl using my finger. After chilling in the fridge overnight, it was quite firm. If you make this recipe, definitely make the optional caramelized rice crispies too -- they go perfectly with the pudding.

It's pretty dense compared to the Double Chocolate cake. What I like about it is that it is very easy to work with -- you can easily cut it into layers without it falling apart.

In 40 pages, I'm sure this has been mentioned at least once, but . . . I'll never put stuff in the freezer again without labeling it. Whenever I put something in the freezer, a little voice in my head says "Label it!" But I ignore it, thinking that surely I'll be able to tell what it is a month from now. But then I end up in the freezer, a month later, chiseling out and sampling little chunks of various substances trying to find that last bit of raspberry ganache or bittersweet glaze or whatever.

middydd or anyone else with a "normal" bundt pan -- if you're in the kitchen in the near future and have a ruler or tape measure handy, would you mind measuring the diameter and depth of your pan? I'm just curious is the difference we had in rise was due to different shape of the pans.

Right, that's an example of potentially misleading label, since it could be taken to mean that some milk has rBGH in it, and some doesn't, when according to the FDA (IIRC), no milk has measurable rBGH in it, even from cows given rBGH, because they metabolize it before it ever ends up in milk. ← What the Monsanto mouthpiece is saying (milk is the same as far as safety & quality & "the amount of protein, fats, nutrients, etc.,"), is not what you are saying ("no milk has measurable rBGH in it,"). ← Well, the Monsanto "mouthpiece" --which the rest of us would probably refer to as a spokesperson-- was only alotted a few lines of text in the article quoted above, so who knows what he/she may have said about rBGH specifically. I'm fairly confident that this spokeperson was aware that tests show that rBGH in pasteurized milk from rBGH supplemented cows, if it is present at all, is present at a concentration so low that it can not be measured even with extremely sensitive analytic techniques, and that even if it were present in very large amounts, it could not possibly have any real physiological significance since BGH does not interact with human GH receptors, and does not survive digestion anyway (which is why growth hormone has to be injected into cows, btw). I do need to correct a mistatement I made earlier: rBGH can be detected in milk from supplemented cows prior to pasteurization, at an extremely low concentration (~1ppb), but this is apparently destroyed by pasteurization, according to this source.

Thank you. I read the first two of these, and though they criticize the compliance testing programs, neither gives any evidence that compliance with the ruminant feed ban is not extremely high (i.e. neither gave examples of farms found to be using ruminant feed in violation of the ban --I'll check the last two). I'm not worried if the occasional bag of ruminant feed make it to cows, but it would be a cause for concern if this was happening on a large scale on a significant number of farms.

No, I haven't read it. Since you have, could you summarize the verifiable evidence in the book relating to violations of the ruminant feed ban?

That's true, but then nothing will cost your farm more time and money than being found to be not in compliance with laws relating to BSE countermeasures. And I also think most cattle farmers understand that BSE is an enormous risk to their whole industry, and therefore to them personally, and that it is very much in their interest to take it seriously.

May you're right, but "Some dude told me one that there was this one farm somewhere were they still fed cows to cows" is not verifiable or compelling. I know that FDA does run a feed testing program designed to test compliance of the ruminant feed ban, where they go and sample cow feed from farms and test it for ruminant material. Maybe you could provide some information on the number of violations this program has discovered?

Why would anybody try to refute something that's obviously true? You appear to have been confused by something I wrote on Mar 10, when I left out the word "all" in the sentence: "If you go back and read the actual article that describes the proposed legislation, you'll see that the proposed legislation is *not* intended to remove [ALL] warning labels." I thought my meaning was pretty clear from the context of the rest of my post, and my other posts, where I pointed out that state but not federal labelling requirements would be affected, but apparently I was wrong, and apologize for the confusion.

Fair enough. But even though you're not making that claim, let me go ahead and explain why it appears to be wrong, at least with respect to BSE/vCJD: the only known way for BSE to be transmitted from cow to cow is through food, and it is thought that the BSE epidemic in he UK was spread through meat and bone meal, where bits of infected cow were processed and fed to other cows, ad infinitum. As he MSNBC article in the OP points out: "Eating contaminated feed is the only way cattle are known to contract the disease." So here's the thing, this practice was banned in 1997, and its illegal for both organic and conventional farms. So therefore I don't think that either mode of production should produce a higher or lower incidence of BSE. Before 1997, it may have been a different story.

That is certainly true, but completely beside the point. For the thousands of people who do die or who suffer serious and lasting adverse effects, it really doesn't matter that most people recover from food poisoning. I don't want to be a pain in the ass about this, but if you're going to make a claim about the superior safety of organic food, in this case a lower risk of exposure to pathogens, I'd really appreciate it if you at least attempt to provide some evidence for that.

