mjc

I used pure roast chicory that I order from thecajunconnection.com (though now I see its 2x more than at cccoffee). In the recipe you infuse the chicory in water for 20 minutes.

In Bellouet's book L'art des enterements de france on p. 211 there's a recipe for "la tarte aux poires caramel-chicoree." I've made it a few times and its amazing. Its a almond shortcrust, filled with flourless chocolate cake and chocolate ganace, topped with pear slices around the edges, and then a disk of caramel chicoree mousse in the middle. The recipe though for the caramel chicoree mouse calls for "chicory in grains" which I believe may be different than the coffee with chicory that you have.

Sonny's in South Orange used to have THE best bagels, haven't been in awhile, so I don't know if they still do.

I don't know if it would work for you, but the item pictured on p. 124-125 of The patisserie de pierre herme is something that I've been wanting to make.

A friend of mine is doing a language immersion program in the town of Sancerre in the Loire Valley. She asked me if I could find out about any wineries that she should be sure to visit. I figured this was the best place to find that out. Thanks for any tips.

These donuts are made with only the best ingredients, so that helps to make them more expensive.

buy pistoles instead of blocks.

There is nothing wrong with using a silpat. Just freeze the silpat and attached macarons (or parchment even) for a few minutes, and it will be much easier to get them off.

when I was making macaroons for my pastry club cookie sale, the pastry chef who I work with said to leave the egg whites out for 3 days. I thought thats gross and didn't do it. My macaroons came out ok, but were not as tall as he said they would be if I let the whites sit out longer.

you can make a semifreddo, which isn't quite an ice cream, but is similar. I'll look for a basic recipe, or you can just do a search.

French Laundry finally has a good web site.. On the bouchon page they have a link to the designer's site with some pictures. Here.

yes

I get mine at JB prince for under 6 bucks. They feel pretty light, and do not tend to warp.

slkinsey: I think that you are pretty much on the right track. The system is slightly more complicated, but you have the basic concepts down. The system works on the same properties as all chemical reactions. Chemical reactions are in a state of equilibrium between products and reactants. If you have more of a reactant you drive the reaction forward and in a reversible reaction, if you have more product you drive the reaction in the reverse direction. So if you have more fat entering a fat cell than glucose, than the reaction in the fat cell will be driven in the direction that favors incorporating fat molecules into storage fat. But . . . If you have only fat and protein and no glucose (carbs)—well then you are basically on an atkin’s diet. So, your first thought is, well since I have excess calories, then I will store them in the most efficient way as fat and store fat as fat and use the protein for the energy I need. However, you must also consider the cost and benefit of using proteins for energy. As I’ve said before, proteins are important for the “machinery” of the body. Without proteins, the cells don’t work. I couldn’t find anything in my notes or texts that specifically answered your questions, but in a starved state, proteins are protected from being used from energy as long as they can be. So, I would say that if you had an equal amount of excess proteins and excess fats, then the fats would more likely be broken down before the proteins. Also (and this is a little more detailed), fats are stored in fat cells in the form of triglycerides. A triglyceride is made up of a glycerol backbone (a molecule called glycerol) that has three molecules called fatty acids attached. Fat cells are only capable of getting the glycerol backbone from glucose. So, if you had no glucose in you diet (or very little), then your fat cells, would not be able to store the fatty acids of dietary fat away and so would have to burn them. (Now of course protein can eventually be put down a pathway that makes it into glycerol, but now we are getting even more complicated. I’m not totally sure if this can occur in real life, but I think it does and this I believe these two ideas are a part of what the atkin’s diet is based on. I’ll have to check into this further.) I agree with you, if we are talking strictly about losing weight, based on the data we’ve discussed, it would seem a low/no fat diet would be the best. I hope this helps a little, let me know if it doesn’t.

So this assumes approximately 87.5% efficiency in converting extra calories from a mixed diet into stored fat. It strikes me, however, that the amount of dietary fat would not have to be all that high for this efficiency to come up a few percentage points. In the real world, of course, there is not much difference between 4000 calories turning into 1 pound of fat and 3500 calories turning into one pound of fat. If one's diet is consistently 250 calories over equilibrium (not a hard thing to do) it will take only two days more to salt away a pound of fat. Ok, so we are definetly on the same page now. I think you are right, that the body will try to do the most energy efficient thing. But as you've said again and again, excess calories are excess calories. So if the body has excess dietary fat and excess dietary carbohydrates, its going to turn its excess carbs into fat no matter what once the relativlely small carb storage is full. I don't really know what the bodies daily requirement is for protein. Its very dependent on many things. For example if you suffer a burn or a fever or anyother activity that raises your metabolism, then that will increase you need for protein, because you repairing/or creating new machinery to run your bodies cells. If you had a high protein diet, that was low in fat and carbs, then the body would need to use the proteins to make energy--which is of course ineffecient. If you had excess of the requirements then it would become fat. Basically I think the idea is that the body will do the most effecient thing at the time. It doesn't know what you are going to eat in the future. I don't know if this answers your question. As for me, I'm currently in medical school and have had plenty of biochemistry. (I'm going out of town today, so I probably won't be able to post for about a week, just in case my answers not suffiecient. I can also ask some of my professors when I get back.)

