Patrick S

Ok, I went back and checked the link supplied earlier in this thread. It has a fatal misprint -- listing 3/4C sugar rather than 1 3/4. If you made the cake according to that recipe, I'm not at all suprised your cakes turned out crumbly and not sweet enough.

← Neil, the recipe in my copy of the book is different from yours. Mine lists 1 and 3/4C sugar rather than 3/4, 1/2t salt rather than 1/4, and 1/2t baking powder rather than 1/4. Did you only use 3/4C sugar, or did you just leave out a 1 in your quote? EDIT to add: my copy of the book is a an uncorrect proof, not the final version. I have no idea if the recipe in the finished book is the same as the one in the uncorrect proof version. EDITED again to say I meant 'uncorrected proof,' not 'uncorrect proof,' which sounds like uncorrect English.

Well, I guess there's no accounting for taste. Sorry the results were not good for you, Neil and Josette. Personally, I thought the taste of Mrs D's was far better than the Woolley recipe, being a little less chocolatey but much more buttery and without the slight sourness of the buttermilk. I made it with the Valrhona cocoa, which I like better than Hershey's, but I'm pretty sure that's not what turns me off the Woolley recipe. I don't know why it turned out very crumbly for you Neil. My last attempt attempt at the Wooley cake was actually more crumbly than the Mrs D's cake.

Its also interesting to consider raw milk cheese in the context of other food-borne pathogens. Raw milk cheese is not exceptionally dangerous. It is dangerous in the same ways that raw meat, eggs, and even produce are dangerous. Is it against the law to sell very rare steaks. Or unwashed produce that could be contaminated E. Coli? Or desserts made with raw egg whites?

The nanny-state doesn't have to be nanny-statist in all its affairs. God knows the US isn't. I mean, there are apparently much stricter controls on raw milk cheeses, which kill maybe a few to a few dozen people a year, than there is on cigarettes, which kill roughly 400,000 people a year.

I'm not sure I understand your point. It would absolutely be nanny-statism for the gov't to ban Vioxx for people with rheumatoid arthritis who haven't had relief from any other drug. The narcissism is entirely on the part of the person who says, in effect, 'Sorry, but you are too stupid to decide whether you want to trade pain relief for increased risk of heart attack.'

That's arguably a political issue, though. If you were living in Canada or Europe or some other place where you didn't have to pay for your own medical insurance, would you feel differently about this? ← One way or another it gets paid for - either by insurance premiums or taxes. The real problem is the whole issue of liability and how that has careened out of control. This is pertinent to the issue of raw milk cheeses as well as things like wild mushrooms or other food products. To a significant extent the concern about liability is good because it makes people aware of potential consequences of not having a safe product and thereby working harder to have one. The problem though is that no one in the US seems to be willing or able to take responsibility for themselves, whether it be eating raw milk cheeses, wild mushrooms in LA or spilling hot McDonald's coffee in one's lap. ← Exactly! It really is amazing.

That would be great if your average person was smart enough to make the right kinds of choices, or at least not sue if they made the wrong choice and got harmed. But from what I've noticed, people are not getting smarter or less litigious as time goes on. And that means problems for all of us. Large tort settlements or judgements raise company insurance rates, which raises prices for all of us over the long term. People seeking medical treatment for self-inflicted conditions raises everyone's health insurance premiums. I don't know about other people posting on this thread, but my premiums are high and if they go much higher we will not be able to afford health coverage. I would love to live in a world where we could rely on an individual's own intelligence and common sense to keep people out of trouble, but that is not going to happen. ← So, you would be in favor of government restrictions of, say, individual caloric intake? Should it be illegal for, say, a McDonald's to serve someone a heaping pile of junk food every day? There are all sorts of health risks associated with diet, not just risks from pathogens as in cheese. For instance, should the government mandate a certain intake of fruits and vegetables, in order to moderate the excess cancer risks from a diet low in fruits and vegetables? Bad diets are affecting you insurance premiums to a far greater degree than foodbourne pathogens, so shouldn't we be legislating diet also? EDIT to add: I missed where you said "not in favor of banning raw-milk cheese, just pointing out another side here."

That would be great if your average person was smart enough to make the right kinds of choices, or at least not sue if they made the wrong choice and got harmed. ← Right, and that is exactly where we disagree. I don't see the state, or you, as having the right to make my health/diet choices for me. I think I have the right to detroy my body the way I see fit. I totally agree though that people should not have the right to sue someone else for their own bad choices.

The ice cream looks delicious, Elie. And your presentation is lovely even without a split dish. I have a cheapo ice cream machine that I haven't used yet, but this is really tempting me to put it to use.