I'm curious, Pam. What makes you believe that the risk of vCJD is lower from organic beef as opposed to conventional beef?

Of all the foodbourne illnesses out there, "mad cow" worries me just about the least. This finding will have absolutely no impact on my own beef consumption. There is an estimated 95 million head of cattle living in the US, and around 30 million slaughtered per year*. The FDA currently tests about 20,000** of those 30 million cows slaughtered. I've seen estimates that the FDA has tested about 650,000 cows total.*** ← Yes, but its the USDA, not the FDA. USDA/APHIS' BSE Enhanced Surveillance Program is testing about 30,000 cattle every month for BSE. Since June 2004, 652,697 cows have been tested. But we need to keep in mind that the tests are not simply done randomly, they are focused on the cows that are considered most likely to test positive, so the incidence of 3/650,000 is certainly far higher than the incidence in the US herd at large. Based on hundreds of thousands of tests from the highest-risk cattle, it is currently thought that the prevalence of BSE in US cows is less than 1 per several million cattle. By contrast, in the UK, at the height of the BSE epidemic, something like 1/3 high-risk cattle were BSE-positive (compared to something like 3/600,000 in the US so far tested). And I think everyone should keep a few very important facts in mind: 1. This cow was at least 10 years old, and therefore was born before the ruminant feed ban (which was enacted in 96 or 97, IIRC). Of the two US-born cows that have tested BSE-positive, BOTH were born before the ruminant feed ban (the third "US cow" came from Canada). There is no evidence that any new infections have even occurred in the past decade, or that the ruminant feed ban has been anything less than 100% effective in preventing new cattle infections. 2. There is, at this point, no evidence that even a single BSE-positive cow has entered the US food chain. In the UK, they have lived through what it basically the worst-case scenario: It is estimated that something like 500,000 BSE cows entered the food chain there, and despite that, there have only been 150-ish cases of vCJD, and it has been estimated that the total number of cases will end up being around 200. 3. So far, there is no evidence that even a single person has developed vCJD as a result of eating US beef. Even allowing for a 10-year latency, the cases should be appearing. The only case I could find information about was a 22 year old Florida woman who was born and grew up in the UK. Maybe I'm missing something though -- can anyone point me to a single uncontroversially-diagnosed case of vCJD in a US person who did not live in the UK? 4. By any realistic estimation, the absolute risk of death from just about any conventional pathogen dwarfs that from vCJD. You are far, far more likely to die from eating raw vegetables than you are from vCJD. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, there were 554 outbreaks associated with produce from 1990 to 2003, sickening 28,315 people. The number of sickness and deaths from vCJD aquired from US beef is currently, 0 and 0, respectively. While those numbers may rise the future, there is no reason to believe that the numbers will ever even approach those in the UK. Given these differences in absoute risk, it seems odd to me that no one appears to be clamoring for enhanced inspection and testing of fruits and vegetables, or for mandatory food irradiation which would essentially eliminate this problem.

Exactly. Angels have an ethereal texture, especially the cherub variety.

filipe, thanks for the PH pics (I love that you posted a close-up), and good job on the pave! When I saw this the other night, I cut a slice from the pave I had in the freezer (I made two last time).

I tried it, and had the same experience as you. The picture in the book looks like lemon pound cake with lemon curd on top.

That sounds a lot more informative and less potentially misleading.

I don't think it's a misleading label either. It's more like labels on eggs that come from cage-free chickens -- it's not that there is necessarily anything wrong with caged chickens, but some people simply prefer buying eggs from cage-free chickens. For me, it's not that I have anything against drinking milk that might have trace amounts of bgh in it, it's that I prefer spending my money on companies that don't drug their cows to increase milk production. ← No, of course its not misleading to say that your milk comes from cows that are not supplemented with rBGH, and I would be suprised if anyone could show me where anyone has been sued or the the FDA has taken action against a milk producer that makes this claim in a straightforward way. The problem with Oakhurst was that the label on the milk that read "Our Farmers' Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones". As halloweencat's own comments make clear, many consumers will misinterpret this label to mean that Oakhurst's milk is compositionally different from other brands of milk, which is not the case. Oakhurst has every right to point out that their cows were not supplemented with rBGH, so long as they do it in a way that doesn't imply a compositional difference. Good, because as Ive been pointing out, there is essentially no difference in the BGH content of milk whether it came from rBGH supplemented cows or not. Every glass of milk you ever drank had had BGH in it, no matter who produced it and what production techniques were used.

The irony is that your last post proves clearly that the label was potentially misleading, and that you had in fact been mislead as to its meaning. To wit, you wrote: Your own choice of words proves that you were under the mistaken impression that there was a compositional difference in the "product," i.e. the milk, which is false, rather than just a difference in production techniques, which is true. You even compare Oakhurst's "no-rBGH" label to "no msg" labelling, which can hardly be interpreted as referring to anything other than a compositional difference. I don't wish to seem rude, but I think you just made the case for me very compellingly (that is, the case that some labels relating to rBGH are misleading).

