mizducky

Oy. You just reminded me of another story from my days as a Microsoftie. Not only were their kitchens equipped with stashes of free sodas and juices, but a goodly number of them had old-school popcorn makers like these. When somebody made up a batch, you could smell it for seemingly miles--fortunately it was a relatively nice popcorn smell, not that nasty artificial-butter/almost scorched odor of microwaved popcorn. And then the smell would cause the vultures to descend, so if you started making a batch and left the kitchen, you might return to find no popcorn left for yourself Which also reminds me--in the Microsoft office-eating ecology, we had a whole other class of people not mentioned in the original article: the Scavengers. Any free food of any sort available, any leftovers from a meeting refreshment tray or a morale lunch, they would magically appear and handily clean it up for you. Not that I was above taking a free handout myself--quite the opposite--but I swear there were some folks who must have been subsisting on nothing but their gleanings. And some people would even bring in overages of food from home (excess baked goods from a holiday party, excess garden produce, etc.) and leave them in the office kitchens so that the Scavengers would take the stuff off their hands. Oh, and another classification missing from the article: the Tipplers. The folks with little office bar stashes discreetly (or not so discreetly) hidden away in file drawers and cubicle fridges. Nothing like trying to get your inebriated brain back onto your work after a lunchtime bout of Party in a Pail frozen Margaritas (yeah, the stuff looked and tasted a little like that green radiator antifreeze gone semifreddo, but we drank it anyway).

Not only is that a lovely story, but now for some strange reason I find myself thinking of an old Ernest Tubb song, "Say Something Nice to Sarah" ...

Oy. I had gotten to the point where, if I brought home one of those rotisserie chickens, it was with the understanding that at least half of the meat, and *all* of the skin, would be vaporized within moments of opening its little plastic container. The remainder would be gone by sunrise. And some of my mom's and my best mother/daughter bonding experiences were over the leftover Thanksgiving turkey carcass. We would just place the carcass between us in the middle of the dinette table, and just sit there and fress until it was nothing but disjointed bones, both of us lost in turkey-grease bliss. (And this is the same woman who attempted to chide me for coveting a slab of prime rib? )

Thank you for this entertaining and enlightening story. I think I'm finally getting it about the white rice/brown rice thing--it's not just a taste preference, it's not just a custom, it's got layers of cultural significance I hadn't even realized. I will therefore try to refrain from weirding folks out any further with tales of brown rice intruding where it's not supposed to go. Funny about the wild and converted rices! Those regulatory authorities were actually correct about the wild rice--botanically it really is a different grass-plant than the conventional rice plant. As for the converted rice: a lot of Americans who care about their rice think converted rice is pretty disgusting too. Your staff had it exactly right--it may look and feel like rice, but that is where any resemblance to the real thing ends.

All of my favorite binge foods involve large amounts of grease-drenched animal protein. I realize a lot of folks on this board love a good hunk o' meat, but I swear, when I catch a whiff of meat being grilled, I start drooling like Pavlov's dog. In fact, I'm rather amazed at how well I'm managing meat portion control on my current diet, because there have been times when I have been utterly incapable of portion control around meat. I recall one memorable occasion when I lived in Boston, about 20 years ago. My parents were up to visit, and they treated me to dinner at Durgin-Park ... so of course I ordered the prime rib. My mother took one look at this huge slab o' meat they brought me--the typical Durgin-Park portion of prime rib hangs off the edges of the large dinner plate they serve it on--and murmured some hint/noodge to the effect of "you're not really going to eat all that, are you?" To which I replied, with a fierceness that surprised even me: "I WANT it!" My mother, taken aback by this sudden appearance of cave-woman territory-defence behavior in her eldest daughter, thereafter left me alone (except for a stray eyes-rolled-to-ceiling look which I pointedly ignored), and I proceeded to methodically eat. the. whole. damn. thing. Hefty layer of fat and all. And IIRC, I made a bit of a dent in the sides, too. That's how I used to be able to get about meat--just don't get between me and my fix, and nobody gets hurt.

Ah well. Just chalk it up to one crazee Caucasian grrl messing around oblivious to tradition ... Though I should add: if the pressure cooker had not succeeded in pounding the brown rice into creamy submission, I probably wouldn't have liked it either. This might better be discussed in a whole new topic, but this isn't the first time that I've noticed that people from traditionally rice-eating cultures don't really care for brown rice. Are there any authetic traditional Chinese uses for brown rice at all? Or is it only mad dogs and Englishmen (figuratively speaking) who eat this stuff?