Not to take the thread even further off topic, but I think its pretty obvious that unconscious biases have very little oppurtunity to unconsciously skew analytical data. Gas chromatograph reading or whatever says what it says, regardless of what one would like it to say. With a background in experimental pych, I'm sure you release that unconscious biases come in many varieties, and have a variety of motivations, and are hardly limited to financial interests. To be sure, groups like, say, the Environmental Working Group, that issued the scaremongering and misleading report about PCBs in farmed salmon that you referenced, have strong ideological and financial biases. For instance, they recieve funding from organic producers and thus have as much of a financial interest in bashing conventional agriculture as Monsanto has in promoting it. And beyond that, I can point you to concrete examples of how that bias has been expressed in the form of shoddy data and/or outright deception about the dangers of food produced by conventional agriculture. To give one fairly typical example, Todd Hettenbach of the Environmental Working Group, was paraphrased in 1999 as saying that "just a bite or two of an apple, peach or pear" that had been treated with methyl parathion could "cause dizziness, nausea and blurred vision" in a child. But he just made that up. Laura Plunkett, a neurotoxicologist who consults for EPA, said that was "totally off the wall," and that "nless it were 100% soaked, absolutely dripping with methyl parathion, there's no way that a few bites of fruit would be a problem" ('Fear of Fruit,' Wall Street Journal, February 25, 1999). My only point is that it would be extremely naive to think that anyone is free from biases and preconceptions. And certainly it would is odd to me that anyone would accept uncritically a report from EWG, which has plain ideological and financial biases, while showing such suspicion of simple USDA analytical data! You can see more about EWG, their biases and financial motivations at ActivistCash.com. Take care, Ron! And don't fear the farmed salmon, yall!

Thanks, Dorie! It looks like chips, but no, I actually used Callebaut 60% chopped up with a serrated knife.

I tried to make a Nutella cheesecake, and it turned out pretty well. Used 24ozs cream cheese, 3 eggs, about 3/4C sugar, a jar of Nutella, and 1t Frangelico. I used vanilla wafers and butter for the crust. Its a little softer than your typical cheesecake, but silky smooth and delicious.

I tried the Korova cookies last night. They are good. They're the best sable cookie I've tried (which is not a whole lot, since I usually prefer chewey to sandy). I love the texture contrast between the chocolate chunks and the cookie.

Of course, we all have different ideas when it comes to individual liberty. Personally I see it as my own right to risk my own health by eating dangerous cheeses, sniffing glue and bungie jumping as long as I don't bother you. Slap on a warning label, sure. Even ban sale to minors. I can agree with that. But not with a blanket ban.

Ron, I'm not 'emotional' at all, and I apologize if I've come across that way. I am very concerned, however, that people will reduce their consumption of or stop eating heart-healthy salmon out of an unfounded fear of cancer, or due to the completely false belief that it is deficient in omega3 fatty acids. I know you didn't bring up the issue of omega3's. However, when I pointed out that farmed salmon is as high if not higher in omega3s than wild salmon, you questioned "WHO funded the research," and stated that that conclusion "seems to fly in the face of most that I've read in recent months and years." You didn't bring the issue up, but you very clearly expressed your skepticism on the matter. You're initial question was indeed an honest one. And its a question that I think can be and has been answered -- farmed salmon is just as healthy as wild salmon.

Actually, every one of the substantive claims I made was backed up by peer-reviewed scientific research, cited in the Gold et al paper. Again, I did not rely on ACSH for a single one of the substantive claims I made regarding PCBs in salmon. Having said that, I read ACSH all the time, and I can't think of a single instance where they ignored facts in order to take a pro-industry stance on an issue. And I can think of some industries --like tobacco-- that they have bashed mercilessly. I'm not sure why our discussion of PCBs in salmon brings this quote to mind, especially since I get the impression that you think you've found the truth about farmed salmon, to wit, that it lacks omega3's (which was shown to be false), or that it has a dangerously high concentration of PCBs (which is also false). But since we're exchanging quotes, here's one of my favorites: "The truth will set you free. But first it will p*** you off." Cheers!

The Science of Cooking, by Peter Barham (2001) looks like a good book too.

Careful, Ron! A 16 ounce t-bone has as much PCBs as a 4 ounce farmed salmon filet!

