Patrick S

Right, and even if it did reach the brain, it couldn't exert an effect, because there are not vanilloid receptors in the brain (capsaicin is an agonist for that receptor). I'm agnostic about the issue, though I admit Ive never seen or known anyone who ate chilis compulsively. However, if capsaicin can in fact raise the serum endorphins, which are active in the brain, by interactions with vanilloid receptors outside the brain, perhaps it is theoretically possible that it could produce dependency? I've met people in psychiatric settings who seemed literally addicted to cutting themselves. Maybe that would be a better analogue than cocaine or opiate addiction. EDITED FOR CORRECTION: Contrary to what I said above, there are reports of vanilloid receptors in the brain, expressed at low levels.

^ Thanks Meliisa! I'm flattered. The truth is I see something almost everyday on eGullet that makes me want to run to the kitchen, put on a long playlist of mp3s, grab eggs and butter and make things happen. One recent example is FoodMan's daquoise with coffee buttercream, but there are so many more.

Also, even though its already been mentioned, I want to point out again that all ripe fruit contains alcohol, from natural yeasts metabolizing fruit sugars. In ripe and overripe fruit, the concentrations can be as high as 1-3%, in which case we are not talking about "trace amounts" anymore.

Your source is wrong. A "trace amount" of alcohol remains in the bread. Don't take my word for it though. Check out Logan and Distefano (1998), who reported that "A variety of breads and soft drinks were tested and found to contain low concentrations of alcohol." In fact, if you do a little Googling, you'll find plenty of evidence that breath-alcohol tests give a positive results following consumption of bread. You can also check out Goldberger et al (1996), who reported "the detection of trace amounts of ethanol in soft drinks and other flavored beverages." They go on to report: Goldberger et al, 1996. Unsuspected Ethanol Ingestion Through Soft Drinks and Flavored Beverages. Journal of Analytical Toxicology 20, pp. 332-333. Logan and Distefano, 1998. Ethanol Content of Various Foods and Soft Drinks and Their Potential for Interference with a Breath-Alcohol Test. Journal of Analytical Toxicology 22, pp. 181–183.

Excellent photograph, Alinka. All your photos seem to have great lighting.

Lemon cream-filled macarons.

They're only so-so. The recipe calls for 24 minutes at 320, which makes these more dry and crispy than I like. I did a few at 17 minutes and they also seemed a little to crispy. I filled them with lemon cream.

Did you also try the "European Style" dutched before Hershey's stopped making it? If so, how does the Special Dark compare to it? Like I said, I thought the "European Style" was very good for the price.

I only wish I could make it through a single day without saying 'no' or 'stop' more than a dozen times. Nevertheless, I don't think we'll be moving into a bubble anytime soon. Has anyone seen the Austin Powers movie, where Will Farell plays an assassin named mustafa who is trying to kill Austin Powers? The assassin has one quirky flaw -- if he is asked any question more than 2 times, he has to give a truthful answer. The dialogue starts like this: "Who sent you?" "You'll have to kill me." "Who sent you?" "Kiss my ass, Powers." "Who sent you?" "Dr. Evil. " "That was easy." "That was." "Why did you tell us?" "I can't stand to be asked the same question three times. It just irritates me." That scene's been popping up in my mind over the last few days, except Austin is replaced with a kid asking for cocoa puffs. Well, leaving aside the fact that Captain Morgan's is really more of a drug than a food and is illegal for sale to minors, I think you do raise a good point. The discussion has focused so much on government regulation, but I don't know that anyone has mentioned the idea of economically pressuring television networks and food manufacters to change their ways. I bet if enough parents got together and said "We're not going to watch any more Spongebob as long as you run advertising for high-fat, low nutrient foods," then those ads would end or be modified to make the parents happy.

Sorry it turned out so bad for you, Darcie! The only thing I know that might be helpful is to spray the pans with a good coating of oil+flour spray, or butter and flour, so you get a more tear-resistant crust on the outside of the cake. This cake is definitely delicate. I finished mine with a warm ganache, which is thin enough to easily apply, but I can imagine it would be alot more difficult to finish with buttercream.

Don't forget bread! Anything made with yeast is going to have alcohol in it.

Interesting theory... I'm no way scientifically up on such things, but I've always been under them impression that ethanol was not an addictive substance in the same way as, say, nicotene and opiates are. I've also always heard that most natural juices, e.g. OJ and apple cider, have trace amounts of alcohol in them due to natural fermentation that the preservatives just can't stop. The idea that microdoses of alcohol make kids alcoholics seems quite a stretch to me, and that makes me wonder if this story is an urban legend. ← Yes, "trace amounts" of alcohol are found in all sorts of things, for instance just about anything made with real vanilla extract. And in any event, regulating the INGREDIENTS of foods is the job of the FDA, and I don't think anyone here has disagreed with the idea that regulatory bodies which regulate the ingredients in food should exist. BTW, ethanol is definitely an addictive drug in the same way that nicotine and opiates are, which is merely to say that there is such as thing as ethanol dependence and ethanol withdrawal.

I used Wolfert's recipe. But I bake at 375 and on the middle shelf as opposed to 400 on the bottom shelf.

'Tis a cannelle. Any cannelle queries you may are almost certainly answered on this thread.

I had some whole milk I needed to use up, so I broke out the canelle molds.

Macaron batter should "flow like lava", a thick lava, but that's not much help in practice. I just look really closely at the batter and keep folding until it looks completely homogenous -- no streaks, no clumps of nut/sugar mixture-- and then keep folding a little bit more.

