The science of baking cookies

YouTube link.

From the producers of TED talks, via ">Neatorama.

Cooking meals in a coffee maker

From NPR's food blog:

"My nephew came home from Afghanistan complaining about the food in the mess hall," says Jody Anderson, a retired photographer in southern Oregon. "But the soldiers were allowed only to have coffee makers in their rooms."

So Anderson started developing recipes for the coffee maker, including ones for mac 'n' cheese, short ribs and chicken soup...

As Anderson describes it, the design of a traditional coffee maker gives you three basic cooking techniques:

1. Steam: The basket at the top is a great place to steam vegetables. You can throw in broccoli, cauliflower or any vegetable that cooks in about the same time as those.
2. Poach: The carafe at the bottom serves as a simple vessel for poaching fish and chicken. You can also use it to hard-boil eggs or make couscous and oatmeal.
3. Grill: This technique is a bit more advanced — and time-consuming. But if you're really itching for a grilled cheese sandwich or a cinnamon bun in a motel room, the coffee maker's burner can serve as a miniature grill.

Solanine poisoning

[T]he potato is the most common cause of solanine poisoning in humans. But how do you know when solanine is present in a potato? The tuber is turning green.

Though the green color that forms on the skin of a potato is actually chlorophyll, which isn’t toxic at all (it’s the plant’s response to light exposure), the presence of chlorophyll indicates concentrations of solanine. The nerve toxin is produced in the green part of the potato (the leaves, the stem, and any green spots on the skin).

The reason it exists? It’s a part of the plant’s defense against insects, disease and other predators. If you eat enough of the green stuff, it can cause vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, paralysis of the central nervous system... but in some rare cases the poisoning can cause coma—even death...

Fatal cases of solanine poisoning are very rare these days. Most commercial varieties of potatoes are screened for solanine, but any potato will build up the toxin to dangerous levels if exposed to light or stored improperly. Often, the highest concentrations of solanine are in the peel, just below the surface and in the sprouted “eyes”—things that are typically removed in cooking preparation...

More at the Smithsonian's Food & Think blog.  Photo credit unknown.

How to make "Jello worms" - updated

The photo is self-explanatory.  The thread at Reddit discusses some of the details of preparation, including how to remove the worms from the straws.

For maximum gross-out effect, mix the worms with "dirt" (crushed Oreos!!).

I think we've found our front-door treat for next years' Halloweeners.  Yay!

Addendum:   I wanted to post a follow-up for those planning to create some of these.  It's not as easy as it looks.  I tried to make some for Halloween, and the result was dreadful:

The key appears to be in a casual comment at the original recipe about using extra gelatin.  The ones that I made (unfortunately camouflaged on the red plate) were too squishy to be of practical use.  If I do this again, I'm going to use a much higher gelatin/water ratio.  Also I didn't add enough cream to mute down the fluorescent color of the cherry jello.

And a final note re the straws.  I would have preferred to use the "bendy" straws as shown in the original to show the segmentation of the worms, but the straws I did find were larger (made for thick liquids/ice cream etc) and yielded a better-size worm than skinny straws.

Attempt to protect part of the Antarctic Ocean fails

Someday I hope to post some good news about the health and future of the world's oceans.  Today is not that day.

Talks to create the world's two largest marine reserves in the Antarctic have broken down, with conservationists branding Russia a "repeat offender" for blocking an international agreement.

Delegates from 24 nations and the European Union have been locked in talks in Hobart for the past 10 days at the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

But the negotiations have ended in frustration for the nations, including Australia and the US, that proposed vast protected zones around Antarctica, with Russia, Ukraine and China refusing to back the plans...

"It's a bad day, not just for Antarctica but for the world's oceans, because so many fisheries are over-exploited and this was the one place we could create a reserve," she said. "The fact it can be blocked by a few nations with interests in fishing is very hard to take.

The failure of the talks is the third time in the past year that the proposals for protected zones have failed to find agreement among the commission's nations...

