Category Archives: food and drink

Saturday Scenes

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alonys red
(The striking central red piece above is by the artist called Alonys (as are the ones surrounding). You can see more things of hers at her myspace space.)

Well, it’s been a busy week here, and I had tons of things to tell you in about five or six extra posts (beyond the quick ones I did) that never made an appearance. I had several for last weekend too. I ought to start by catching up from there. Here goes a bit of recollection and reflection:

Saturday was interesting since I ended up cramming three different activities into the evening, after a day of gardening and errands (mostly the latter), if I recall correctly.

gatherd crowdThe evening began (as it did the Saturday before) with a trip to an opening at an art gallery. This time it was downtown, near Gallery Row, (it is called Crewest) and it was featuring the work of some up and coming female artists. Overall, I was not overwhelmed with things I thought were great, but the exhibition was not without some interesting pieces on the walls (see above – some of her 3d sculpture-meets-painting works were fun too) and sometimes interesting people milling around. There was even a DJ, but sadly no wine (I’d been spoiled by the last gallery reception, I suppose.) […] Click to continue reading this post →

De-Gaussing

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I accidentally used the term “de-gauss” (or perhaps “degauss”) in conversation the other day, referring to something I had to do for my well-being. I was asked for an explanation. Thought I’d explain what I meant to you too:

One of many effective ways to de-gauss: Get the best gin ever (Hendricks’), a decent tonic water, the very tastiest of lemons (it’s from the tree in the garden), a glass, some ice…*

gin and tonic

…and a really comfy chair. Hey, it’s been a long and busy day.

-cvj

P.S. Oh. There’s some other use of the word involving getting rid of trapped built up magnetic fields, etc., etc. You can google that.

(*Yeah, I know it’s not a great snapshot, but you get the idea.) Click to continue reading this post →

200 Calories

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What’s a calorie? Well, it is a unit of energy. If you take a gram of water and put some energy into it, you’ll raise its temperature (assuming it is away from its boiling point). If you succeed in raising the gram of water’s temperature by 1oC, you’ve put one calorie of energy into it.

But that’s not the calorie you probably have used in your everyday conversation. You’ve probably been talking about the Calorie. (Note the upper case C.) The Calorie, or the kilocalorie. It is 1000 times larger than the calorie of the previous paragraph. It’s the energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by 1oC (assuming it’s not at its boiling point). That’s the Calorie you find discussed in the context of nutrition – the energy content of the food you eat.

Without further ado, let me show you what the Calories “look like”. Let’s take a reasonable number of them – 200. Each of the pictures below represents 200 Calories of a food, which you’d get from eating it. Mini peppers, gummy bears, and kiwi fruit: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Attack of the Clones?

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cloned cowsNo, probably not, but we are probably in for a battle. The FDA is said to be about to announce the approval of using cloned animals for food. The announcement will be on Thursday, but there are several news reports about it already. Here is a link to an AP article written by Libby Quaid. (I also borrowed from that article the picture -left, by Chris Gardner- of cloned dairy cows Cyagra1 and Genesis.)

What will the battle be about? Well, Let’s get the fear-mongering (that opponents of this announcement will use to their advantage) out of the way first. If these were indeed clones in the purest sense of the word, produced in unquestionable circumstances, in an industry that did not already have several unsettling and dysfunctional features to it (see for example here) then there would be no issue. The bottom line is that we should be no more scared of clones than we should be of twins.

But it is not that simple. According to the article to which I pointed, here are claims -backed up with documentation- (I have not read the research, so am merely reporting that it exists) that the cloned animals are not produced in a manner that would be acceptable for the production of animals by other means -there are still many deaths and deformities in the process, and these birth defects are still not fully understood.

Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, said the FDA is ignoring research that shows cloning results in more deaths and deformed animals than other reproductive technologies.

The consumer federation will ask food companies and supermarkets to refuse to sell food from clones, she said.

