klc14

Ceylon and Assam blend, half and half. The signature blend for Brown's Hotel (Mark Twain stayed there, Rudyard Kipling died writing at a desk there). Another tea from that trip was Twining's Lemon Balm and Fennel. No caffeine, and soothing to an upset stomach. In bags. Haven't seen it since, it's not on their website. Republic of Tea: either Cardamon and Cinnamon or Cinnamon and Cardamon (I think they changed the blend, seen it both ways). A touch spicy, a bit rich. Just an American tea, this one...

I second that Five Guys vote! Never tried In-n-Out so can't compare, but Five Guys makes an excellent burger. Remember to order the small one, if you order a regular one it comes with two patties. That's a lot of burger. And OH those cooked-in peanut-oil fries!

Being rather paranoid, I tend to use cash to keep as much of my personal data out of circulation as possible. Credit card companies are increasingly being pressured by everyone from health insurers to government to provide info on what people buy. I don't really want my HMO to find out how much I spend on booze and cigars. And, occasionally, wait staff have been known to help themselves to your credit card info..... some have been known to carry a small reader to take the info off the magnetic strip while on the way back to your table with your card. That's why some places don't take CC's or restrict them to orders over a certain amount. Not to mention the interest you pay on the amount you charged!

Pepsi, all the way. I bought a few shares of stock because I love it so. I really can't drink Coke anymore. can only drink Coke if I am REALLY hot or hungry and there is NO epsi. Used to work for a guy whose family owned a Pepsi plant down south for many years. He got Pepsi delivered free to his office. Free soda for staff. I was in heaven.... This meant we could try the new products too, the various Slice flavors when they sold that, and Pepsi Clear (a 90's flash in the pan, made with high fructose corn syrup and all the caffeine, none of the coloring: it gave me a HEADACHE. Or maybe it was Pepsi Crystal? Anyway NOBODY liked it.) Pepsi One: that is/was the one calorie version. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't real Pepsi. Close, but not quite close enough for me. Now, I had a friend tell me the Pepsi and Coke flavors were: Pepsi: Lime and Cinnamon. Coke: Lemon and Ginger. Although I see I switched order. Anyway she said that's why Pepsi goes with Thai food, which uses more lime, and Coke goes with Chinese food, which uses more lemon and ginger. So she said. I know that when I was younger and wanted a Pepsi more than anything, limeade would take away the craving. For me it's just Pepsi. I drink way too much probably.....

I buy Progresso and add a little or a lot of Tabasco and sometimes something like celery seed with a strong flavor. (I had a friend whose mother told her, if a recipe ever tastes really bad, add Tabasco. If it still tastes bad, add more. Just keep adding Tabasco and eventually it will be edible.) Progresso tastes less salty to me (I agree, best to skim the fat globules off). I won't buy the lentil variety. When I first bought Progresso, moving on from the Campbells of childhood (my mother was insulted, she raised me on Campbells and had Campbell kids paper dolls I think), I tried a can of tomato basil and one of lentil. Tomato basil was fine, at least it was then, but the lentil made me sick to my stomach on a day when I felt really great. I have never wanted to try it again in case it was the soup and not me.

. . . I have simply got to know more about this bagel dog thing. Who knows, it might lead me to join in Jason's iniquity. Anyway, I gotta SEE it. I gotta SEE the vending machine. I gotta... yeah, I gotta TASTE it. I just gotta. . . . They were called "Bagel Cheese Dogs" and they were in the vending machines in the dorms at American University. Oh joy, you can apparently buy them from AMAZON! <iframe marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" width="120" height="150" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?o=1&l=as1&f=ifr&t=egulletcom-20&dev-t=D68HUNXKLHS4J&p=6&asins=B000055358&lt1=_blank"><MAP NAME="boxmap-p6"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="1, 140, 83, 150" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/egulletcom-20" ></map><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x150.gif" width="120" height="150" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p6" alt="Shop at Amazon.com"></iframe> oh my lord--on the Amazon page, it says on the left, Discover similar items in Gourmet Foods!!! ROFL!

Popeye's. Of course it partly depends on which one I go to. There's one where it's delicious, facility is clean. There's one where it tastes fine, but the facility just feels a tad greasy or something. There's one where it tastes okay, but the atmosphere is...sketchy. That's the one where the food gives you those fast food runs. KFC--last time I went, it was the middle of the afternoon, I was going for fast food, so it might have sat for a little while. As another poster noted, it didn't taste like chicken at all! just grease. A Nay vote here. Bojangles--haven't seen in a while. When I tried it years ago I wasn't ready for it, I was still eating KFC (which was decent then). I would probably like it now. Church's--only tried it once. Not bad, but not impressive. I believe their big thing was that they soaked their chicken in buttermilk? As a kid I really liked the fried breading best. I could have made a meal off that!

