mags

I don't think these products are intended for dieters, Ronnie. My sense -- and this is purely me talking out of my ass (what a charming image THAT is) -- is that Coke and Pepsi have gotten wise to the fact that the world is not divided between dieters and people who don't give a damn what they eat. There is a huge, third population made up of people who don't need (or aren't prepared to take on) the stringency of a "diet" -- giving up all the things they love to eat -- but are increasingly uncomfortable with the high levels of fat, sugar, and calories in those things. That discomfort could, theoretically, prompt them to opt for the "diet" versions, but for many people, Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke taste awful, and are lousy substitutes for The Real Thing. Another option is for people to moderate their consumption -- kicking their three-can-a-day habits down to one can a week, for example -- but Coke and Pepsi sure don't want people choosing that option. So I think the introduction of the "mid-calorie" line is like a preventative measure: See, you don't HAVE to go the moderation route (which you don't want to do anyway, since you love your three cans a day). If you go with the mid-calorie option, you can have your three cans a day and simultaneously get rid of the guilt you've been feeling about drinking them. WHile I'm sure the introduction was motivated entirely by marketing, I actually think it's a really healthy step toward a less insane concept of food and eating. America in particular has a feast or famine mentality: As a country, we tend always to be either dieting strictly (however individuals define that) or throwing caution to the winds and binging our heads off. We're either eating skinless chicken breasts and salad with no dressing or fried chicken with cream gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits; dessert is either revolting sugar-free Jell-o with a strawberry and a tablespoon of fat-free Cool Whip, or fudge brownies with ice cream. As a society, when it comes to food (and obviously, there are individuals of whom this isn't true) we don't seem to know how to tread a middle ground, and both food companies and the media fuel our black-and-white approach; both advertisements and food magazines seem to assume that we're looking only for menus that fall either into the 500-calories-and-under camp (like Gourmet's Eating for Health section) or into the calories-be-damned department. Some magazines and newspapers (Sunset, the Washington Post) do publish nutritional counts on all their recipes -- which I think is great, because it allows people to make informed decisions about ALL of what they eat -- but too many assume that the only people who care about the calories, fat, carbs in their recipes are "dieters," who are assumed to want only the most stringent options available. I think all of this is insane, I think it contributes significantly to the binge-and-starve mentality that has been the bane of so many people with weight problems (me included), and I even think it's indicative of wider social ills, of a mentality that says a given food or recipe or menu is either Good or Evil. So I'm all in favor of anything that proposes a workable middle ground, even if that middle ground comes complete with (modified amounts) of high-fructose corn syrup.

Though I yield to no one in my passion for lipids, the clotted cream in a jar (or Devon cream in a jar -- and yeah, I've tried both) taste, to me, like nothing more than fat. Not unlike spooning up a clot of Crisco. There's no dairy flavor, and...well, there isn't really any flavor at all. Marscapone is wonderful, but it has a tang that I don't always want. Ditto creme fraiche. Nope, what I want, what I crave, is fabulous, yummy double cream, bursting with fresh dairy goodness.

Speaking as a carb-avoider who lives alone -- and is thus not always inclined to do a big cooking number every night, since there's nobody to jump up and down, lick the plate, and DO THE DAMN DISHES -- I can tell you that the freezer is your friend. Any kind of stew (and this includes your basic "curry") can be loaded up with protein and veggies, piled into single-serve tupperware containers, and slapped into your freezer, there to remain until you come home tired and vulnerable to the siren song of the pasta pot.........until you remember that it will be EVEN EASIER to just pop one of those babies into the microwave, nuke it for 10 minutes, and presto! hot and healthy dinner. Stew recipes are remarkably forgiving. You don't have red wine? Try adding a little brandy, or take it in a different direction, and use beer and a whole lot of onions. You don't like carrots? Try turnips; cooked long and slow, they will soak up all your good stew-flavor, and taste great. You don't want to use potatoes? Throw in some cauliflower florets. Your sauce is too thin? Use a big slotted spoon to pull out the protein and veg, then boil down the sauce until you like the consistency (or stir in a "slurry" of a SMALL amount of cornstarch mixed with about 3 X as much water, and bring to a boil). And stew can go in a zillion different directions -- curry, red-cooked Chinese, chili, chili verde, etc. Stew, of course, is great sopped up with some great crusty bread. But depending on how carbo-phobic you are -- and how much tolerance you have for added fat -- you could make pureed cauliflower (steam or nuke florets till tender, whiz in food processor with butter/cream/cream cheese plus seasonings of choice -- I like salt, pepper, and a little chicken-stock base, which I buy in jars and stow in the fridge, plus maybe some caramelized onion). Once again, this stuff freezes very well in single-serve Tups. On a cold night, a dollop of mashed cauli with a couple of fried or poached eggs is a really fast and really delicious dinner. Soup is also a great way to pile in the veg. We're coming right into gazpacho season, and that's my idea of a great lunch, plus you get enough vegetables in to qualify as a rabbit. I'm a big fan of Jim Fobel's recipe from "Big Flavor," but there are recipes everywhere. Make a big batch -- which will take all of 15 minutes -- and keep it in the fridge for several days. Finally, on a hot day, a plate of cut-up raw vegetables and an interesting dip -- which will keep in the fridge for several days -- can be a great lunch. If you're really rich and/or really lazy (I'm occasionally the latter) you can buy the packs of ready-cut veggies at gourmet markets -- coins of cucumber and summer squash, carrot and celery sticks, topped-and-tailed string beans, sliced red pepper. They will keep perfectly well in your vegetable crisper for several days -- more, if you get one of those "fruit fresh" bags.