“Meat and milk from cloned animals have no benefit for consumers, and consumers don’t want them in their foods,” Foreman said.

That alone might not be so terrible, you’re thinking, but the big thing […] Click to continue reading this post →

Seven Gingerbread Houses

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No, the title is not part of an alternative version of that Christmas song that cumulatively lists things (whatever it is called). It is really that I spotted the display of the entries in something that looked like the aftermath of a gingerbread house bake-off. This was at the Kitchen Academy, the chef’s school next door to the Arclight.

gingerbread

Here are some more pictures, including the top three places, and then I have a question for you: […] Click to continue reading this post →

An Apple Pie Process

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It is time for another detailed Asymptotia visit to the kitchen.

Not many days after I showed you that phase diagram for pastry making, Thanksgiving day showed up, and I found myself making an apple pie to take over to have with friends for dessert. Making a pie is a very fulfilling kitchen endeavour that is remarkably simple at the core. The bonus is that with a bit of practice the results are often delightful. Let me show you what I mean.

The summary: You do various “processes” to move around the phase diagam, as with any phase diagram in physics. A phase diagram depicts the kinds of states your working substance can end up in as a result of changing the conditions. Like H2O being able to be ice, steam, water, depending upon things like temperature and pressure. In physics, doing various processes to change the temperature and pressure might involve pushing on pistons, adding energy in the form of heat by applying flames with a bunsen burner, etc.

Here, we will be doing processes relevant to the kitchen. The aim is to find the right path across the amusing phase diagram above (click for larger; origin: Lab Lemming; finding the wrong path is not good since you end up with inedible junk… most paths are irreversible). Anyway, find the right path …and soon after you get to eat something like this: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Grand Clues All Around

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Today in my Physics 100 class (I’m preparing it right now), we’ll be re-discovering the structure of the atom… It’s nice to consider the clues that are around us in our everyday life. This picture (click for larger… and yes, I was down at Grand Central Market again on Sunday) will start my discussion of one set of important clues…. Any thoughts about what aspect of it I’ll be talking about?

[img]

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

People of the Corn

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The people of the corn are not the folks in Chiapas, Mexico, who have been known to call themselves that. Or, I should say not just them. Who else? The people of the USA. Maybe much more so than the people in Mexico.

I learned this from listening to Michael Pollan, author of the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, who was on NPR’s Science Friday two days ago. His book explores the origins of the food that we eat every day, explaining the changes that have occurred in agriculture that moved us away from the traditional model of a farm (that many of us still have in our heads) to the current model: No animals, no pastures, no variety. Just a few specific crops, like corn. Corn grown for all sorts of reasons, and very few of them for the actual corn itself as a food. Instead, it goes into nearly everything that we eat (and more) in huge quantities. The vast majority of the food that we eat has corn at its base in some way or another. Either directly, such as in the sweeteners added to nearly every procesed food, or indirectly – corn is used as feed for producing the […] Click to continue reading this post →

A Tasty Phase Diagram?

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I love making pies. I perfected my current pie-making technique when I was a graduate student in Southampton. I was in a rented house with four other students, and the house had a splendid apple tree in the back garden. I could not bear to see them all go to waste when it was in full crop. So I made apple pies. Lots of them.

A crucial part of the process of making a good pie is the making of the pastry that will constitute the crust. Very important indeed, unless you are cheating and buying a ready-made crust, in which case you are not making a pie any more – the actual work has been done for you. (Ok, sure, go ahead – shout at me…)

Well, I don’t need to do one of my long cooking posts about this just yet, since the Lab Lemming is concerned about these issues too, I noticed, and has gone to the trouble of preparing what looks like a careful study of the process (including the pitfalls) just in time for the beginning of the primary pie-making season (Thanksgiving, etc…). Here’s a phase diagram from that discussion, which made me laugh quite a bit:

[image of pie crust phases]

Here’s a bit of the discussions below it, to whet your appetite… […] Click to continue reading this post →