Oh, duckduck, I know what you mean about calcium. I've already told my month-of-eating-cheese-pizza story so I won't repeat it. But just as you said, the calcium reduced the rending pains to dull aches that now don't appear. Although that may be age for me.... Interesting about the vitamin B. Never noticed a problem myself but you seem really sensitive to B levels in your system if you can notice a difference from eating a couple of Luna bars v. Odwalla bars! I'm glad you were just able to let your co-workers live. For now.

well, wagyuboy, your link didn't work for me, but I went to the tealand.com site and looked at this PMS tea. Never tried the stuff myself. I just suffer nobly in silence. The stuff has mostly dandelion root in it and is apparently supposed to be a diuretic, to deal with, you know, that "temporary water weight gain." Which if you eat all the carbs you really want could be a permanent fat gain. Sigh. brave man, to sacrifice yourself for science! If your mother and wife never use it, possibly they already tasted it, but just can't bring themselves to throw an entire box. In case it works and they need it sometime. edited: for clarity.

Tried it in a toaster oven using a medium-heavy made-in-Japan no-name stoneware casserole with lid from the Goodwill store. Results still good. The Parsons Method is not brand-sensitive but benefits from quality. Working with ExtraMSG's template and Russ' advice about salting before cooking to salt the beans and not just the broth, 1/2 pound pinto beans, 5 cloves of garlic, 2 teaspoons of thyme, 1 teaspoon of kosher salt, 5 cups boiling water, hour and a half, temp 275. A bit hotter than recommended but beans were done. LOTS of bean juice. Could have gotten away with 4 cups of water. I also had a meal of a nice big bowl of beans and also expected to have a wind problem, even had the candles lit to burn off the methane , but....nothing. I don't eat beans that much either. Overall: MUCH easier than the rinsing, soaking, draining, soaking, draining, boiling, draining, simmering on burner I tried before. Those scorched on the bottom a bit. No such problem with the oven-baked beans. I will be more likely to cook them with this method, which can only help the US bean industry! Also: Much less water used than with all that soaking. I am going to try rancho_gordo's method next. Never hurts to have a plan B.

jo-mel, i don't WANT to seem dense but--you use the footstool when sitting after standing long periods, yes? Or are you standing with one foot on, one foot off (nah, that even SOUNDS painful).

-- posted by Jonathan Day, June 16 2002. I think the "mysterious reason" is the raisins, they have some preservative properties. If you look on a bread or cereal label and see "Calcium proprionate" listed as an ingredient, that's from raisins.

helenjp: You must have been getting enough calcium already through other sources? I think I was like 75% starches in my diet, I may have had a deficiency thing going on....varies from person to person. For instance, I don't always reach for chocolate. Sometimes, potato chips are what I crave. Mindless food. I get the low salt kind because they taste better (Utz). But I gotta have crunch. As for my former "cheese cure" I don't eat cheese every day anymore. I did keep it up till another problem intruded: sinusitis! Had to drop cheese and all dairy entirely while I got various infections under control and I never went back to the Daily Morsel. But the dragging pulling pain I described before never returned either. So it worked out.

Okay, JennotJenn, I think that qualifies, something you NEVER eat and can't stand normally. The twice a year cycle....maybe it links up with a planet or something? Ah yes, cottage cheese the diet food of yore--they used to sell it at lunch counters and in diners with 1 canned peach half and a burger, "the diet plate. "

Your Mileage May Vary. Sorry, didn't mean to be cryptic--I think I thought I was typing for a different board, LOL and all that stuff isn't used here much is it?

I'm wondering if the original bags were related to MRE packaging--"Meals Ready to Eat," the successor to C-rations for the US military. I've only seen pictures of MRE's or read descriptions but what this does sounds similar--black plastic looking outside, teflon inside, apply heat, inside cooks, outside is touchable in 90 seconds..... I am resisting buying some. But I have to praise Rachel and Jason for their fearless dedication to Science and Technology and Food in testing, and testing, and testing and sharing their results. You guys are the Gurus of Toast-n-Serve!

Quoting Pumpkin Lover: I believe it does, my evidence is anecdotal, but earnest -- YMMV! Back in the 80's. I was taking a math class at the community college twice a week, and I HATE math so I rewarded myself with pizza for dinner every night on the way to class. I had classes on about 4 nights, I think. Yes, I gained weight (six pounds). And it cost me about $100 because I was going to Pizza Hut (booths were suitable for spreading out the books to study while taking on pizza) and buying, and eating, most of one small cheese pizza 4 nights a week. I usually took a couple of pieces home which did duty for breakfast. And the next month.... What a complete total astounding difference. One of my curses had been getting these horrid pulling cramps in my legs....but that month, I had only the faintest brush of them for an afternoon. Any sort of cramping was SO MUCH LESS.... I was still limp as a dishrag with fatigue, but the absence of pain made it all so much more bearable. Some months I had so little cramping I barely noticed it. Been that way ever since. I KNEW I loved pizza, but suddenly it was the MIRACLE food. But that six-pound gain...no, it wasn't water weight! Also, I couldn't really afford the cost, even of Pizza Hut, which was basically fancy frozen pizza anyway (you could see the semi with the PH logo on the trailer pull up every so often to offload supplies). (I blush to say, I ate there not just because of pizza, but because I could put it on a credit card McDonalds would not take credit cards for McNuggets which was my other school night food. I have since gotten MUCH smarter about credit and about eating like a grownup! ) I began eating at least a couple of ounces of cheese every day, and from then on....no problem! Sometimes I baked cheese and pizza sauce in a small oven dish ("spoon pizza"), to get my daily dose of cheese. Sorry to have interrupted the research review, back to the real science now!

