Patrick S

I kinda sympathize, but not much. If this women thought her only choices were moldy grapes or . . . cookies, its no wonder her daughter is overweight, and it sounds like she needs some training on how to shop. Eating healthy doesn't have to be any more expensive than eating unhealthy. Even if the produce is garbage there are plenty of other choices. ← Wow, is that an oversimplified answer! How are you supposed to reach that good, healthful food if you don't have transportation, or you're working two jobs? Just because the woman was in New York City, that doesn't mean the stores in her neighborhood have affordable, healthful food. And have you tried shopping for a family by bus? ← I don't think my answer was oversimplified at all. I think the real oversimplication is pretending that you have to buy cookies for your obese daughter because the grapes are moldy. I lived for many years on minimum wage, and therefore know from my own experience that you can find reasonably affordable healthy food in just about any grocery.

I kinda sympathize, but not much. If this women thought her only choices were moldy grapes or . . . cookies, its no wonder her daughter is overweight, and it sounds like she needs some training on how to shop. Eating healthy doesn't have to be any more expensive than eating unhealthy. Even if the produce is garbage there are plenty of other choices.

Hey Patrick S, It really is a cool site, isn't it! I used to buy the 6lb size cans of Hunt's tomato puree and tomato paste, and then realized the paste is priced the same as the puree, and you just add water to the paste to get the puree and have more. SO I buy only the paste now, and dilute it to the required consistency. It has a bit of citric acid in it, which livens up the taste imho, and I don't miss the chunks of tomato as I add enough other stuff to add texture to the pizza. I am particularly found of adding ground fennel seed, tarragon, brown sugar, and of course S&P and a little fresh basil & marjoram to get a really wonderful sauce that is good on thin crust as well as thicker crust pizza. None of my pizzas work well unless I fire up the electric wall oven and rectangular 1/2" thick pizza stone to 550F for at least an hour before peeling the pizza onto the stone. With the stone set exactly in the middle of the oven, I get a nice browned bottom, thoroughly cooked sauce and the cheese is just taking on a hint of carmelization just the way I like it! doc ← I'm going to experiment with the paste this weekend and see how I like it. I usually have sauteed onions and garlic in my sauce -- I guess I'll just sautee like normal and then mix it into the paste, and thin it if I need to with water? I cook my pizzas the exact same way you describe, except I put the stone on the bottom rack. I also like a little caramelization on the cheese -- that's the only thing I don't like about fresh mozarella (well, beside the higher price), that its harder to caramelize.

Actually, there appears to be little concensus on this point. Most experts do agree that trans-fatty acids are worse than saturated fats on a weight-for-weight basis, and margarines do have much more TFAs than butter (butter does have a very small amount of all-natural TFAs). BUT --and this is why there is so little agreement-- butter has so much more saturated fat than margarine has saturated fats+trans fats, its not clear that its better overall than the TFA-containing margarine. A lot of nutritionists are still recommending the softer, tub margarines over butter, because they are much lower in TFAs than the firmer stick margarines.

Well, I don't think its so much regional culture as it is individual preference. I'm also from the south, and I use lots of Splenda, and see lots of other people who use it too. Well, I hate the break the news to ya, but sugar is one the most refined, most-processed products you'll ever buy. You don't get 99.98% pure sucrose without a great deal of processing.

← Take 1/2C sugar, add a couple Tb of water, cook to 245F, add 2C rice crispies, keep stirring and cooking til the sugar caramelizes, scoop out quickly onto parchments. They are very crispy and caramel-ly. They make a good garnish. You can see what they look like here.

Well, sugar is actually about 50 calories a tablespoon, and a lot of people who like sweet tea are going to want a bit more than 1 tablespoon of sugar in their tea. Certainly if we are talking subbing Splenda for sugar in all of our sweetened drinks, the calorie savings are not trivial at all, easily hundreds of calories a day. I'd rather save the calories for something for which there is not IMHO a good low-cal substitute. Like buttercream.

Cool resource, doc. That guy brings up the fact that cooking tomatos changes their flavor, so if you're going to use a canned tomato product to make your sauce, use a product that is already thickened to the level you want, rather than thickening the tomato product by boiling. He says that the thick canned products are thickened by boiling under a vacuum at 135-145F, so even thought they are cooked, they are cooked at a much lower temperature. I've always used crushed tomatoes for my sauce, but I have to simmer the sauce to make it as thick as I like. Anyone have any tips on what sort of canned tomato product would be better -- that wouldn't need to be reduced? Maybe a mixture of tomato paste and drained crushed tomatoes? ETA: Looks like I just needed to keep reading! He gives several sauce recipes.

It depends on how hot your burner is, but its not long at all -- 2-4 minutes maybe. By the time they are done, most of the crispies will be browned, the sugar will leave amber streaks on the bottom of the pan as you stir, and you'll probably get just a little smoke. Have your parchment ready, because once they're done, you need to get them out of the pan kinda quickly.

Also, FWIW, I find that it works better to heat the sugar to ~245F, add the rice rispies, and just keep cooking (stirring constantly) til you get the caramelization you want -- rather than adding the crispies to the sugar, coating them, removing them, and then caramelizing the crispies in batches. If you do the latter method, you often end up with chunks of rice crispies that are stuck together and do not get caramelized.

They will stay crispy for several days as long as they are in a dry environment.

