jsolomon

Fat=bad, my ass. If it weren't for the 1000-2000 (closer to 3000 some days) Calories of fat in my daily diet, I'd be looking like Christian Bale in "The Machinist" This list plays into the "if a little is good, a lot is better" mentality that people get when they disengage their brains from their lifestyles. I would sooner say that cash crops such as rice, corn, soybeans, and sugar cane are worse because of their geo-political effects. But, that's my particular bent on what makes a food good or bad.

TLC negates all calories. I'm still holding that "wholesome" deals more with balming and girding the soul than anything to do with the body. At least in current parlance. I think a workable dictionary definition (or philosophical) is "something necessary to maintain the optimal state of the whole, assembled item". This does not just include the physical side of being a human, but the psyche, too. So, does that mean that the morels that I gathered with an old S.O. and then fried them in butter and we had a fantastic date off of it? Hell yeah. Those morels were wholesome in spades. They did more to repair our relationship than anything I've ever done. It girded us for another 11 months of her in grad school. How can that not be wholesome?

I have a few ideas, but none of them are cheaper than a couple hundred bucks, and all of them involve the use of power-tools to cut into a refrigerator. <insert Tim Allen grunt-bite>

Eh? We don't have caffeine receptors, but it still works on us. We may not understand the specifics, but they still bind to something that acts like a receptor. Unkown and unpredicted are two completely different things.

I'll also join Jack's side. Granted, when I order a tasting menu, I expect that sort of thing, but there should be something in the middle. The thing that disturbs me about tasting menus is (to riff off of another thread that I've put my worthless $.02 in) there is nothing wholesome in them. It's all a tease. Flirting tastes and suggestive platings that are about as satisfying as the microsecond romances in the checkout line in Wal-mart at Christmas. Don't get me wrong, both have their places. But there should be a stolid element to anything in a meal I eat. Perhaps that's because I'm from sturdy farm stock. To me, tasting menus satisfy the academic, curious side of me. Big, gigantic cuts of (insert formerly alive plant or animal flesh here) satisfy the deeper portions. I could definitely have a one-night stand off of a tasting menu dinner, but not lasagne or pot-roast. They serve completely different areas of the diner and society. But, when it all comes down to the deepest sentiments of what satisfies my food cravings, "Ug make fire for big meat".

First suggestion: hazelnut liquer.

S'mores give me migraines. So I'd file the idea in file 13. Otherwise, my suggestion would be use chocolate marshmallows (homemade, or stir some sort of chocolate flavorant into Marshmallow Creme) and white chocolate, on graham crackers. Suggestion 2: add a dash of Chipotle Tabasco into either a regular S'more, or the S'more above Suggestion 3: Rough crush graham crackers, make chocolate ganache, roll browned large marshmallows in ganache and then into graham crackers. Serve on toothpicks or similar--I like the plastic sabers, but I used to do best in sabre when I fenced.

How else are we supposed to make other academics? Once made, we prop them up with wholesome food, and lather, rinse, repeat.

I generally don't add "stick to your ribs" as a necessary condition for wholesome. However, prepared from scratch, taking time, requiring many steps, and prepared with love are my general requirements for wholesome. Wholesome food balms the soul and girds the world-weary against the travails of returning to their anathema functions in the world. Wholesome food gives folks the strength to do what needs to be done. Heavens, it's tasty and expeditious.

And it wasn't advertised as hand-made? That should have raised the price by a good $.50