I just made brown rice congee, and it came out pretty darn good if I do say so myself. This is especially cool because my bod could really use the extra fiber and nutrients that brown rice provides. I basically placed 4 cups broth and 1/2 cup raw medium-grain brown rice (I do like my congee thick) in my pressure cooker, locked on the lid, and let it go for about an hour and a half. The cooker valve made some slightly alarming spluttering noises, but otherwise behaved itself fine (I was worried that sputtering might clog the valve up). The resulting congee had excellent body, the grains still distinct but quite soft. Plopped a little fermented tofu in and had a very soothing dinner!

Wow, Henry, not only is this one intensely beautiful blog, but man, are you ever exemplefying the best of the Seattle urban-hip lifestyle!

Hmmm. That hadn't been my understanding; and the second article Torakris cited also states that it originated in Japan. Its major formulator and the person who brought the idea to Europe and America, George Osawa, was born in Japan.

Fascinating! I studied a little macrobiotics in the 1980s (I was living at the time in Boston, one of the major US centers of macrobiotics interest and study). I had gotten the impression then that macrobiotics was at the time a lot more popular outside of Japan than within its borders. Interesting to see it making a comeback in its native land.

The dissipation of useful energy will destroy the basis of life ... hence the need to "repair" before this occurs ... that was the entropy to which I thought they were referring .... ← Erm, it also says (in the original Wikipedia article, notation to the link to Rikfin's views) that Rifkin's work is "a notorious misinterpretation of entropy". Edited to clarify: Entropy in physics does not mean the amount of disorder of the system. It means the amount of energy in a closed system which has become disordered and thus unavailable to that system. In the expenditure of that energy, local organization within a closed system can actually increase, as when a molten substance cools down enough to crystalize. Entropy as a concept has many popular metaphorical uses, but most I've ever come across represent a misinterpretation of its scientific meaning.

Hmmm. The food sounds lovely, and I'm certainly rooting for anybody who sets out to demonstrate that "healthy" cuisine can also be haute cuisine. But I don't think these folks are the first or only ones working at that. Erm, and I wasn't much of a physics student in college, but the definition of "entropy" I learned there was a bit different--clickie.

Heh. I was going to blame the phenomenon on the whole Food Network in general. I for one confess to having been totally ignorant of the stuff until I first gained cable access to the Food Network--and then it seemed like it was mentioned on every single damn show sooner or later. I have no other evidence to base this on, but I still suspect that if one correlated the rise in popularity of the Food Network with the rise in popularity of balsamic in the US, one might possibly get some intriguing results.

Oh, my god....this looks EXACTLY like a decayed tooth I found when going through grave goods from a early 20th century coffin last semester...if I can find the photo, I'll post it. [shudder] ← Okay, I guess there's a lot of us here who are going to have to amicably agree to disagree with each other. I do feel the need to point out that when Daniel presented this morsel as part of his oink-fest topic, it was greeted with hosannahs and salivations. (Even moreso when the toffee bacon wound up as part of a chocolate cake). Now please understand that this is once again *not* to question each individual's right to their own opinions and tastes, nor to say that any person's opinion is *right* or *wrong*--but rather to gently point out that there are in fact a variety of opinions on this topic. S'alright? (Hell--and I'm the woman who, in other topics I can't even remember, expressed a dislike for sweet ingredients mixed in with savory food--although that was more about, say, raisins embedded in savory dishes ... still, I hereby confess my own major inconsistency on the underlying concept. )

Heh. I noticed that dish right off, Maggie. So, folks--what's the verdict? Is the concept of animal-protein-on-donut even a wee bit more appealing when it's a petite slice of foie gras on a doughnut-hole served up by a haute-cuisine restaurant?

Well, this is looking like one spectacular blog. And I was already looking forward to it as a former resident of Seattle. Sounds like you have an incredibly full week planned already, but if I might put in a wee request, I would dearly love if you could wedge in a visit to Kingfish Cafe. I loved that joint. Oh yeah, and I just couldn't resist highlighting this one particular dish you had at Crush: Seems to me I recall a topic elsewhere on this very board concerning another dish featuring a hunk of animal-protein sandwiched between two halves of a donut-type baked good. Just wondering if some of the folks who were perturbed by that other, admittedly much more lowbrow dish might find the concept more palatable in this more rarified form.

Oh god. It's been so long since I had a decent (non-styrofoam non-supermarket) strawberry, I can't even remember when that was. And yet, I am another who regularly breaks down and buys those damfool plastic berries, just because I crave berries so badly. However, Anna N, I think you may have just saved me. What a cool idea! It never even dawned on me to try roasting them. I shall have to conduct experiments very soon now.

Dudes--a whole topic on manly-man food, and neither Fergus Henderson nor Tony Bourdain have been invoked yet? Dayum.