Yeah, I've had the stuff in jars; it's vile. Again, given that the U.S. certainly has lush grasslands of its own, and that it would be possible, I imagine, to bring in Jersey or Guernsey cows, I don't know why some American dairy hasn't done this. Seems like a market niche waiting to be filled. American thighs need fattening!

Good lord, what did they do to the museum? It looks like an alien spaceship has landed on the front steps. All your base are belong to us.

So here's a question: Why is there NO double cream OR clotted cream available in the U.S.? I'm mystified as to why some enterprising dairy -- Ronnybrook Farms, say -- doesn't get on the bandwagon. I know (or I think I know) that double cream and the like can only be produced by certain breeds of cows, but yeesh! Some outfit in Maryland or Virginia is raising Yorkshire Old Spot pigs, so why doesn't somebody get in the Special Breed of Cow business? On the other hand, if double cream were available to me without my having to climb on a plane to get it, I would probably look rather like a Special Breed of Cow myself, so maybe it's a good thing.

Gawd, Seth, that bread looks absolutely amazing.

Wow, that should be great with the Thai Carnitas. Many thanks.

The stuff in jars, however, it's labeled, is thoroughly disgusting, IMO.

So RECIPE for Polite Pineapple Vinegar, por favor????

You know, the thought of Thai carnitas makes me go all warm and runny inside. But I looked up the recipe for Diana Kennedy's pineapple vinegar, and while I'm sure it would add immeasurably to the general deliciousness, I have serious difficulty with any recipe that tells me to skim once the maggots are visible. I don't know that I've contributed to the Stuff I Would Never Eat thread, but, yeah, visible maggots are kinda at the top of the list.

I have to put in another plug for Sophie Grigson, just because I'm realizing how often I turn to her books -- particularly Sunshine Food and Sophie's Table. I resisted buying Sunshine Food for ages, because I figured it was going to be another rehash of the same "Mediterranean" stuff we've all seen a zillion times -- pesto, risotto, ratatouille and so on. But in fact, like her other books, it's full of recipes I would not otherwise have encountered (often with a distinctly Turkish/North African bent). One of my absolute faves, a Tunisian dish of scrambled eggs with tomatoes, peppers, and spicy sausage, is on the menu tonight. And I second the raves for Nigel Slater, yet again, in part because his books are such a pleasure to read. In fact, I've been thinking that while I own a ton of cookbooks, there are really fewer than a dozen that I cook from regularly.

Mostly, stuff from the UK. Double cream, Cox's orange pippins (apples -- the best apples I've ever had), roast pork with crackling, bacon sandwiches eaten with a mugfull of tea strong enough to strip deck paint. I miss Neal's Yard as well -- I used to work about 50 feet away, and that's where I would buy my lunch. From the Boston Years...Steve's ice cream with smush-ins

Tell that to the Honey-Glazed Ham people -- not to mention all the folks who devour ribs with barbaque sauce or red-cooked pork or, ummm....bacon.

Jumping in, a year after this thread faded away like an old soldier. On my last trip to HK, I went to the food department of some gigantic Japanese department store, and looked for the weirdest-looking liqueur I could find, for a friend. It came in a bottle shaped like a sort of elongated fried egg, and the top was shaped like a whole egg in the shell, which obligingly cracked (to reveal a white plastic center with a bright yellow "yolk") when you opened it up. It was just spectacularly kitschy. Unfortunately, when we did open it up, the stuff inside tasted exactly like shampoo. Which beats real poo, I guess, but not by a lot.

Ok, but how desperately weird is it, really? Chocolate-covered salty pretzels are majorly delish, in my book. And when I was a kid, my father brought home chocolate-covered swiss cheese from a business trip to Zurich. (That was revolting.) But seriously, pork rinds are mostly kinda crunch + salty; there isn't a whole lot of porkiness going on.