When I piped mine, many of them had "peaks" too. I got rid of most of them by banging the baking sheet on the table. Regarding the mixing of the nut/cocoa/sugar mixture into the whites, yes do this by hand, not mixer. I have no way of knowing how thoroughly you did this, bit when I have undermixed in the past the macarons didnt come out right.

The first two times I made macarons, the only difference was the sitting out part, and the ones that sat out had feet. When I made Lebovitz's version, I piped a few and put them in the oven immediately, and sure enough they sprouted feet. I don't know what's causing the cracking, but here's a few things I did that you may try. 1. Warm the whites with a double-boiler or a pan of very warm water. I didnt let my whites sit out for any length of time. 2. Beat the meringue to very stiff peaks. 3. Make sure the whites and almonds are throroughly incorporated. 4. I used insulated baking sheets, which probably slows the rate at which the bottom of the macarons heat up. Maybe that's a factor.

Hi Darcie, I realize the above isn't intended to be some kind of doctoral thesis on obesity intervention, but surely you understand that the two options you list --having CPS take custody of kids and place them in foster care vs regulating corporate activities--are hardly the only options. For a parent that force feeds their kids gravy and fried chicken, CPS intervention may be in order. I don't know what the best soutions are, but I suspect they are somewhere in that vast gray area between doing nothing and removing kids from parental custody. And I hate to keep pointing this out, but there is already very strong evidence that exposure to advertising is playing only a small part at most in the increase in childhood obesity rates we're seeing in north America and Europe. Interventions focused solely on advertising are doomed to be ineffective. Sweden has banned all food advertising to children for 15 years, and they still rank 11th out of 21 European countries in terms of percentage of overweight 7-11 year olds, according to the International Obesity Task Force. Over 20% of these kids are considered overweight (i.e. have BMI's >25), despite the fact that they grew up under the food advertising ban. Now I have no doubt that kids in Sweden are still exposed to some food advertising (through billboards and satellite dishes, for example), and its not a perfect "ban," but international comparisons show that they have by far the lowest exposure rates in all of European countries that were there studied by Consumers International (Dibb and Harris, 1996). And yet they are very much in the midst of a childhood obesity epidemic. Quebec has had a similar ban since 1980. In 1981, prevalence of childhood overweight in Quebec was 11.5%. In 1996 the prevalence was 27.6% (Willms et al, 2003), which is very close to the average for all of Canada. This prevalence is lower than that for New Foundland, Nova Scotia, and Ontario, but it is higher than that for Alberta, British Columbia, and Manitoba. Again, I have no doubt that kids in Quebec are still exposed to some food advertising (through billboards and satellite dishes, for example), and its not a perfect "ban," but comparing Quebec to the rest of Canada shows that even enormous differences in advertising exposure do not have very large effects on childhood obesity rates. So, even if we assume that banning advertising will have a beneficial effect on childhood obesity rates, something that even the IOM report says in uncertain, I think its pretty clear that the effect would be relatively small, and that some other types of interventions would be needed to have a large effect. So I still say that, to paraphrase JohnL, parents are the first, last, and best targets for intervention. They wield a level of control that Captain Crunch can only dream about, and there's no way we're going to make real progress without getting them involved. Dibb and Harris, 1996. A spoonful of sugar. Television food advertising aimed at children: an international comparative study. London, UK, Consumers International. Willms et al, 2003. Geographic and demographic variation in the prevalence of overweight Canadian children. Obesity Research 11, 668-673.

Hershey's new Special Dark cocoa is also "super alkalized" and very dark. This is replacing their European Style dutched cocoa. According to Cook's, the change is not for the better. That's really a bummer, because the original Hershey's dutched ("European style," in the silver container) was not bad at all.

You may have all the answers but your "tone of voice" could use a little something, Patrick S. It's great that you have the time and knowledge to teach your daughter jujitsu. ← I'm sorry if you don't like my tone of voice, but "excuses, excuses" is precisely what they were. Extremely lame excuses at that, in my opinion. EDIT to add: Carrot top, I'm sorry if I seem dismissive, but let me try to explain why. I would do ANYTHING it takes to keep my family healthy, no matter what it took. If I fail at that job, I am a failure as a person, in my book. If you really love your kids, and I bet you do, and if you understand that they need exercise, you'll find a way to make sure they get it. If you really have so many constraints on your time that you can't do that for 90 minutes a week or so, something else has to give.

Patrick S, Kate was elaborating on comments made in the original article. ← I was addressing comments made by Kate, not by the original article, so my comments should have been and were directed at her. And the article did not make the claim that Kate made, which is that baked Cheetos and whole milk have similar "amounts cholesterol and saturated fats".

Excuses, excuses. . . Soccer is hardly your only option. You don't have to leave your house or spend any money to get good exercise. For instance, my daughter and I are trying to teach ourselves jiujitsu. What this means in practice is that I let her practice arm bars and hip throws and more or less beat the crap out of me, a few nights a week. She has a great time, I have a great time, she gets exercise I get exercise, she learns some self-defense. Maybe one day she'll get bored with this, and thats fine. But I'll make sure we find something new. I bet that for most kids there is some physical activity that is engaging enough.

Clearly, no one who isn't blinded by anti-milk ideology would be able to resist such a well-reasoned argument. ← Its all in the delivery.. ← True. It would be good to have a table nearby to pound your fist on as you shout "It's MILK, people!", and do some finger-wagging with the other hand.

Clearly, no one who isn't blinded by anti-milk ideology would be able to resist such a well-reasoned argument.