That's true. Most people are still stuck in a false dichotomy that most scientists abandoned a long time ago. Most diseases result from an interaction between genes and environment or genes and behavior, not one or the other exclusively. The example that is often used to illustrate this point is phenylketonuria (PKU). People with this disease lack the enzyme needed to break down the amino acid phenylalanine, which builds up in their bodies and can cause severe mental retardation (among other things). This is a classic example of a "genetic disease." We can pinpoint the exact mutations in the phenylalanine hydroxylase gene that result in PKU. But here's the thing, the development of PKU can be controlled by a behavior modification -- the avoidance of phenylalanine in the diet. So is PKU a genetic disease or is it caused by a behavior? Neither. Its the result of an interaction between the two, both of which are necessary, but neither of which are sufficient. Conversely, diseases that have typically been thought of as being wholly caused by behavior are also affected by genetics. For instance, lung cancer in smokers. You can isolate the particular compounds in the tobacco smoke that are carcinogens and show how they mutate particular genes in lung tissue cells that lead to cancerous growth. But the twist is that your genetics appears to play a major role in your susceptibility to lung cancer -- some people have DNA repair enzymes that are sluggish and are many times more likely to get lung cancer from smoking than the average, whereas others have super-efficient DNA repair enzymes. So is lung cancer caused by smoking or is it caused by sluggish DNA repair? Neither. Its the result of an interaction between the two. Obesity is definitely affected by genetics. Some people can stuff their face every day and gain nothing, while some people seem to gain weight just thinking about food. Obesity is also definitely affected by behavior, and since we can't change your genes once we're born, that's where you have to focus.

Herme's lemon cream is much like a lemon curd, except that it has a lot of butter whipped in, at the end, with the immersion blender, and that makes it extremely smooth and creamy. Yes, you can make a wonderful lemon tart with this - in fact, Herme's lemon tart is simply a prebaked pate sucree (sweet tart) shell filled with lemon cream and finished (optionally) with a clear glaze on top.

Two recipes I can definitely recommend are Thomas Keller's and Pierre Herme's. Between the two, I prefer Herme's, but both are excellent. If you make Herme's, its essential that you use the freshest butter. It has so much butter in it that any off flavors that may have got absorbed into the butter in the fridge will show up. If you make Keller's tart, I recommend that you use add zest to the filling recipe at the beginning, and then strain it back out when you pour the filling into the tart shell. You're going to use ~3 lemons for juice anyway, you might as well use that zest!

Yes there is. Water boils! And, steam is a very energetic material. ← Of course, if srhcb wanted to be a smartass, he could point out that 212F is only magical at sea level, where atmospheric pressure=1 atmosphere. On the summit of Mt. Everest, the magical temperature is going to be closer to 160F.

Here are a few of my favorite lemon desserts: 1. Rose Beranbaum's lemon glow chiffon cake (double the zest and juice) served with Herme's lemon cream (make with freshest butter you can get). 2. Herme's lemon tart. 3. Cook's Illustrated lemon bars. 4. Cook's Illustrated lemon cheesecake. You can find recipes for each by searching the pastry and baking forum.

That looks delicious, Klary. Ling, that brownie looks like a highly potent chocofix. Tonight, continuing down my list of desserts from the Greenspan/Herme, I made the Crispy and Creamy Rice Treat, from the first Desserts book. This has a small cake base made from ladyfinger batter. The base is sprinkled with a layer of toasted hazelnuts and broken Nestle crunch bars. Above that is a layer of a creamy, cinnamony arborio rice mixed with creme anglaise and whipped cream, set with a little gelatin. On top is a layer of thick chocolate creme anglaise, and some caramelized rice crispies.

I'm not a complere zealot. I can use nonbutter on some vegetables. But for breads, almost all sweets and baked goods, I vastly prefer butter. I shudder at the thought of buttercream made with margerine.

Great job, Alinka! I love the mousse photo.

Has anyone given the Baumkuchen a try yet? The photo is so beautiful and her description of the cake sounds very nice. I'm also interested in anyone's additional comments with another year gone by. I have the book out of the library and am looking ti over trying to decide whether to buy it or not. ← I seem to recall that TurtleMeng tried the Baumkuchen and had a rough time with it, but I can't remember exactly what she said. Since I last commented on this book, I've tried the caramel custard tart, caramel souffles, chocolate souffles, lemon pound cake, and beignets. None were a flop, and some (like the custard tart) were considered outstanding by at least one of the "tasters." The lemon pound cake seemed to have an odd texture to me, but it was also well liked by those who tried it.

And whether it kills all the microbes or just removes them, plain soap appears to be just as good at disinfecting your hands -- there was actually a study comparing the level of microbes on people's hands using triclosan (antibacterial) soap versus regular soap, and there was no difference.

I can't address the rest of the world, but according to the CDC, foodbourne illness results in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths per year in the US. Link The actual number of cases of foodbourne illness would have to be much higher, since the vast majority of foodbourne illnesses present as short-lived episodes of GI symptoms that do not require hospitalization.

Of course. Caramel and chocolate are two of my favorite flavors, and the Pave marries them perfectly. Together with the Plaisir, its one of my all-time Favorite Things.

Sounds fine to me as far as it goes, so long as we remember that what you eat is only half of the obesity equation, and that no matter how healthy your food choices are, you still have to use as many calories as you consume.

No, no beveling. The only "trick" really is inverting the loaf -- the top of the Pave is the bottom of the cocoa loaf, which is just rounded to the shape of the bottom of the loaf pan. Thanks so much for the kind words, everyone! I'll never be able to repay you all for the encouragement and motivation and warmth I've recieved. You all are truly the best!