What are they?

Ah! Very interesting. Thank you for making that explanation, as that clears up quite a bit. Just to be sure that we're on the same page, it would seem that the efficiency of turning these things into fat is only relevant to losing/gaining weight if the person consumes practically no fat. Otherwise, the body will simply store excess calories by converting dietary fat to fat storage, which is extremely efficient -- yes/no? So, basically what this information tells us is that, if you are going to consume excess calories, it is better from a weight maintenance standpoint if you eat zero fat and high protein so you make your body burn the maximum number of calories converting the protein to stored fat. Wouldn't this tend to suggest that the best diet for fat loss would be a zero fat, high protein, moderate carbohydrate diet? I'm not sure we are exactly on the same page, because I don't exactly understand what you mean. As i understand it the efficiency of turning these things into fat is always relevant, no matter if you take fat in or not. The amount of fat the body can store seems to be endless. So if you take in excess fat it will be turned into fat, and if you take in carbs and protein in excess of what your body can store/use in those forms then it should be converted to fat by this ineffecient process. Something I didn't mention before: As you have said a pound of fat contains 3500 calories. To lose a lb of fat you must have a caloric deficit of 3500 calories. Because of the fact that the storage of fat is inefficient, if you eat a "normal diet", meaning one constisting of a mixtures of fats, proteins, and carbs, you have to take in about 4000 calories to lay down 1 lb of fat. As to what diet would be best for maintence I think its hard to say, because you can't really look at any single of the bodies metabolic processes in isolation. Also just because you maintain weight, or lose weight, doesn't mean what you are doing is good for your health. But I agree with you, Based on these numbers it does seem that a no fat, high protein, moderate carbohydrate diet would be the best kind for weight loss/maintenance. The carbohydrates should be the complex type. I can't find any studies that look at this, so I don't know. Complex carbohydrates are made up of simple glucose molecules that are put together in a branched form. The advantage of complex carbohydrates over simple carbohydrates is that, the simple carbohydrates are broken down into glucose molecules quickly by the body, while the complex ones are broken down slowly. The break down product is glucose. When there is a lot of glucose in the blood the body will use it to make energy, store as glycogen, or store as fat. The problem with simple carbohydrates is that since they are broken down so quickly, the bodies needs for energy and glycogen stores are quickly met and the rest of the glucose is turned into fat. The complex carbohydrates, because of their "complexity" are broken down much more slowly by the body, therefore there is less excess glucose in the blood stream that is turned into fat. I think the problem with high protein diets is that they are usually based on animal proteins and so are also high in fat. Of course this is exactly what the atkin's diet is and it does appear effective for weight loss, but may be dangerous as people like Dr. Ornish suggest. Ornish suggests a diet high in complex carbohydrates and vegatble/bean protein. He present data that shows that this diet "reverses heart disease" and help people lose weight. The reason you lose weight on this type of diet, is that you take in many less calories and feel satied faster by the complex carbs than by fats and proteins. Honestly Its really hard for me to say what is best, I have a good understanding of the basic processes of metabolism, but will gladly admit that at this point in my training I do not fully understand how all of these processes interact.

