Mallet

Maybe a lit late here, but I thought I might give a comparison for quick perspective. Behold, the Bouchon quiche! You almost feel yourself getting fatter only by looking at the ingredient list, and it is worth every single delectable bite. Here's a quick rundown (I chose the bacon and onion quiche): -half a dozen large eggs (444 cal) -half a pound of butter (1590 cal) -2 cups milk (244 cal) -2 cups heavy cream (821 cal) -1 pound of cooked bacon (688 cal) -1 tablespoon salt -12 oz. flour (1344 cal) Entire Quiche: 5131 calories Recommended serving = 1/8 quiche = 641 calories One of these "extreme" entrées is like eating close to half a Bouchon quiche, and I can't imagine it providing even close to the same amount of satisfaction

I had mega-issues with this yesterday, until I realized that rubbing a damp towel on the seam dissolves caked-in cure and fixes everything. I might rubbing on the spoon after putting the meat in the bag as well.

I never thought of sterilizing and re-using Ziploc bags, thanks tristar!

I think there's a perception that sugar is used in this way to cover up less than perfect ingredients and is therefore shunned by those in the know. Adding sugar to your tomato sauce? Perfect tomatoes don't need sugar!

Why do I consistently get better browning when I use rendered pork fat vs. oil or butter?

Has anybody been to Gio in Halifax yet? Seems like a really interesting place, and the chef certainly has an impressive CV. My parents said they had a fantastic meal there recently, but I haven't been to Halifax in a while so I can't comment personally.

I've just come across the Wikipedia Cookbook.

There used to be a wall of candy at the A&P near our house that was recently replaced with various 'health foods' (organic tahini, dips, spreads, cereals etc..)

I find extremely specific recipes very confidence-building, especially when I first started cooking. Although many find her writing style insufferably pedantic, I really like Rose Levy Beranbaum's books for that reason.

I would kill to see Martin Picard from Au Pied de Cochon do a TV show similar to the cooking segments on his 'album' DVD.

Hey, give them a break, it's for charity

This seems pretty foolproof.

Where does Starwich fit?

Interesting article, I didn't know Smithfields raised Berkshires for Japan!

I found this USDA website very informative in addressing some of your questions: The shift from the crop-livestock model to the centralized operations discussed in the Rolling Stone article is recent, and has only occured since the early 1990s. From 1990 to 1996 total pork production only increased 3% (reference) indicating that, by and large, this model was amply capable of supplying numbers. I don't think anybody in this thread has suggested that pork should never be transported more than x metres or anything, just that the concentration of large farms in small areas not historically used for hog production is a concern. I think the following picture is pretty revealing: Smithfields was fined for an incredibly small proportions of the infractions which it commited. From the RS piece: Clearly enforcement is an issue under any system, perhaps encouraging a production model which is less likely to cause infractions in the first place is a better solution? I hope so This doesn't seem to be the case as pollution happens when you have an excess in a particular location. So it's not dependent on total waste (which could indeed be less if every farm was a "factory" farm, I don't know) but on what the immediate environment can handle. In fact, according to the USDA website linked above, large farms produce disproportionately more pollution than small ones (the largest 2 percent of U.S. hog farms control only 2 percent of land but produce 53 percent of the total excess nitrogen in hog manure and half the total excess phosphorus).

meh. Better him than Rachel Ray. Bourdain is a force for good.

How about using hydrogen stoves? The only by-product would be water.

No way! Plants use up CO2 and break it down into oxygen! We should eat more meat, and get rid of the methane-producing cows that are killing the plants.

A good start might be "The River Cottage Meat Book" by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. The first half of the book covers ethical and husbandry concerns followed by guides on how to buy meat and chapters on beef/veal, lamb, pork, poultry, game, and offal (including cut diagrams and descriptions). The second half contains the recipes, divided by cooking technique (roasting, slow cooking, fast cooking, barbecuing, preserving and processing). Guaranteed to cure you of any residual vegeterianism

I apologize for taking this quote somewhat out of context, but why hope for technology to solve problems (in this case, the ones brought on by the massive and essentially unchecked scaling of hog operations) it created in the first place? Part of the problem is that the solutions come about once the problem is well-entrenched, and if you believe the article, reversing the damage completely would litterally bankrupt the culprits. A little foresight and a more precautionary (rather than reactionary) approach to rapid development such as this would go a long way towards both ensuring progress, but without sacrificing so much. Mallet (ever the optimist )

Based on the tasks you use your blender for, I'd say you're good with what you have. I use an el cheapo Braun blender for the same uses and have no complaints about the single speed. I'm guessing that benefit of multiple speeds are mostly if you use your blender for other things (like chopping onions etc...)

Anne, I suspect many farmers would disagree with that statement (maybe Stan can chime in?). Obviously I'm not pretending that shit from sustainably managed pork smells like roses, but that's a far cry from manure "lagoons". As far as the environmental points raised in the article, I think their beef (couldn't resist) is one of scale and concentration. Instead of distributing the same number of pigs in relatively small operations across the country Smithfields has concentrated its operations in a small area, and ecosystem simply can't handle it. Project, I'm surprised you couldn't find anything using the link I provided. Zooming out and scrolling around I found around- 30 hog farms in a 5km square, many with pretty big lagoons (about 100m x 50m). In one instance, the lagoon was bigger than the farm!

Sweet! Either I missed it before or it's recent, either way you just made my day.

Are you then taking the position that, failing to disprove an alternative hypothesis, both propositions are made equally plausible?

That's far too simple