I'm flattered by your assumptions, but let me assure you that I have absolutely no formal education on any of these topics. I don't have a college degree of any kind. Now, regarding Weisman's paper. He refers to a total of 5 persons with CJD who had also eaten squirrel brain. The problem is that this is common on western KY, where the cases were from, as the same letter itself points out. This is an interesting bit of data, and I appreciate you pointing it out. But the letter doesn't provide any evidence that this association is causal, and I would be skeptical of it in light of the fact that squirrels themselves have not been reported to have spongiform encephalopathies. Regarding the second paragraph -- CJD has been around for a long time, and does not just occur in people who eat beef. So therefore it would not be at all surprising to find people with CJD who had eaten rodents or pigs. Now, if you had some people who developed the variant CJD, vCJD, who had eaten other mammal brains but had never been exposed to beef, that would be more interesting. And the only case I've read about was a woman who did not eat beef but worked for years with meat and bone meal in a pet store, and could have concievably been exposed that way. Regarding the third paragraph, I am not aware of the CDC report you reference, and I could find nothing about any risk of a aquiring a spongiform encephalopathy from eating sheep. All of the sources I consult (even those written well after 2001) say that there is no evidence that any human has ever aquired a TSE from eating sheep. Berger JR, Weisman E, Weisman B. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and eating squirrel brains. (Letter) Lancet 1997;350(9078):642

oakhurst was not saying the bgh was bad, but it was prominently stating that it's product was (and would always be) free from artificially introduced hormones. monsanto went after oakhurst for essentially stating that its product was free of something (like the "contains no msg" labelling, and similar), but which did not explicitly disparage monsanto's product. in another article related to this, the lawsuit was apparently settled when oakhurst agreed to add a line to its packaging that stated that the fda had found that there was no difference between milk from cows treated with bgh and cows that were not. i think there might have been others, but that's the one i remember. cheers -- ← Right, that's an example of potentially misleading label, since it could be taken to mean that some milk has rBGH in it, and some doesn't, when according to the FDA (IIRC), no milk has measurable rBGH in it, even from cows given rBGH, because they metabolize it before it ever ends up in milk. As long as you are clear that you are referring to a production technique ("cows not given rBGH") and not a compositional difference ("contains no rBGH"), there is no problem. The problem, of course, is that many consumers buy the milk from non-rBGH supplemented cows *solely* out of the belief that there is a significant compositional difference, these producers must carefully word their labels so as not to dispel that belief.

There have been many complaints made to the FDA regarding labels that are considered misleading (e.g. that make unsubstantiated health risk claims), or that make flatly false factual claims ("Contains no hormones" -- all milk contains hormones), and in many cases the FDA has agreed, but as far as I know there has never been any complaint or lawsuits against labels that are not misleading, like "This milk came from cows not given rBGH supplements."

Makes sense to me. Because I can tap the macaroon and there'll be a hollow sound, and the shell doesn't even crack. But the banging the cookie sheet on the table thing is supposed to deal with it, right? I know I didn't do that, because I figured that since I wasn't piping it, I would not get this problem. And now I realise why I didn't want to try the PH recipe in the first place. Our Patisserie tried that recipe and made macarons with terribly cracked tops. ←

If you go back and read the actual article that describes the proposed legislation, you'll see that the proposed legislation is *not* intended to remove warning labels. Rather, it just takes the warning labeling power out of the states hands and puts it in the FDA's hands. ← And since the FDA has deemed the bovine growth hormone safe, a state will not be able to put it on a warning label. I appreciate being able to choose products that don't come from injected cows, even though the FDA has deemed these injections safe. ← Right, FDA has determined that BGH is safe, and therefore no state should have the right to mandate "warning labels" stating otherwise. You may wish to have the information to choose milk from non-BGH supplemented cows, but you have no basis to demand such information in the form of a "warning label," which are specifically supposed to warn of human health risks. Having said that, does the legislation in question remove the right of producers of milk to add labels relating to BGH, as many of them choose to do right now? I understand that it would prevent a state from mandating such labels, but I don't know that it would prohibit private milk producers from doing the same kind of labelling they are doing right now. If the legislation in question prohibits factually accurate and nonmisleading labelling by private companies, I would certainly oppose it. But if the legislation applies only to what types of food labeling the states can mandate, that would be very different. ← I downloaded and read most of HR4167, and it would indeed appear to affect only the state, not producers themselves. So, it would appear that HR4167 would have no effect on the already-existing, voluntary labelling of milk from non-BGH supplement cows.