I racked the wine yesterday. I went from my 23 L plastic primary to the 19L glass secondary. I remembered why I stopped homebrewing when the carboy promptly rejected the bung 5 times in a row. I got tired of re-sterilizing the bung, so I re-sterilized the primary and re-racked from the primary back into the secondary. It smells a little funky right now, and there wasn't as much yeast settled on the bottom as I remembered from my beer brewing days (wine had been in primary for 12 days). In another 10-14 days instructions say to begin sampling specific gravity. 0.998 is the goal. Once that is reached, we add the remaining clarifying agents (potassium sorbate) and kill the yeast (potassium metabisulfite) and bottle. I have a thread on wine kits in the wine forum, and will post pictures to that thread.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha! I didn't own a digital camera when I started this! Okay, I can stop laughing now. I have had the wine in the fermentor for 12 days in primary fermentation. I racked it yesterday into the second carboy which promptly rejected the bung, so I sterilized everything in the primary again, and re-racked the wine from the glass secondary back into the primary fermentor. According to the directions, once I reach a specific gravity of 0.998 (in about 10 more days) I am ready to add the potassium metabisulfite and potassium sorbate solutions and then bottle the wine. The kit is a pinot grigiot from Vintner's Reserve, and in between bouts of swearing at the bung that simply would not stay in the fermentor, it smelled slightly minerally, and very yeasty. It was very reminiscent of a beer at about 3 days (out of 7) fermentation. It is most certainly not clear at this point, but the two remaining additives are supposed to help with that once they are added. Currently, I am looking for larger items to "bottle" the wine in. Granted, 750 ml wine bottles are certainly larger than 12 oz beer bottles, but that's a lot of glassware to clean and sterilize without the benefit of a dishwasher. So, I've contacted a couple of suppliers of bag-in-box solutions to see if any of their samples will make me happy. I will post about my experiences with those. If they are very successful, I think I will approach my local homebrew supply shop and see if they will stock them.

So, where does that leave those of us who are from towns too small to support a chain joint?

My brother had this done in high school, and I have to agree with lesfen. My brother was happiest when we would take the food we were eating and used a blender or food processor to get it to a state that he could eat it, too. Good ideas for liquids for these foods: cream, butter, olive oil. Eating through a straw is hard work, and it is highly likely that calories will be lost. Ensure is what the RD is going to suggest, but I'd just make sure that there is a varied diet and crank up the calories.

She is definitely interested in baking, but I'm not sure my wife can handle more flour prints in the kitchen. That is, in addition to the ones I create. On the breakfast front, I intend to teach her to do pancakes and then waffles. She can definitely handle those from start to finish. Eggs (scrambled and omelette) are on the list, too. ← Don't forget frittatas. Those are in the middle ground between omelettes and scrambles, and can give her some good oven experience with minimal mess.

How can you call brilliantly insightful thoughts like this one sloppy? The one truly good compliment I can give this article is Myth 4 that store-owners know nothing. I can point to store owners that are at both ends of the spectrum, but they are there to help you find what you are willing to pay for. Of course, no one really helps you figure out how to buy wine for someone else's taste in those articles...

Happy Birthday! I think I started my 21st with Jaeger and a greaseball breakfast. Then, I went to Organic Chemistry.

For WOW, high class presentation, I'm with Anna N. Drumsticks have always entranced me when they are presented similar to what they really are: the closest part of the chicken to the ground. Dishes that play off of a bourgeiois aesthetic I have of them are the ones that pique my interest most. Perhaps that's because we see too many images of barbarian kings tearing turkey drumsticks to pieces with their teeth. The passion of chicken legs and thighs is being able to throw delicacy to the wind and tear into the skin. Why try to change that?

As a consumer, I love bread bowls. They have that bourgeiois stick-to-your-ribs quality that good short ribs get when braised right.

...not i... who does that? u.e. ← I'd even tell the French Laundry where to stick it if they wanted me to wait that long at the door. But we are ignoring that nearly any place in that price point in the whole town has that exact wait. You have to go $5 either way per plate to get away from that--which for a family or a large group can add up quickly. In Lincoln, on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday evening, if you don't want to wait 45 minutes or more, you have the choices of Billy's (modestly upscale), Wasabi, vietnamese, Pizza Hut, fast food, or one of 2 independent greaseball diners. Every other place has horrid waits. Is it more of the economics of that price point that forces that kind of chain economy of scale to survive?

Brined, floured in AP flour seasoned with salt, pepper, and paprika, and pan-fried in a mixture of half butter-half schmaltz.

Frickles, draft beer--you just HAVE to drink that stuff there, elsewise you'll hit a bump and spill it--ditto for flaming drinks, reubens and any other grilled sandwich, BLT's unless you like your tomato soaking through everything and then sliding out the backside, medium rare steaks also travel remarkably poorly.

Grilling...

As I write this post, I have a boned leg of lamb that I'm going to marinate in some extra virgin olive oil, blitzed onions, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and rosemary (sorry, FG) and smoke long and slow some coming weekend. Probably for when we get the wine in the fermentor ready to break out for the first time. Lamb is great, and I think that most Americans don't like it because they simply don't have a reference for its taste, so they default to fussy.

Oh, I forgot to mention, good pain pills go down great with beer or wine. But, once I get through med school I'll make more responsible recommendations.