I'm distressingly ambivalent about beans. Distressing to myself, I mean; I really feel like I should like them more than I do. And to be fair, certain varieties of legumes I love deeply: chick peas and lentils, both of which were major childhood comfort foods. And I love a nice split pea soup or dal. But other beans? really lukewarm. Kidneys and pintos and white beans especially just seem so starchy and unexciting to me. Black beans are okay if I put in a lot of tomatoes and spices to wake them up. And yeah, I have cooked beans numerous times with lots of stuff to tart them up, but what usually happens is that the leftovers get thrown out unfinished, because I pick all the goodies out and leave the beans behind. I've never had either cassoulet or baked beans homemade, so maybe I would feel better about beans after tasting that ... but right now is probably not a good time for either cooking project. I should probably give Rancho Gordo's beans a whirl, see if that helps matters. Curiously, I'm one of those odd non-Asians who likes tofu, even completely plain tofu. Go figure.

Yeah, I figured I could always just sub them for any other beans. But ... well, I guess I should clarify that I'm looking for savory recipes that work especially well with adzuki beans' unique properties and flavor profile--not necessarily traditional Asian recipes, but those would be really cool too.

I've been researching and writing website articles about bird flu for the past couple of years now. IMO the article cited above does put an extremist spin on things (I had to re-read a couple of passages because I found phrases like "man-made" so misleading). But under the hyperbolic language is some serious stuff to ponder. It is in fact a well-accepted concept--not just among the experts cited in this article, but generally--that this latest evolution of the bird flu virus from a modestly lethal-to-birds version to a virulently fatal-to-birds form was vastly accellerated by large quantities of birds breeding in close quarters. But that's just classic biological wisdom--the more bazillions of generations of microbes produced, and the more opportunities they have to re-assort their DNA across strains, the greater the odds that, sooner or later, one microbe is going to hit the slot-machine jackpot of the right bits of genetic code to totally foil a critter's immune system. There's additional issues, of course (including H5N1 having an especially strong tendency to DNA transcription errors, a significant generator of genetic mutations). But as to crowding of critters as a culprit in this situation, my reading of the science news feeds is that there really isn't a whole lot of doubt about that. Certainly the carrying of virus by migrating birds can't be helping matters, and that does mean outdoor "free-range" flocks of domestic birds are therefore also at risk, but the actual genetic incubators of the virus, where the bug just chugs along reproducing and rolling the genetic dice and hoping for that killer combination, are those large concentrations of poultry (whether in factory-farms, or traditional farms, or what have you--but as factory farms have almost by definition much larger bird populations than traditional farms, well, you do the math.) On the other hand, the scenario the experts are really dreading--that the virus mutates sufficiently to be passable not just from birds to humans, but human-to-human--is additionally accellerated by people living and working in close proximity to live birds--as in all poultry farms, but especially in cultures where people keep household flocks of poultry and live with their birds 24/7, such as in many poorer commuities in Asia. The scenario goes like this: some creature that's capable of being infected both by bird flu virus and human flu virus (not even necessarily a human--pigs, for instance, supposedly can get both too)--gets infected by both virii simultaneously. The two strains of virus start doing their multiply-and-reassort thang, and somehow a bird-flu and human-flu virus get together and reassort in just the right way to produce a viable hybrid that combines the easy human-to-human contagiousness of the one with the virulence of the other--uh oh! A long shot, but like I said, the more opportunities the virii have to play together, the more opportunities for the killer combo to arise. In fact, a similar scenario has been posited for the rising of the Spanish Flu bird-flu virus. Remember, it was the early 1900s. Lots and lots of people around the world--including in Europe and the US--lived on farms and kept poultry for their own subsistence. Hell--the armies fighting World War I all traveled with stocks of live poultry to feed the troops--and there were some king-hell outbreaks of that flu among said troops. And with the opportunity, time, and a little anti-Las-Vegas luck, the combination was hit and the Spanish flu virus was off and rolling.

Hello--reviving this topic. I'm especially interested in hearing about savory recipes using these babies. I've got a bag of them in the kitchen begging to be used. Thanks in advance.

Oh, I should add that Alton Brown, in an episode of "Good Eats" entitled The Man Food Show, featured made-from scratch corn dogs and sliders. (Hey, just trying to be helpful... )

You forgot the bottle of beer. (Although I guess Bessie Smith wasn't, strictly speaking, a guy.) ← Yeah, but I understand she was pretty butch ... Lessee ... meat, meat, and more meat ... including organ meats ... potatoes ... stinky cheese ... onion rings ... heh. To judge by the foods touted here, I may need to have my chromosomes tested too.

And I got the bulk of my list of prices through the Von's online shopping website (which I do actually use on a regular basis), eked out with a few prices from other places that I knew from memory.