There is a world of Greek food beyond "Greek" salad and souvlaki, and I don't think you have any right to be irritated merely because the menu didn't conform to your notion of what "Greek" food is. A restaurant offering "American" food isn't obligated to include hamburgers and grilled-chicken caesar salads on its menu, either. The $18 price tag on an appetizer should have given you a clue that this place was shooting for something other than what you'd see at your standard corner tarama-and-souvlaki joint, as terrific as those joints can be.

You might want to email the company. Just go to the website -- www.wheylow.com -- and I think they have a "contact us" button. Josh Wheedon from WheyLow did a Q&A here a few months back, and he was very responsive and a nice guy.

The Bottom Line, definitely. And from back in the day, Pyramid and Save the Robots.

If you A) wanna get fancy, and B) wanna combine ideas, you could serve dainty little portions of gazpacho IN the cucumber cups. Actually, I think that would be very swanky.

I'm another huge fan of Whey Low. Particularly when making desserts to share with other people, I won't use any other artifical sweetener (and I think I've tried them all). To my tongue, it is a near-perfect mimic of sugar, and it also has great functionality -- caramelizes beautifully, etc. Many polyols (sugar alcohols) taste ok, but they can have produce seriously bad GI problems -- think many hours in the bathroom -- if consumed in quantity, and the problem is, "quantity" appears to differ from person to person, so there's no way of telling if your maltitol-sweetened brownie is going to give 3 out of 5 customers a very unpleasant night. Which would not be good for business. Be aware that neither Sweet n Low nor Equal is heat-stable, so if you cook with them -- though I don't know why on earth anyone would -- their "sweetness" will effectively disappear. Finally, I would STRONGLY STRONGLY recommend looking at some recipes/cookbooks that have been produced by the low-carb community, rather than by non-low-carbers trying to cash in on the current trend. First, people outside the community often don't understand the needs of low-carbers: they'll substitute Splenda for sugar in a recipe, and then go on to specify 2 cups of flour. Second, those outside the community who have made some efforts to understand the basics (ok, flour = bad) typically try a single-item substitution; they'll take a generic recipe for cookies, say, and substitute Splenda and soy flour for sugar and wheat flour. Yccchh. Tastes disgusting. Just as a combination of artificial sweeteners can produce a synergistic sweetening effect, a combo of flour-substitutes can often produce a MUCH tastier cookie or pie crust or brownie than any one alone. Some of the flour-substitutes that are frequently used in LC cooking include: vital wheat gluten (essentially wheat "protein," stripped of all starch) almond flour or other nut flours (no chestnut -- too high in carbs) protien powder (can be derived from rice, whey, soy) wheat protein isolate inulin (which also has sweetening properties) wheat bran soy flour (careful -- this stuff can taste nasty if it's not adulterated) vegetable gums (guar gum, etc.) oat flour (relatively high in carbs, but quite a bit lower than wheat flour) flaxseed meal Take a look at April Fields' "101 Low-Carb and Sugar-Free Dessert Recipes" for some ideas about low-carb baking. (I'm not crazy about her recipes from a sweetening POV -- she relies almost entirely on maltitol and commercial, Splenda-sweetened syrups -- but she's fairly savvy about making substitutions for flour.) I think her website is fabulousfoods.com. Alternatively, look at some of the websites frequented by folks in the LC community -- try lowcarbluxury.com or lowcarbtransformation.com -- most of which have extensive recipes. I'm not at all suggesting that you copy the recipes -- though many people in the LC community are good, inventive cooks, they're mostly amateurs, and you're a pro. But these people do have extensive experience working with the sometimes oddball ingredients that go into making the difference between a baked good -- a cookie, a muffin, whatever -- that both tastes good and meets dieters' needs, and one that doesn't really do either.

Hunh. This is an idea with real appeal, since the filter over my stove -- even if I clean the damn thing, which I obviously have to do -- doesn't do anything about removing smoke, and smoke is one of the two big problems. You say this baby really does get rid of smoke quickly? The other big problem is grease, which collects in droplets in the air and then festoons itself across my ceilings and walls -- and is by no means confined to the kitchen. Do you think the air purifier does anything with grease? Perhaps I should call the company. At any rate, thanks for a very interesting option.

Some of these are really good suggestions, and thank you!

Ingrid, what an elegant writer you are. A pleasure.

No experience with dropping pigs, but a fair amount -- courtesy of years as a copy editor -- with lovely typos. My all-time favorite was in the manuscript of a biography of Oliver Cromwell, who -- according to the writer -- thought "the peasants should manifest their will by ballet." I had this wonderful image of stumpy grubby, Breughel-style peasants pirouetting around trilling "No taxation without representation" or "We demand an end to the tradition of imprisoning debtors." Er....the writer meant BALLOT.