Have you been wondering why Americans are so overweight? Or why certain foods are so cheap? Have you heard our average life expectancy is headed down, not up? Two college friends set out with director Aaron Woolf in search of answers to these questions and were surprised by what they discovered. You will be too as this film follows a crop of corn from seed to your dinner plate.Link to the video on AOL (Courtesy of Slashfood)
Came across this picture in Amit Gupta's Flickr stream, it's a bottle of Dublin Dr. Pepper. The Dr. Peppers come from the Dublin bottling plant who still use sugar (not high fructose corn syrup) in their recipe. I love this sort of thing, I'm a Dr. Pepper fan (I'll drink it over Coke or Pepsi if I'm not feeling like having iced tea or water), so finding out I can get the "classic" version of the drink will definitely get me to buy a case or two off their website.
Time-lapse video of construction of the giant gingerbread house over at Disney World's Grand Floridian hotel. Link (via BoingBoing)
(Ok, this is actually in Oakland) 1st Annual Oakland Regional Grilled Cheese Invitational
The “Grilled Cheese Invitational” is an official competition with prizes awarded for each category. The competition will be begin promptly at 8:00 pm at Eli’s Mile High Club in North Oakland. This is a serious competition and only the strong will achieve victory in The Grilled Cheese Invitational, with all the associated bragging rights available therein. All those looking to compete in the Invitational smust read the rules and regulations before they register their sammich. Pre-registration for the 1st Annual Oakland Regional Grilled Cheese Invitational is now open.Picture upload by ninjapoodles
In the case of fatty foods, that confident voice belonged to Ancel Keys, a prominent diet researcher a half-century ago (the K-rations in World War II were said to be named after him). He became convinced in the 1950s that Americans were suffering from a new epidemic of heart disease because they were eating more fat than their ancestors. There were two glaring problems with this theory, as Mr. Taubes, a correspondent for Science magazine, explains in his book. First, it wasn’t clear that traditional diets were especially lean. Nineteenth-century Americans consumed huge amounts of meat; the percentage of fat in the diet of ancient hunter-gatherers, according to the best estimate today, was as high or higher than the ratio in the modern Western diet.Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus [NY Times] Picture from Craig Hatfield
I love a good steak sandwich, so I was excited to come across a "Flank Steak and Boursin Cheese Sandwich" recipe that I had to try. I was initially unhappy with the recipe because it didn't call for doing anything special to the steak, just simply throwing it on the grill until complete. I had some prior experience with a marinade from Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking" book so I went with that. Take the flank steak (I used 1/2 pound) and place into a plastic bag with five (5) tablespoons soy, one and one half (1 1/2) tablespoons honey, and one (1) tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, seal the bag and place into the refrigerator for a nice rest (I recommend putting the bag into a bowl just in case of any possible spillage). I marinated the steak overnight but I would guess you could marinate as long or as little as you want. About an hour before lunch the next day, I took the steak out of the fridge to come up to room temperature. I set it aside to prepare the onion rings. I chopped an onion into rings (well more like strips), and got out a large-ish bowl for the batter. Into the bowl I dumped one and a half (1 1/2) cups of flour, pinch of salt, and big pinch of paprika. Mix that around with a spoon (or better your hands). On top of that mixture I poured a bottle of beer I had left over in the fridge (now that we have a house with a guest room, guests always seem to be bringing beer and there always seems to be an oddball beer left over). Mix that concoction until there are no lumps. I folded the onions into the batter making sure they were all covered with the goo. I heated up a deep sided frying pan with about an inch of vegetable oil over medium high heat. When the oil came to temperature I dropped in my first batch of rings, cooking them to a golden brown. I wasn't really happy with the overwhelming amount of batter on the first batch, so I hunted around for a colander and dumped the uncooked rings & batter into that to thin it out a bit. After thinning I cooked the rest to golden brown, perfecto! Set aside covered to keep the rings warm. I moved my top rack in my oven up so the steak would rest a couple inches from the upper heating coil, I then set the oven to "High" broil. Cook the steak under the broiler for 3-4 minutes on each side, then let the steak rest on a cutting board for five (5) minutes. With the residual heat of the oven, I warmed a nice sized baguette for the sandwiches. After toasting the baguette, split and spread a nice layer of Boursin cheese on the bread. Follow with the warm rings, and top that with the steak thinly sliced. So it wouldn't be too unhealthy I finished the sandwiches off with Romaine lettuce. Serve with remaining onion rings. Things I would have done different. - The marinade I had left over I should have warmed into a nice dipping sauce. - The rings, next time I'm stuffing the onion into the blender on puree then folding into the batter. That whole mess will go into a piping bag and then....ONION RING FUNNEL CAKE! My mouth waters thinking of it.
I came across this video the other day, claiming it shows the secret of cooking the best scrambled eggs you've ever tasted. The video (for those of you without the patience to watch it) shows Gordon Ramsay's version of scrambled eggs. Now the man has several TV shows, written books, and has several Michelin starred restaurants so I figured he might know what he's talking about. The concept is fairly easy. For my lovely wife and myself, I dropped four (4) cold eggs, and two (2) tbsp of butter (cold) into a cold pot. I turned my stove top to 3 1/2 (low but not too low, my stove's low setting is "2") and placed the pot on top. Here's where it gets strenuous, the direction you'll be taking is roughly the same as risotto. Stir, stir and more stirring. Every several minutes I took the eggs of the heat, continuing to stir. The eggs take on a pearl shaped porridge feel, I'm going to say the whole thing (stirring, move from the heat, move back to the heat, etc.) took about ten minutes. What you're looking for is about 75% firm, 25% runny eggs. Take the eggs off the heat but continue to stir, allowing the residual heat to "tighten up" the eggs. Sadly I didn't have any Crème fraîche so I added one (1) tbsp of half-and-half and stirred like a man possessed. I seasoned the eggs with 2 pinches of salt, and a big grind of pepper. Since I had two tortillas available I served the eggs on the tortillas and topped with salsa and shredded cheddar cheese. Things I would have done different: - Try adding the crème fraîche and scallions like Ramsay recommends. Also serve as recommended on sour dough toast (mmm boy) with tomatoes on the vine and portobello mushroom tops. - Much less salsa, we lost the taste of the eggs because of the salsa topping. They eggs were excellent though.
Brian Kirsten is an entrepreneur, software engineer, writer and publisher. He currently owns Brain Scan Studios, a digital media company focused on publishing comic books and graphic novels. He’s recently launched FictFact with his wife, Christine Kirsten.