Yeah this issue got a lot of attention in 2004 thanks to an Environmental Working Group report and tons of scaremongering headlines. But the science to justify a health concern simply isnt there. Yes, PCBs do seem to be slightly higher in farmed versus wild salmon. But the good news is that in both farmed and wild salmon, the content of PCBs are extremely low. The average PCB content of farmed salmon was reported to be 27 parts per billion, which is about 1% of the allowable limit set by the FDA, which is itself extremely conservative (see below on the HERP ranking for PCBs). To put that into some perspective, that is much higher than the concentration in wild salmon, but only about 4 times higher than the concentration in beef, so for someone like myself who eats beef far more often than salmon, by far my largest PCB source is beef. In fact, for the "average american consumer," the yearly-per capita PCB exposure from beef is 2016 picograms TEQ, from milk is 756, from poultry is 386, and from farmed salmon is 178 (2004 data). So, supposing consumption of farmed salmon tripled in this country, salmon would still only account for a small portion of the annual per capita load of PCBs. From PCBs and Farmed Salmon: Facts to Go with the Fiction Ironically enough, one of the reasons farmed salmon have higher PCB is that they have more fat, including more heart-healthy omega-3s. Fatter fish will have more fat-soluble compounds in them. Another point that should be mentioned is that overal dietary PCB exposure from all sources have been dropping dramatically since PCBs were banned. In fact, the dietary exposure to PCBs dropped 20-fold between 1978 and 1986 (see references in Gold et al, 2002, p. 64). Whatever risk dietary PCBs pose to the average consumer, that risk has been dropping enormously. Lastly, we should compare the supposed carcinogenic risk of dietary PCBs to other natural and synthetic compounds in the diet. To do that I need to introduce the HERP index (which I also referred to on another thread). The HERP index is a ranked index of various carcinogenic hazards. The ranking is straightforward. It reflects the ratio of the dose humans recieve in mg per kg of body weight per day to the lowest dose in mg/kg/day that has been shown to be carcinogenic in animal tests. So, for instance, if the 'average consumer' gets 10mg per kg of body weight per day of chemical X, and the rodent tests show that chemical X causes cancer in rodents at doses of 100mg/kg/day, then the HERP rank for that chemical is 10%. The methodology is described in detail in Gold et al's papers on the subject. Gold et al's paper is available here. I should probably also point out that Gold and coauthor Bruce Ames are considered to be two of the world's leading toxicologists, particularly with respect to environmental carcinogens. PCBs are actually near the very bottom of the HERP index, with a value of 0.00008%. That means that the average consumer recieves about 0.00008% of the lowest dose shown to increase cancer risk in animal studies (Gold et al, p. 82). This compares very, very favorably to many natural carcinogens present in our diets. For instance, caffeic acid from coffee has a HERP of 0.1%, caffeic acid from lettuce has a HERP of 0.04%, and hydrazine from mushrooms has a rank of 0.02%. Bottom line for me is I am much, much more concerned with being struck by lightening than I am about getting cancer from PCBs in salmon. Some links: The Top Ten Unfounded Health Scares of 2004: PCBs in Salmon and Cancer

Yeah, it doesn't evaporate. The volume of stuff in the can is the same before and after. You're just browning the milk solids. EDIT to clarify that the volume actually increase while the stuff if hot due to thermal expansion (which is why you can paint your kitchen a lovely dulce de leche if you open the can while its hot). But once its cool, the before and after volumes are the same.

For me it always comes out lumpy till I assault it mercilessly with an immersion blender.

Absolutely. In my humble opinion, people have become way too tolerant of nanny-statism, and it wouldn't surprise me if some nanny-statist congressperson got the bright idea to ban the sale of raw milk products. I'm all for the FDA keeping people informed, and don't oppose things like warning labels, but I strongly feel that when it comes to one's own health and body, the final decision should always be yours, not the state's. Sadly, few people in government feel the same way.

Did you read the PDF that I linked to? The data comes straight from the USDA online database, which I consider the best of its kind. The gram amount of eicosapentaenoic acid+docosahexanoic acid per 100 grams fresh fish are as follows: Farmed Coho Salmon: 1.206 Wild Coho Salmon: 1.085 Farmed Atlantic Salmon: 1.911 Wild Atlantic Salmon: 1.472 Farmed Channel Catfish: 0.274 Wild Channel Catfish: 0.364 Farmed Rainbow Trout: 0.928 Wild Rainbow Trout: 0.587 So as you can see, with the exception of catfish, which is low in omega3s to begin with, all the farmed fish are significantly higher in omega3s than their wild counterparts. I follow food-safety issues too. If your sources have said that farmed salmon lacks omega3s, they're definitely misinformed, and therefore I would take their future prouncements about food safety with skepticism. Cheers!

That simply is not true. On a per-serving basis, farmed salmon has as much if not more omega-3 fatty acids as wild salmon does. As a percentage of total fat per serving, wild salmon is slightly higher in omega-3s. But since farmed salmon have a significantly higher fat content, the per-serving omega-3 content is about the same or higher in farmed salmon. For instance, see this page, and particularly this attached PDF file comparing omega-3 content of wild vrs farmed salmon. Also: Kris-Etherton PM, Harris WS, Appel LJ; American Heart Association. Nutrition Committee. Fish consumption, fish oil, omega-3 fatty acids, and cardiovascular disease. Circulation 2002;106:2753. There may be good reasons not to eat farmed salmon. But a lack of omega-3s is definitely not one of them!