Patrick S

They most certainly can be. The evidence is literally all around us. Replace the word "can't" with the word "shouldn't," though, and you have a valid point.

I am a big fan of chocolate+orange, probably even moreso than chocolate+raspberry or chocolate+lemon, so I'll have to try that! I decided to make the Pave again. This time I filled it with the caramel ganache, as usual, but finished it with the glaze, which I made according to Herme's recipe using Valrhona 61%, which is what I happen to have at the moment. Lucky for me, I have some left-over chocolate sauce from making the glaze, and I found that the chocolate sauce doubles as an amazing hot chocolate. I made the apricots but omitted them from the cake, instead adding a sprinkling on the plate.

Doh! Good catch, Dave.

"Fruit sugar" is definitely fructose.

And with the pebble-polishing and diamond-dulling that most public schools currently do, this is a bad outcome? ← If the judgement is coming out of the county or districts or state's school budget, then yes, absolutely it is a bad outcome. I'm no legal expert, but it would seem to me that the problem is that you have no gaurantee whatsoever that your case is going to land in front a competent, reasonable judge, and no matter what the ultimate outcome, the defendent will have to spend time and money merely responding to a lawsuit.

I don't really have a problem with it either. Kids do have to learn to make good choices, but we all understand that sometimes parents have to be able to veto bad choices ("Sorry, no Count Chocula for dinner!"), and this system sounds like way to do that a little bit when the kids are not with them.

Possible, sure.

The way I see it, if you ever paid 3$ for a drink and 5$ for popcorn (or ever had to watch a movie with Hugh Grant in it), you should be entitled to a lifetime exemption from all motion picture intellectual property laws.

Its a silly state of affairs, but I certainly do not fault the school administators --they probably understand that the risks are utterly miniscule, but also understand that if little Joey's dad brought in a cake filled with laxative or rum of whatever and was allowed to distribute it, they would be portrayed as reckless and sued into oblivion.

Definitely. One of the worst potential side effects is rhabdomyolysis, which is literally "breakdown of muscle fibers," and can cause kidney failure if it is serious enough (because the kidneys are basically clogged with all the muscle breakdown products). On the statin TV comericals when they say something to the effect of "If you experience muscle pain or weakness, contact you doctor, as this may indicate a potentially serious side effect," that's what they are referring to.

In terms of flavor and color, yes, but not in terms of viscosity. I think the important variable as far as viscosity of a syrup is concerned is not the temperature to which the sugar has been cooked, but the water content of the finished syrup, and that can be manipulated to whatever level you desire. So you can take your caramel and add water, and depending on how thick you want your syrup/sauce, you cook it to the right temp -- the higher the temp, the thicker the syrup. I hope I'm explaining that in a way that makes sense! BTW, I can see how gelatin could be useful for thickening a syrup. You could thicken it by reducing it, like I've been talking about, but that will make the syrup very sweet, because a syrup is only going to get thick at 50+% sugar. But if you use gelatin, I can see how you could freely manipulate both the sweetness and the viscosity. For instance you could make a sauce that is thick but only 40% sugar.

Melissa, According to this pharmacist, grapefruit juice interaction with pravastatin, fluvastatin and rosuvastatin (Prevachol, Lescol and Crestor) appear to be minimal. On the other hand, I don't know how much I would trust this source, since he also claims that the effect of grapefruit juice in the morning has only a minimal effect on lovastatin taken in the evening, yet the source he cites for this actually says that drinking 8oz GF juice in the morning resulted in an approximately doubled AUC and Cmax for the lovastatin.

Hi Ted! I think the idea is that both the viscosity and the boiling point of a sucrose solution is a function of sucrose concentration, so you can tell how viscous/thick the syrup will be by measuring the boiling temp. As you know, a sucrose solution boiling at 235F has a sucrose concentration of about 85% and will form a malleable semi-solid at room temp, while a sucrose solution boiling at, say, 300F, is 99% sucrose will form a very firm brittle solid at room temp. Theoretically don't you think that you could also predict the viscosity of the cooled caramel syrup, which is still essentially a sucrose solution in the 40-70% sucrose range (I'm guessing), by the boiling temp? I imagine the ideal for a pourable sauce would be somewhere in the range of 215-222F, which corresponds to sucrose concentrations of 50-70%. I think an experiment is called for!