[The pineapple and cottage cheese is pretty normal, you can buy it that way ready-mixed. My mother depended on cottage cheese as a source of protein for managing diabetes, and routinely added pineapple so she could do a protein AND a fruit exchange in one, if she didn't buy the premixed (frankly a bit overpriced). And they have peach, and strawberry nowadays. The OLIVES, though.....I will grant you that is weird. Although I suppose the brine and the sharpness contrasts with the sweet....what kind of olive? the pimento stuffed small green kind or some "olive bar" sort? Do you avoid olives usually? Perhaps you qualify, we need more details. edited to fix quote source

You probably addressed this in the lesson but I was not sure-- what is the inside supposed to be like? Do you have a picture showing that? I've read that French cooks make theirs sort of "runny" and consider American souffles overdone--is this the "chewiness" you mentioned in another Q&A? What degree of firmness am I looking for? Softer than custard, firmer than custard sauce? I ask partly because I was with a friend at a restaurant and she thought the souffle she ordered wasn't done--the egg was not entirely firm at the center. (Of course they just ran it back to the kitchen and into the microwave for her, and it came back dried out to the point of being overdone. It was probably frozen and reheated, anyway). I didn't know if it was "right" or not, although clearly not right for her. Another problem is sometimes I fold in the egg whites and they don't blend with the base, I have little bits of foam in the midst of things. What am I doing wrong there, do you think? Thanks. This was a really helpful class.

Deep pot is not the exact phrase but there is a clear overall preference for something with depth ("so long as the eggs will ultimately be covered by a couple of inches of water"). At least once I read it over, I thought so. I always wondered how to make this work, whenever I tried it I wound up with egg drop soup. Too small a pan, and the "vortex" method did me in. Finally I just bought the specialty pan with insert. I will give the "cupless" method another try tonight or tomorrow, now that I Know The Secrets

Quoting VivreManger: "One point that I think was established earlier is that almost all canned salmon is in fact wild. " True. Of course Costco's Kirkland brand is farmed. You can tell because they list coloring as an ingredient. Farmed fish tends to gray tones without coloring. I know, I really should not be mentioning Costco in the same thread as Whole Foods!

quoting hillbill Posted: Oct 29 2003, 01:12 PM Hear, hear! I saw the BBQ one last night and was thinking mostly, gee, he's awfully funny looking. Like, Revenge of the Nerds at 40 or something. Then I realized, "It's the infamous..." But I don't eat at BK these days, my system does not tolerate fast food . Happens when you get used to good food. So I'm steering clear on health grounds. When Pam cooking spray came out in the 70's, its celebrity endorser was one Carmelita Pope. Every time I saw it, I would think, who's Carmelita Pope. My parents later said she was a movie starlet in the 40s or 50s. But she could say her name and speak the lines like she was somebody you should pay attention to. ...and of course Eleanor Roosevelt endorsed a brand of margarine in the 50s, I think it was called "Lucky," because she wanted to make poor people aware of and willing to use a cheap substitute for butter (knowledge of transfatty acids being WAY in the future). She apparently really tried the stuff too. They used to run the ad in a display at the National Archives which is where I saw it.

quoting Marlene (Posted: Sep 5 2002, 05:25 AM) I believe that is because alcohol metabolizes as fat. (I learned about this when my mother got strict on her diabetic diet. ) It has to do with the aldehyde chains of the molecules or something, if I recall the biology textbook table correctly. Maybe I don't. Anyway, there are 9 calories in a gram of fat, 4 calories in a gram of carbohydrate, 4 calories in a gram of protein. Alcohol metabolizes in your system as if it had 9 calories per gram, if I may belabor my point. I seem to remember, however, that beer was counted as a carbohydrate on the food exchange list, and we joked about drinking a slice of bread with your burger. So by not drinking alcohol you are seriously taking in fewer calories. As Marlene says, a matter of making choices.

I didn't realize people ate mooncakes, I think I read (in the Wall Street Journal, maybe in '98 or '99) that people just gave them but treated them like Christmas fruitcake--too heavy to eat, but a nice "gift." They sound pretty tasty, actually!