What does the other 50% become? Yes... that is exactly my question. What happens to the other 50% of the calories? Let's look at a hypothetical example: Let's say we have a person who, through a combination of exercise and basic metabolic activity, burns off 2,000 calories a day. This person never eats anything but protein. Every day this person eats 2,500 calories of protein for an excess of 500 calories per day, which the body will store in some form as we know. My understanding is that excess calories are stored as fat and that the body does not store excess calories in the form of protein. I have never, ever read anything suggesting that extra calories are stored as anything else other than fat, so maybe you could explain how this might happen otherwise. So, what I am saying is that this person would gain a pound of fat -- fat having around 3,500 calories/pound) -- every week until equilibrium is reached between calories consumed/burned. I welcome any other explanation you could offer as to what would happen with those extra calories. Given your explanation, I can see how in a hypercaloric diet composed of mixed protein, carbohydrates and fat that the fat would most likely be stored as fat, as this would be more efficient. But, in such a case, we come back to the calorie is a calorie issue. If one is eating a 2,500 calorie diet that is 500 calories per day over what is required, I don't see how monkeying with the relative caloric contributions of fat, carbohydrates and protein could possibly change the storage of fat in the body. Fat is the main long term storage for of energy in the body. The more readily accessible storage from is glycogen, glycogen is a branched molecule composed of the sugar glucose. Glycogen supplies are imporant in the body, but are small compared to fat. Proteins are what makes the body work. They are the machinery of the cells, which make up our bodies. So when you take in protein it is most efficient to break it down in to its basic components which are amino acids. The body then uses those amino acids to build its own proteins that it needs. So sugar, or glucose gives off a certain amount of energy, that we could measure in calories. Protein and fat do the same. Protein is used as a last resort for energy, because it is so important in keeping the body's "mechanical" systems running. Sugar and protein have a different molecular structure than fat. In order to store excess protein and sugar as fat, you must convert the sugar or protein molecules into fat molecules. This costs energy. The energy requirement needed to change a sugar (carb) into a fat is less than that needed to change a protein into a fat. So since you need to use energy to make a fat, the process is less effecient. So when it is said that the conversion of protein to fat is 30-50% effecient, that means that in the process of converting the protein to fat, you use up half of the enery you would have yielded, had you directly "burned" the protein. This excess energy is given off in the form of heat. So to answer where does it go?--It goes into the environment.

That makes no sense at all. Your body has a metabolic need for a certain number of calories per day. It will burn those calories. Any calories consumed in addition to that number will be stored as fat. What is so hard to understand about this? Now... look... it is certainly a fact that certain calories become available more quickly than others. If I take in 100 calories of glucose together with 100 calories of fat, it seems fairly certain that my body will use the 100 glucose calories faster than the 100 fat calories. But so what? I mean, let's say that your body burns 2,000 calories per day. Let us further say that you have already consumed 1,900 calories on a given day, at which point you eat 100 calories of glucose and 100 calories of protein. It is pretty much a given that the 100 glucose calories will be converted into metabolic energy faster than the 100 calories of protein. Therefore, the 100 protein calories would be the "extra" calories and would be stored as fat whereas the 100 glucose calories would be burnt up as the last part of your body's daily requirement. Do you see how nonsensical this is? It doesn't matter what order you ate the calories in, only that you ate too many. What matters is the sum total of the calories you took in that day. So, no, what the calories are made out does not make a difference as to whether of not one's body stores those calories. The only thing that makes a difference as to whether or not one's body stores extra calories is whether or not there are any extra calories to store. If there are extra calories, the body will store them. It really is that simple. To believe otherwise, you would have to believe that 2,000 calories of carbohydrates are somehow different from 2,000 calories of fat are somehow different from 2,000 calories of protein on a caloric basis. This is untrue on its face, despite the fact that people are making zillions of dollars telling people that one or more of them is weight loss magic while one or more of them is weight loss hell. Look... I'm not arguing that the food in which the calories are contained has no effect on health, or even that it has no effect on weight loss/gain. There are plenty of reasons why certain foods can be beneficial for weight loss, even though weight loss always inevitably comes down to a calorie deficit. What I am saying is that calorie for calorie there is no difference in terms of weight gain. Atkins and all those guys may say that their super magic method changes the metabolism and does blah blah blah... and maybe it does. But the fact is that, if you follow the Atkins diet and consume more calories than you burn over time, you will gain weight. It is not clear to me, and I have never seen it proven, that any of these special diets succeeds in fundamentally changing the human metabolism so that it burns significantly more calories on a daily basis. Ok, I think I now see why we are having this miscommunication. Again I agree with you about how this concept of calories work. If you take in more than you use, then you keep them. Ok, but excess calories that are stored in the form of carbohydrates and proteins do not suddenly turn in to fat. In fact, excess carbohydrates will be stored as carbohydrates and excess protein as protein (amino acids) up until your stores become too full. The conversion of proteins and carbohydrates to fat after that is imperfect and costs energy. We can look at it another way, and I'll give you some exact numbers (from McGilvery Biochemistry): fat is turned into fat with 95% effeciency. carbohydrates are turned into fat with 77% efficiency. proteins are turned into fat with 30-50% efficiency. So If I take in an excess of calories that means that the source DOES determine how much fat I lay down. If I take in all of my excess in protein, then only 50% of it will become fat. So Yes it does matter what you eat.

