Category: Uncategorized

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Food Coupons and Deals

If you are a foodie, and buy online, I strongly recommend that you check out the Food Coupons and Deals site before your next purchase. It tracks the special discounts and the coupon codes for getting them from many popular food and cooking stores online.

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Carbo-terrorism

My father sent me this link the other day. It is hilarious and I recommend it to anybody who is on a low-carb diet — or not on one. After all, if you can’t laugh at yourself…

Today, of course, nobody eats bread. People are terrified of all carbohydrates, as evidenced by the recent mass robbery at a midtown Manhattan restaurant, where 87 patrons turned their wallets over to a man armed only with a strand of No. 8 spaghetti. (“Do what he says! He has pasta!”) The city of Beverly Hills has been evacuated twice this month because of reports — false, thank heavens — that terrorists had put a bagel in the water supply. [Barry]

Barry, Dave. “Confessions of a closet carb fiend.” The Miami Herald. 28 March 2004. <www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/8292220.htm> (4 April 2004).

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Walk for Health

I am a strong believer in walking for health — balancing caloric intake with its expenditure in activity. Now it seems that the American College of Sports Medicine has set out to demonstrate this axiom by hooking up a group of Amish to pedometers and monitoring their diet and exercise.

Amish men, who mostly work as farmers, logged an average of 18,425 steps a day. Women, who handle gardening, cooking and child care, recorded 14,196 steps. One man covered more than 51,000 steps in a single day by walking his field behind a team of plow horses. All participants exceeded the 10,000 daily steps often recommended for cardiovascular health. “Vigorous” activity in which Amish men took part included heavy lifting, shoveling, chopping wood and tossing straw bales.

High-calorie diets of meat, potatoes, breads, pies and cakes didn’t interfere with maintenance of a healthy body weight, the study found. Only 4 percent of Amish adults were obese, compared with 31 percent of Americans overall; 26 percent of the Amish were overweight, compared with 64.5 percent of Americans.

Scarton, Dana. “Doing The Plow.” The Washington Post. 13 January 2004. <www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11578-2004Jan12> (4 April 2004).

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Buffalo

Photograph of Buffalo Herd.

The guy who runs the local feed mill has a farm down the valley where he has some buffalo.

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Big Red

Photograph of KitchenAid Professional Mixer.

I have been saving this for a while — mostly because I have been too busy — but, Gretchen has gone and spent the pennies she has been saving on an KitchenAid Professional 6-Quart Stand Mixer. We call it “Big Red.”

This morning, Gretchen used it to make Apple Muffins.

Photograph of Apple Muffin.

Apple Muffins

  • 2 cups All Purpose Flour
  • ¼ cup Sugar
  • 1 tablespoon Baking Powder
  • ½ teaspoon Salt
  • ¾ cup Apple juice
  • ⅓ cup Oil
  • 1 Egg
  • 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
  • 1 cup Apple, peeled and finely chopped
  1. Heat oven to 400°F
  2. Line a muffin tin with 12 paper baking cups.
  3. In a medium bowl, combine all dry ingredients — including apples.
  4. Break egg into mixer bowl and beat. Add apple juice and oil and mix. Add dry ingredients. Mix until dry ingredients are just moistened — batter will be lumpy.
  5. Fill baking cups ⅔ full.
  6. Bake for 20 minutes.
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Food Log

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This is sad…

Of 14 potential lunches and dinners a week, New Yorkers cook less than half — 5.4, according to the 2004 Zagat Survey — skipping the rest, or turning to restaurants for dine-in or takeout. National statistics are no more encouraging. According to the NPD Group, which surveys eating patterns, less than a third of main dishes are made from scratch, down 16 percent in the last decade. Little more than half of all suppers require use of a stove top, a 21 percent drop since 1985. And dinner parties are on the wane — we garnered 16 invitations on average in 1990; 12, in 2003. If dinner parties do happen, takeout tins often litter the kitchen.

It seems a bizarre paradox. The popularity of food porn — TV programs presenting not-always-realistic recipes and cooking techniques — continues to grow while most of us remain whiskless. And it’s not only an American trend. According to a recent survey published in the London Times, the British are also suffering a bit of fry-pan phobia, with restaurant spending there up more than a third in the last five years. [Amodio]

Amodio, Joseph V. “Celebrity-Chef Backlash.” The New York Times. 28 March 2004. <www.nytimes.com/2004/03/28/magazine/magazinespecial/SECELEBCT.html> (3 April 2004).

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I love the smell of bacon cooking!

We are making refried beans (frijoles refritos) today.

Frijoles Refritos

  • 1 pound dried Pinto Beans
  • 2 strips Bacon
  • 1 large Yellow Onion, finely chopped
  • 1 clove Garlic, minced
  • 3 tablespoons Chili Powder
  • 1 tablespoon Ground Cumin
  • ½ teaspoon Salt
  1. Pick over and rinse the pinto beans. Place them in a large pot. Add enough water to cover the beans and bring to a boil over a high heat. Remove from heat and let stand for an hour.
  2. Cook the bacon in a skillet. When done, remove the bacon and drain on paper towel, reserving the rendered bacon fat.
  3. In the reserved bacon fat, sauté the onion until translucent, then add the garlic and continue sautéing until lightly browned.
  4. Add the sautéed onions and garlic, along with any remaining bacon fat to the bean pot, along with the chili powder, cumin, and salt. Cover the bean pot and bring it back to a boil, then reduce the heat, and simmer until the beans are tender — about an hour. Keeping track of the beans and add more water if you need to to keep them from scorching.
  5. Eat the bacon.
  6. When the beans are tender, drain off any remaining liquid, then mash them with a potato masher.

These freeze really well. Form about a cup of the beans into a patty and stack them, separated by wax paper, in a zip-lock bag in the freezer.