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Flight back delayed 2 hours because BCN air traffic control couldn't come to grips with the end of daylight saving time and wouldn't give us a slot across the Atlantic. This shouldn't have been a surprise. Sat at the gate for 2 hours (with champagne) WTF. Lunch was a deeply flawed version of the dinner coming over. Casablanca and Caddyshack on the video thing A tasty flatbread prior to landing.

Dinner at Fonda. The second oldest restaurant in Barcelona, we are told. Chef has 5 Michelin stars in aggregate over his career. None here, but it was great. Standard apps. Catalonian poke Lobster salad. Perfectly cooked. Hake and crawfish

Another working lunch

Dinner in the hills that surround the city Appetizers. Tomato bread...foie with fruit...fried squid...ham...sardines Cheesy urchin. Yuck. A local sausage. Beef and veal. Tasty. Apple tart with caramel. The end to every dinner. A high proof grappa-like drink. Tasted like sweat socks. Foul. I preferred this one, only about 80 proof, which was a herbal liquor sort of like Galiano. They said it was what women drink, but my machismo is sufficient to overpower this flaw in my palate. (Didn't Hemingway drink girly drinks?)

"working" lunch Appetizers...the ubiquitous jamon iberico and salmon sandwiches and tomato toast "noodle paella" apparently a Catalan standard eaten as much as the classic rice dish. It was OK in a rice-a-roni ish way. I need to learn more about Catalonia. It is a major political issue in the region. Most natives are bilingual, with Catalan being more close to French than Spanish. They just had a secession vote which was nearly 50:50! There's a Catalan president ( not a presidente, which would be too Spanish for their taste) in waiting. Pastries for dessert

I had a series of private dinners with menus lovingly selected by my host. First up was a seafood place on the waterfront. First the tapas. There were many repetitions of these tasty apps. Tomato toast with Catalan olive oil and barely grilled sardine. Just great! Next was local tuna (not shown) followed by croquettes. Seafood on the right, cod on the left. Tomato toast with jamon iberico Fresh caught hake steak.

A quick trip to BCN for business. The AA business class dinner on the way over was much better than usual. The beef looked to have been cooked sous vide, or at least combi oven. It was a real MR. The salad was tasty. An anomaly. Hotel breakfast buffet. I really love the Euro hotel breakfast. If they only had a decebnt bagel... Lunch at a local bar that had its own take on classic tapas. Beer, patatas bravas with mayo and sriracha, fried chicken bits. Pre-dinner beer at the hotel

not finding it

Woof! Well done.

Me too. Did that with our kids. One peep and out you go. They figured out quickly what behavior was rewarded

I make -butternut squash soup with turkey stock and a little sage. -diced sautéed butternut and potato hash with bacon - acorn rings baked then stuffed with mashed smoked sweet pots with a touch of allspice ..topped w brown sugar and broiled

A quite nice pumpkin soup made with mirepoix, ginger and cream(and a bit of heat) in the American Airlines Admirals club in PHL. So far the best thing to come out of the US AIRWAYS merger.

This is really the crux of it. A paper comes out. They lay press finds an attention grabbing headline saying "Bacon = Cancer" and presents the scientific finding as though it is the last word on the subject. No qualifiers, no insight, no perspective. And then next week theres a different paper that's published and its contradictory. And so on. Which one is correct? Often both are...in their way. The simple answer that we all want usually doesn't exist in medicine. Every study has flaws. Every experiment has limitations. Stuff that we are told as truth is often not, Can anyone find a study in humans (in a good journal) that says anti-oxidants extend life...or even do anything?

In general, real scientists welcome critical thought and testing of hypotheses. Name calling is reserved for the faculty senate.

I think that the public has a hard time telling trash science from the real thing. So much garbage is presented as though it were true. It can be hard to know who to trust.

I think they said that eating meat raises your chance by ~15%. So if your risk is 1 in 100 to begin with ...your meat eating risk will be 15% higher. But, yes , it cannot be additive.or we'd all be deadly now. It's also not clear if this paper was actually peer reviewed or just published as a consensus paper, which may well go unreviewed. Also worth noting that consensus papers are what the group agrees to put their name to. Their May have been dissenters whose opinion isn't reflected in the final product. ..or strident minority opinions who get more prominence than they deserve.

Not really news, but more confirmatory of what we've been told for years. I can't download the paper but the ars technica piece seems to be complete. From that...The IARC report seems not to take into account the eater's inherent risk of colon cancer. For example a population could have 20 % of people all of whom will get colon cancer from red meat and 80% who won't no matter how much they eat. And we know that there is clearly an inherited basis for a lot of colon cancers. So is everybody at risk ....who knows? This is important because I like cured red meat. Especially hot dogs with charred skins. Maybe yellow mustard's turmeric will fight the hot dog carcinogens. I'll go ask Oz and get back to you.

I don't think that it either Julia or Kenji. Both offer a lot and they cover different ground. Complementary I'd say.

Not using metric is "unscientific"? Everyone knows food tastes better when cooked to Fahrenheit temps.

Nobody can process inulin as far as I know.

Its "healthy" because the carb isn't absorbed so blood sugar doesn't rise. Screwy logic.

This says that slow cooking will convert the inulin. https://www.paleohacks.com/fructose/converting-inulin-to-fructose-through-slow-cooking-2099

Somebody who suffers from the problem ought to do an experiment with aging the sunchokes and see how long it takes to convert the inulin.

Figs and chocolate seem mismatched to me. I think I'd have a brighter flavor for figs. Citrus or strawberry perhaps?

Beano is good only for certain carbs, those with alpha galactoside carbohydrates...eg beans. Inulin is different, so it ought not to work with J-chokes