The region is considered by scientists as vital to the health of the world's marine life. It is estimated that three-quarters of all aquatic life is sustained by the nutrient-rich waters of the Southern Ocean, which are transported by an enormous current into the northern hemisphere.

More grim details at The Guardian.

Death by caffeinated candy

As reported in The Independent:

A man died from an enormous caffeine overdose after snacking on high-energy mints - each of which is as powerful as a can of Red Bull...

Mr Jackson was a heavy drinker and had cirrhosis of the liver which would have limited his liver’s ability to process toxins but it was the caffeine overdose that killed him, the pathologist said...

Birkenhead-based Hero Energy said that it highlighted the risk with prominent warnings on packaging and shelves. In a statement, directors Paul Hayes and Steve Hones said they “fully understand” the dangers and risks of caffeine and that the packs advise no more than five be consumed in 24 hours.

The inquest was not told how many Mr Jackson ate but the manufacturers said that he would have had to have eaten “over 300 of our mints, which is staggering” to have the levels of caffeine he had in his blood.

Presumably the estimation of 300-mint consumption was based on normal hepatic metabolism, which would not have been applicable in this case.


Photo via The Mail Online.

Centre pivot-irrigation crop circles

Anyone who has looked out the windows of an airplane flying over semi-arid agricultural land has seen them.  An artile at Edible Geography examines the question of what to do with the spaces between the circles.  Insert smaller irrigated circles, or...

These overlooked corners make up a not insubstantial percentage of a farmer’s available land. On a typical 160 acre “quarter section” in the American mid- and southwest, tessellating pivot circles will leave up to 24 acres, or 15 percent of each field, thirsty...

That was in the beginning. Today we can certainly solve that problem because we have the means of putting an attachment on the end of a typical system. It will swing out and retract as the system goes around so that the corners are covered. Well, the problem with that is that arm that swings out and all the equipment that goes with it is quite expensive.

Mathematics offers another possible solution: Farey-Ford circle packing, a tessellation technique... Elsewhere, a Utah farm family has found a niche leasing corners from their neighbours to grow less thirsty crops or graze cattle... And, increasingly, ecologists are preaching the potential of pivot corners. In a simplified landscape of monoculture crop circles, the corners can restore complexity: left as native perennial grassland or managed as early successional habitat, these concave triangles can provide valuable habitat for bees, birds, and predatory insects to support crop pollination and natural pest control. Sewn together across an agricultural landscape, the corners can even offer movement corridors for migrating species.

As a butterfly enthusiast, I'll cast my vote for allowing just a little bit of the earth uncultivated, as a reservoir for native plants and native wildlife.

Addendum:  A hat tip to reader charlie for remembering the relevant Biblical injunction:

"When you reap the harvest of your land, moreover, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field nor gather the gleaning of your harvest; you are to leave them for the needy and the alien. I am the Lord your God.”

Claims of lax oversight of agricultural biotechnology

YouTube link.

A video report from Motley Fool comments on recent accusations that the USDA's current monitoring activities are basically a "rubberstamp" approach to the genetic engineering of crops.

A coalition of farmers and food companies is mounting a challenge to that arrangement.

Donut-flavored beer !!

New and interesting foods are a powerful incentive for people to go to state fairs.

Lift Bridge Brewing Co. is launching a mini donut-flavored beer for the Minnesota State Fair. The Stillwater brewery teamed up with Dan and David Thiesen, co-owners of the fair’s Ball Park Café, to create the beer. It will have a warm tan color, like the exterior of a mini donut, and a sweet, malty taste. As an added touch, it will be served in a glass with cinnamon and sugar on the rim...

The Minnesota State Fair runs Aug. 22 through Sept. 2. 

From the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal, via Stuff About Minneapolis.

How to take small portions of condiments on a picnic

It's very annoying to make a great sandwich with mayonnaise and later find the bread soggy.  Lifehacker shows a simple way to transport small quantities of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise for application just before consumption.