No. This is a mistake. The body does not handle the calories any differently. It may handle some of the other stuff differently, but in terms of weight loss and weight gain, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. People can argue whether or not it is fundamentally better for one's health to get most of one's calories from fat or carbohydrates or protein, but that is a completely different discussion. I don't think anyone would argue that the body will process 100 calories of fat differently from 100 calories of protein. They are two completely different things and the body will break them down into different things and use those end products for different things. But the 100 calories of metabolic energy are 100 calories of metabolic energy no matter what they are made of. If you take in too many calories of fat, you will gain just as much weight as you would from taking in the same amount of extra calories from carbohydrates. So a calorie is simply a measure of energy (as was already said). Therefore food does not actually contain calories, but contains molecules that have the potential to be used for energy, and we call this form of energy the Calorie. That being said, what I said was not a mistake, because as the body has different mechanisms for processing molecules, the calories from fat are generated by one process and those from carbs by a different one. In terms of weight loss and weight gain, if you have the caloric equivilents of anything, of course its the same. If your body stores "100 calories" then it doesn't matter what its made of. But as I suggested before it does indeed seem to make a different as to whether it does store it. As stone says, what you eat effects your metabolism of it.

Actually this is not entirely true, research seems to indicate (at least the research that atkin's used to present) that the composition of your diet influences if you lose or gain weight. You can eat the same number of calories on an atkin's diet that you can on a high protein or high carb diet and you will lose more weight on the atkin's diet. I don't believe it. Show me the research. And I mean real research, not something done by a low carb diet clinic or quoted from an Atkins book. Even if it's true, it doesn't affect the calorie-is-a-calorie axiom. We know that everybody's metabolism is different. At best, the Atkins approach alters the body's metabolism. But that doesn't mean the body lines up the fat calories and the carb calories in a bite of food and says, okay, you get burned this way and you get burned that way. Rather, by throwing the body into ketosis, the Atkins diet may (arguably) change the metabolism overall. That you get knocked out of ketosis by consuming carbs doesn't mean the body treats the carb calories differently. It just means the metabolic "trick" of the Atkins diet stops working if your carb intake rises above a certain level. yeah I mean a calorie still is a calorie, and you have to burn more calories than you take in too lose weight, but what you eat does influence how well they are burned (I'll look for some data to support that). And yes the body most certainly does, figuratively speaking, line of the calories from carbs and fats and says you go this way and you go that way. The calories from fat are are stored as gylcerol based fatty acids and the caloires in carbs are from glucose, which the body handles differently.

What's so unlikely about that? Certainly, an effective psychoactive drug -- a nutritional Prozac -- that limits the propensity to overeat is easy to imagine. That's a pipe dream. I don't see how a pill, if possible, could solve anything. It's not a pipe dream at all. There are already psychoactive drugs that have been shown to result in moderate weight loss due to reduced consumption of calories as a side effect. The mechanism for hunger and eating is largely regulated by the brain, nervous system and bloodstream. I see no reason whatsoever that a drug could not be developed that acted to suppress the mechanism in the brain that makes us want to (over) eat. In my experience, consistently eating beyond the point of satiety is often a significant part of the problem for people with weight issues. I know it is for me. This is something that could definitely be affected with drug treatment. I completely agree. The gastric bypass is an example of a more invasive surgical technique that seeks to decrease food intake. Someday when the brain mechanisms are better understood there will be safe and effective medications that will increase satiety to eliminate overeating. p.s. this summer i'm doing a research project that seeks to better elucidate the satiety centers of the brain

Actually this is not entirely true, research seems to indicate (at least the research that atkin's used to present) that the composition of your diet influences if you lose or gain weight. You can eat the same number of calories on an atkin's diet that you can on a high protein or high carb diet and you will lose more weight on the atkin's diet.

Ok, you have won me over with your logic. Perhaps I can explain my thought in a different way. The reason that atkins diet excludes carbohydrates is to favor ketosis as you mentioned. When carbohydrates are present glucose is the bodies prefered source of energy and ketones are not favored and therefore their calories are not burned, but stored. So Atkin's knew that if he could eliminate the sources of glucose, the body would have to utilize ketones to make energy--in other words make the body burn the calories of fat. So therefore the atkin's diet is based on the principle that the body will handle the calories from different food in different ways. how's that?

That's not my understanding of the basis of the Atkins diet. As I understand it, the Atkins diet is based on extreme restriction of carbohydrate intake in order to induce a state of ketosis. exactly so that you are burning calories from fat preferentially.