feedmec00kies

What about Natural Brew do you like, rather than Reeds or Vernor's, if I may ask?

Well, Katz's (CaliPoutine's suggestion) does actually sell online - you don't have to go into the city to get it. Just scroll down...

Yes. (edited to link to a page with all three examples)

Toufas, that list is all kinds of awesome! As a New Yorker who almost never goes into McDonalds outside of the occasional rest stop in the US, I never see any regional food. Some of these things look quite intriguing...

I'm definitely with you, Lilija. I've never had to prepare anything that big, but when I make something a little more involved that my usual dinner efforts, I tend to not be hungry when I've finished. I'm not sure if it's smelling and nibbling the ingredients during prep and cooking that does it, but sometimes I'm almost a little queasy thinking about eating, like I just stuffed myself. Never understood it.

I think it's the idea that this breast milk belongs to a stranger that gets me. I've never had children, hence I have never nursed. If I had succeeded in getting pregnant, I expect my husband might have had a taste. Still, that's an intimacy restricted to a very few. Some people get quite exercised over wet-nursing, which doesn't bother me at all. But adults eating the milk of other, unknown adults. Blech! ← I think that's pretty much what it is for me. As an American, I live in a culture that's pretty uncomfortable with breastfeeding as a public activity (even though I think it should be seen as normal). It's associated with something a little too intimate for me, or most people, to want to engage in with other people, particularly strangers. I'm curious about the taste, but not enough to go to someone's restaurant to try it out... I'll have my own opportunities to see what it's like in the future, thanks. This brings up an interesting question. How would a business (restaurant) that uses breast milk ensure the consistent taste of its products if it can't control what the moms are eating? Would they need to have a breast milk taster on staff to ensure some uniformity of breast milk taste? Or freeze batches for blending if there are "off" tastes in the fresh supply? ← Good point. I wonder if the restauranteur realizes that. Maybe he'll make them sign a contract constricting their diet?

As soon as I saw the title, I remembered an exhibit during the free opening weekend at MoMA QNS (the temporary branch from the renovation period.. I'm not sure if this was an installation at any other time). In one of the first rooms, there was a small, 1'x1'x1' refrigerator with a glass door, and a small round of what looked like Crottin. The label said, "Cheese" or something, with materials/medium listed as "Human Breast Milk." Huh. I was somewhat fascinated by the concept, of course, but I wasn't about to break the door and steal the exhibit. To me, it really says something when a food reminds one of a MOMA exhibit. Yeah, I know it's pretty much completely cultural that it make us uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean it's not a valid reaction. I'm sure the restauranteur is hoping people will swing for the sheer reason that it does shock us, and there are always eaters up for that. The PETA letter... I don't know if I could believe it, though it's probably to provoke a reaction more than anything else. Then again, this is the same organization that's offering a $1mil prize for in vitro meat...

Yeah, I forgot about that one. I also got the "correct answer" but thought the explanation the quiz gave was wrong. Hmmm.

I don't know how the price is (I don't know how much containers usually cost), but sometimes I see these kinds of containers being used in New York. They're definitely microwavable; I usually wash them and reuse at least a few times before I dispose of them. I'm not sure how they handle freezing, but the description on this site says that the minimum temperature it can withstand is 0 degrees Farenheit.

Abra, do you know what's with the "mythic" at the top of the sign? Someone mentioned the "Chicken Mythic" sandwich on eGullet within the last week, but there was no explanation to why it was so legendary (or named as such). Google yields no answers.

I was thinking that too, about Omega 3 fatty acid, when I read that, but I wasn't 100% sure. Hopefully she'll mention something about that in the book.

Thanks for the link, Magictofu! As for the fats that are being argued, although it seems unintuitive, I am not ready to write off what she has to say. After all, we still don't really understand how nutrition works, and it's very possible that everything she is saying is accurate. That said, I'll be looking for this one, and for her other book.

I rushed through it and got a 5 out of 11, so maybe I could have thought through some answers more and gotten a few more right. The first one, the one about China threw me off though. My mom always told me that she was taught to finish every tiny grain of rice because your future husband would come with one pockmark per grain you left stuck messily to the bowl. What's going on? Is this uncommon thinking? I thought leaving food was just if you were a guest...

Menus in .pdf format really annoy me as well - for what usually ends up to be a small document, it's very clumsy. It doesn't help that .pdf reading programs are slow themselves, though I've got a nifty Firefox extension that lets me try and open it as a HTML document instead (though it doesn't always work). Ideally, I'd want them to have a version viewable on the website (like text), with a link to download a copy. Why do they do this?? I'm assuming that they do it because it's just the file they send to be printed and it's "less effort," but I could be wrong.