More rind than flesh

This is a cross-section (at its equator) of a grapefruit I purchased this past week.  It tasted o.k., but I've never encountered one with such a thick rind.  A brief Google suggests that this may arise from improper fertilization.  Anyone have experience/knowledge - and any way to detect this condition in a store before getting it home?

"Bread" made from woven bacon

Low in carbohydrates for those of you on a diet. 

Created at Dude Foods, via Neatorama.

A restaurant whistleblower - inspired by Snowden?

YouTube link.

Excerpts from his "about" statement:

"...there serving maggot slap and fly trails with all you can eat advertisements!..... its been over a week now since this has been brought to corporate attention, I contacted the volusia county health dept..... they dont handle it.... they gave me a number and a persons name..... said to ask for them in person...... the operator didnt know who i was talkin about and didnt seem to care.......i placed an ebay "check out item # 121135647488" that made the owner call the police and tell on himself.....i was contacted by the port orange police dept for black mail....wtf...i made several detailed complaints with corporate golden corral.......i have met with the owner personally, he ownes 30 golden corrals in georgia and florida, he showed me pictures of his new golden corral vehicle wraps and explained he "thought this was a cash call" he explained his deep connections in law enforcement and explained "we could be opening ourselfs to a lawsuit" in a way i felt it to be threatning..... i have several texts with wesh 2 news..... i contacted abc cbs nbc and any other c's i could get post's to .... i went to news journal let them view it the video and pictures..... they didnt give a damn!.......i sent Dr Phil a message???????? it was his challenge!..... as of three days ago i left a message with the detective who contacted me about my ebay post....
Why is this restauraunt still open serving maggot smack and fly trialings to the people of Port Orange??
as you see the systemis failing us!!"

The Reddit thread has some salient observations.  One additional thought: since the restaurant responded this way to a scheduled inspection, does that mean that restaurants always know when inspections will be conducted?   So they only need to be compliant once/month or whatever?  Sounds like part of the blame lies with the inspecting authorities, not just the food establishments.

Addendum:  One of a set of four related photos -

- discussed in a different Reddit thread by various former restaurant workers.

Ice cream + flour + microwave = bread

YouTube link.

Make bread from any flavor ice cream in five minutes.  Instructions in the video, found at Laughing Squid.

The YouTube comments are, as expected, worthless.  Perhaps someone here can try this and report back on the results.  I'm on a diet at the moment, and the last thing I need in the house is mint chocolate chip bread.

M is for metastases

Map from the McDonald's app, via The New Aesthetic and Fuck Yeah Cartography.

"Foaming manure pits" on hog farms

As reported by Mother Jones:

You see, starting in about 2009, in the pits that capture manure under factory-scale hog farms, a gray, bubbly substance began appearing at the surface of the fecal soup. The problem is menacing: As manure breaks down, it emits toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide and flammable ones like methane, and trapping these noxious fumes under a layer of foam can lead to sudden, disastrous releases and even explosions. According to a 2012 report from the University of Minnesota, by September 2011, the foam had "caused about a half-dozen explosions in the upper Midwest…one explosion destroyed a barn on a farm in northern Iowa, killing 1,500 pigs and severely burning the worker involved."...

But if the causes of manure foam remain a mystery, a solution seems to be emerging, Jacobson told me: Dump a bit of monensin, an antibiotic widely used to make cows grow faster, directly into the foam-ridden pit. At rather low levels—Jacobson told me that about 25 pounds of the stuff will treat a typical 500,000 gallon pit—the stuff effectively breaks up the foam, likely by altering the mix of microbes present. No other treatment has been shown to work consistently, he said.

The agriculture industry and the antibiotic producers seem to be fused at the hip.

(The video is a Vimeo one that seems not to embed or load well.  There are pix at this PowerPoint presentation).

Found inside an oyster at a restaurant

What's going on?  Answer below the fold.