Grapefruit juice actually interacts with many medications. To expand on what Docsconz said, this happens because there is something in grapefruit juice that is very good at occupying the same enzymes that break down simvastatin, the CYP-450 enzymes. Normally what happens is you take your medicine, the medicine reaches the circulation, and when the medicine in circulation passes through the liver, it is broken down by CYP-450. This is called hepatic metabolism. So anything that inhibits the activity or availability of CYP-450 will slow the metabolism of everything that is normally metabolized by these enzymes. Sometimes people try to exploit this effect deliberately, for instance to increase the duration of effects from fentanyl. Grapefruit juice is far from the only thing that does this, there are other foods and medicines (like cimetidine or ketoconazole) that do the same thing to varying degrees. Conversely, there are foods and medicines that do just the opposite -- that appear to stimulate or increase the effectiveness of the CYP-450 system (e.g. phenobarbital), thus reducing or shortening the effects of drugs that are metabolized by the CYP-450 enzymes. The grapefruit juice/simvastatin interaction appears to be particularly large. One study compared the pharmacokinetics of simvastatin ingested with 200ml grapefruit juice and simvastatin taken with water (Lilja et al, 2004). What they found was that the Cmax (the peak blood concentration of the drug) was increased by an average of about 400%, while the AUC (a measure of how much drug remains in circulation and for how long) was increased by ~350%. Obviously taking the drug at the same time as the grapefruit juice is designed to accentuate the effect, but it is remarkable how large the effect is. Its like taking 3-4 times the dose of simvastatin.

Roughly 2/3C, depending on how much water you add.

This may be a little "lowbrow" for what you have in mind, but Cincinnati-style chili often includes cocoa and has a good many devotees.

Great! Also, if you accidentally add too much water, you can just reduce it down.

Looks great! What is the fruit (?) that is dotting the clear glaze? ← Thanks! Those are golden raisins soaked in a Cognac syrup. I could take 'em or leave 'em, but they have good visual appeal.

Few things in this crazy, mixed-up world make as much sense as caramel sauce, Marlene! There are lots of variations on caramel sauce, the most common has you adding cream and/or butter to caramelized sugar. If you want clearish caramel sauce, you could add water instead of cream to the caramelized sugar. For instance, you might try this: 1/4C sugar 1T corn syrup 2T Water 2T soft butter 3-6T water pinch o' salt Mix the sugar, corn syrup and 2T water in saucepan. Turn the heat on medium-high. Stir to combine, then let it boil without stirring until you reach about 350-360F. If you dont have a thermometer, go by appearance -- at 300, the sugar will start to brown. Right about the time you start to get the first, tiny puff of smoke, put in the butter, turn the heat to low, and stir a little. Then add 3T of water. It will sieze up, but dont worry, it will dissolve into the water after a while. Add more water, if desired, to get the consistency you want.

I love baklava, but layering the phyllo neatly is enough work -- I can't imagine how long it would take if I had to make the phyllo too! I imagine it takes a lot of skill and practice to do this efficiently. I had enough light today to get some good snaps of the cake. Its delicious.

There are plenty of Salmonella enteritidus infection in France, and it is most closely associated with consumption of old or undercooked eggs, just as it is in the US (e.g. Delarocque-Astagneau et al, 1998). EDIT: Note added in proof: Vaillant et al (2005) estimate that Salmonella infections result in 5,700-10,200 cases of foodbourne-illness related hospitalizations per year in France, making it by far the most likely single cause of foodbourne-illness related hospitalization in that country.

I don't think its necessary for pastry cream or creme brulee, just go slow when you temper the eggs with your milk or cream. Egg whites will whip up much faster when they are warm, but its not necessary that they be warm.

Looking back at the results of the Nurse's Health Study, the recent results don't seem so suprising. The paper by Hu et al (1998) reported an analysis involving more participants (80,082 women), a younger population (34 to 59), and a longer follow-up (14 years) than the WHI study. They reported that while total fat intake was not significantly associated with risk of CHD, individual fats were associated with CHD. In particular, while saturated and trans fats were associated with increased CHD risk, mono- and polyunsaturated fats were associated with decreased CHD risk. This would seem to fit really well with the results from WHI -- which showed no relation of total fat to CHD risk, but trends toward increased risk with higher saturated and trans fat intake. Hu et al, 1998. Dietary Fat Intake and the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in Women. New England Journal of Medicine 337:1491-1499.

Well, experts might disagree on how long one can acceptably store eggs at room temp, but no one disagrees that maintaining eggs at higher temperatures increases the growth rate of pathogens in eggs and therefore the potential for illness. And the UK's Food Standards Agency (UK's equivalent of the FDA) does recommend that you "store eggs in a cool, dry place, ideally in the fridge." Link Another article on FSA's site advises "Some foods need to be kept in the fridge to help stop bacteria from growing on them, such as foods with a 'use by' date, cooked foods and ready-to-eat foods such as desserts." Link