First things first, it sounds like you're overcooking the eggs, as Shalmanese mentioned. I would recommend not covering your pan, and maybe heating it up a little less. Also, try adding a small (a teaspoon, maybe) amount of water to the eggs when you're beating them to improve the texture.

It's true, the breweries listed are pretty solid overall. I guess I'm actually speaking from my own priorities; my boyfriend and I go to beer festivals to try and get beers that are hard to find, whether they're retired, draft only, etc. However, for someone relatively new to craft beer (or even just someone who isn't of the collector mentality like my boyfriend) a list of beers that are usually available in bottles isn't a bad idea either. It's a good way to try as many things as possible.

I personally haven't. Unfortunately, you can't tell from the participating brewery list how good the beer is - there are breweries going that have put out some great new and/or draft-only stuff (like Ommegang Rouge... mmmm...), but there's no way of knowing if they'll actually bring it. I don't think this festival has been that amazing historically, but who knows? You could try and contact them and see what beers they're anticipating. From experience, $50 is a pretty standard price for a beer festival. However, you can try to contact the organizers to volunteer to try and get in for free for a few hours of service.

It also has that rubber button thing that you can press as a "brake". I don't know if other salad spinners come with that, though (Oxo seems to claim that it's patented like the pump mechanism). FWIW, the Oxo Good Grips and the Zyliss Easy Spin Salad Spinner were the top picks for Cooks Illustrator (the Easy Spin is the updated version of their original test subject, where the pull cord sometimes wouldn't retract). They said that the Zyliss was able to try a bit faster and better, but they seem to still heavily prefer the Oxo because it's easy to use and the difference in performance is minor. (edited to add some more info)

Not to sidetrack you, but if you're curious about the use of hops in beer, there's a few theories on why hops replaced the use of gruit on the Wikipedia page for gruit.

Interesting. I actually had been thinking about incorrect labeling recently (specifically with white tuna; you can find information all over the interwebs). Hopefully, those unnamed stores and restaurants can legitimately claim ignorance... though that's not such a good thing either. I'm afraid that, with operating costs increasing, this might become more and more of a problem too.

They're not the smallest plums, but I had to post this anyway. The "bowl" that they're in is one of those little dishes they give you in Japanese restaurants to put your soy sauce in when you eat sushi.

FWIW, I just saw a commercial for these (specifically the triple chocolate ones). It was at 1:00am during Olympics coverage on NBC in NYC.

If nothing else, I think Special K's suggestion of repurposing the food processor is a good one (as long as you don't keep hopes for bringing it out of retirement). Fishbowl, a new home for a houseplant, etc... that way, you not only keep the processor, but don't have to stick it somewhere out of view.

The only thing I can think of is delivery by Il Laboratorio del Gelato, but I don't know where you're located. They deliver daily by courier within Manhattan south of 96th Street, and once a week across the United States. They have something on their product page. It ain't cheap, though (but I don't know what your budget is). Outside of them specifically, I would just have to assume that one of those mail-order grocery things like Fresh Direct will do it.

Robyn: Not that it's important to your point, but I believe you're referring to David Chang, of the infamous Momofuku's. It was what he apparently said when questioned why he banned photography from Ko. I don't know, I've never had much interest in taking pictures or notes of what I eat. However, when I first started becoming more interested in beer, I started to try and rate everything. That lasted maybe... through 40 or 50 different beers. I stopped because I found it too distracting. Although it helped immediately to get me to think about what I was drinking, I started to find it distracting and disruptive to my own enjoyment. The only issue is that I no longer can look back on what I've drank and see exactly what I said about it, but I'm not the type to effectively collect ratings like some of the people I know. If I like the beer, I remember it. If record-keeping is why a person takes pictures of what they eat, though, I respect it. I just don't really care for it myself. Here's where I get annoyed about the photos and essays. I'm not opposed to looking at someone else's photographs or notes once in a while out of curiosity, but the cynical part of me gets annoyed about how those pictures and essays get posted on the internet and shared. I feel like they just serve to increase hype and are a way for people to brag that they have the money/awesomeness/luck in front of the computer screen at 10am a lot of the time (not always, but often enough to piss me off). And hype turns me off almost automatically. I personally just like to make my own impressions about the food without the influence of others. I just avoid most of those things because, for whatever reason, I feel like there's a certain bit of arrogance in making them public, and it makes me as angry as YouTube comments do. Yeah, I'm sure you all outnumber me and think I'm being self-righteous and I'm out of my mind, but it's just how I feel. It is just food to me. (edited for clarity)