Give a visit to a page that presents some instructional videos on how to create Latte Art, including a heart, a leaf, and an apple.
Interesting Blogs
Inspired by the excitement of watching Iron Chefs Masaharu Morimoto and Wolfgang Puck in Battle Egg, I went a little crazy and added a whole big bunch of new links. If you are looking for something new, go browse through the links under Interesting Blogs.
Garden Log
Gretchen wanted to get the potatoes in today, but we got our first thunder storm of the year today, so it is too wet to get into the garden, but at least we worked out the garden layout.
Food Log
Breakfast was a bowl of cold cereal with banana slices and two cups of coffee. I weighed 156 pounds.
Lunch was three (very small) ham and cheese sandwiches and a Saranac Pale Ale.
Dinner was whole wheat spaghetti and marinara sauce with Italian bread and a small salad and two glasses of Redwood Creek Pinot Grigio to drink (and a few peanuts).
Follow the Money
Consider this: from the perspective of a profit-maximising medical and pharmaceutical industry, the ideal disease would be one that never killed those who suffered from it, that could not be treated effectively, and that doctors and their patients would nevertheless insist on treating anyway. Luckily for it, the American health care industry has discovered (or rather invented) just such a disease. It is called “obesity.” Basically, obesity research in America is funded by the diet and drug industry — that is, the economic actors who have the most to gain from the conclusion that being fat is a disease that requires aggressive treatment. Many researchers have direct financial relationships with the companies whose products they are evaluating.
Campos, Paul. “The big fat con story.” Guardian Unlimited. 24 April 2004. <www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1200549,00.html> (25 April 2004).
It Is Officially Spring!
The asparagus is finally up!
Food Log
Breakfast was three cups of coffee, half of a white grapefruit, two farm fresh scrambled eggs, a slice of Honeybaked Ham, and a glass of orange juice. I weighed 157 pounds.
Lunch was a cup of ham and bean soup and a Saranac Pale Ale while sitting on the front porch.
I had a handful of peanuts as an afternoon snack.
Dinner was pan fried haddock, oven fries with balsamic vinegar, and two glasses of Redwood Creek Pinot Grigio.
Rock and Roll!
Rachael Ray did Cleveland on $40 a Day today. She started out in Coventry for breakfast, rode the RTA (I called it the “Rabbit Transit” when I was a kid), she went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the West Side Market, the Great Lakes Brewing Company, and ended up in Little Italy. Oh, the memories!
Garden Log
Gretchen and I got our first planting done today. The garden was tilled last weekend, and it was nice enough to get back in today. We planted an eight-foot bed of Burpee Gourmet Blend Lettuce — a blend of five different varieties of leaf lettuce in shades of green and red, consisting of Grand Rapids, Royal Oak Leaf, Salad Bowl, Red Salad Bowl, and Ruby. We’ll hopefully be harvesting this somewhere around June 8th to 13th. We planted another eight-foot row of Burpee Classic Mesclun Salad Greens. Finally in the lettuce category, we planted an eight-foot bed of Little Caesar Romaine Lettuce, which we should harvest around July 3rd. We should start thinning all of these starting around May 4th to 7th. Moving on to the non-lettuce salad greens, we also planted a six-foot row of Burpee Baby’s Leaf Hybrid Spinach, which we ought to harvest between May 24th and June 4th.
We planted a ten-foot row of Agway (Seedway) Dwarf White Sugar Peas, which should be ready to harvest in around June 13th, and a row of Agway Little Marvel Peas, which should be ready to harvest around June 26th.
We also planted three forty-foot rows of yellow onions. We’ll plant another row when we get more seed. We weren’t certain how much to get. It worked out to about a pound per row.
Season to Taste
How much salt do you need? Here are some general guidelines:
- 1 teaspoon per quart for soups and sauces
- 2 teaspoons per pound for boneless raw meat
- 1 teaspoon per 4 cups flour for dough
- 1 teaspoon per two cups liquid for cooked cereal
- 1 teaspoon per 3 cups water for boiled vegetables
- 1 tablespoon per 2 quarts water for pasta [Trowbridge]
Trowbridge, Peggy. “Salt of the earth Information and Recipes.” About Home Cooking. 14 April 2004. <homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/aa042202a.htm> (24 April 2004).