It is definitely a goby with eggs. A proper kitchen knocks each oyster and listens to the thud that let's you know the oyster is alive and sealed in the shell. This one would have sounded hollow and likely would have broken open with the slightest tap. Agree with the comment below that this likely would've been caught in a nicer restaurant. The occurrence of animals nesting in a partially open oyster shell is incredibly high, hence the reason the watermen put so much time into being "hands-on" with the bivalves to do quality control.

It's not clear whether the oyster was served or whether the surprise was found by the person processing the oysters in the kitchen.

Via Reddit.

Scrimshaw pie crimpers

On a recent Venue visit to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, I was captivated by a gallery filled with scrimshaw items, carved by American nineteenth-century whalemen as gifts for mothers, wives, and sweethearts during their long sea voyages... scrimshanders carved baleen, walrus tusks, and whale teeth into hundreds of thousands of pie crimpers.

Serious pastry chefs today still crimp the edges of their pies using their fingers. Some might go as far as using a fork or spoon to create decorative patterns; and the truly gadget-obsessed, or those with no limitations on their kitchen storage space, might even own a simple stainless steel crimping wheel.

Nineteenth-century scrimshaw pie crimpers, however, are not just useful for sealing pies with an attractive flourish. They incorporate forks for punching air holes, knives for cutting off excess pastry, tart tampers that double as decorative stamps, and, most importantly, two, three, or even four crimping wheels, each of which would imprint a different pattern on your pie crust. 

More photos at the Edible Geography source. And a new word for me: scrimshander.  Not in my Random House dictionary, but I found it along with scrimshandy, and scrimshoner as a referent under scrimshaw.

Photo credit: New Bedford Whaling Museum/Nicola Twilley.

Cannibalism at Jamestown

Excerpts from an interesting story in the Washington Post:

That cannibalism occurred during the colony’s “starving time” was never in much doubt. At least a half-dozen accounts, by people who lived through the period or spoke to colonists who did, describe occasional acts of cannibalism that winter. They include reports of corpses being exhumed and eaten, a husband killing his wife* and salting her flesh (for which he was executed), and the mysterious disappearance of foraging colonists.
The proof comes in the form of fragments of a skeleton of a girl, about age 14, found in a cellar full of debris in the fort on the James River that sheltered the starving colonists. The skull, lower jaw and leg bone — all that remain — have the telltale marks of an ax or cleaver and a knife...

About 300 people inhabited the fort in November 1609. By spring, there were only 60. The girl, most likely a maidservant but possibly the daughter of a colonist, was one of the casualties.

Her bones were unearthed last August as part of the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project begun in 1994. About 18 inches of fill remain in the cellar, so it’s possible more of her skeleton will be found. Enough of her skull exists, however, to imagine what she might have looked like, using CT scanning, computer graphics, sculpture materials and demographic data [right embed, cropped from original]. The bones, the reconstruction of her head and the story were presented Wednesday at an event at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History...

The cause of her death isn’t known. The tentative cuts to the front of the skull and the deeper ones to the back are close together — evidence that she was dead, not squirming, when they were made. The temporal bone was pried off to reach the brain. There are dozens of cuts to the jaw, suggesting that muscle was stripped from it. [top image]

Could the marks have been left by animals?

“Not a chance,” Owsley said. “I deal with this all the time. Not a chance.” In fact, he says with confidence that the dissector or dissectors were right-handed...

They used the thickness of facial tissue seen among girls in contemporary southern England to gauge Jane’s. They gave her consensus hair — light brown — not the red or blond of other latitudes and regions. They also chose not to depict her as she undoubtedly was before death — gaunt and emaciated.

*See "Powdered wife explained."  Also "Cannibalism in the 1920s."

"Vibrated, not stirred"

There’s a theory making the rounds—I first heard it from David Wolowidnyk, who runs the bar at West, a well-regarded Vancouver restaurant—that vibrations of the right frequency will cause the molecules in a drink to rearrange themselves in curious ways, thereby altering or enhancing the flavor... One thing I learned rather quickly: pulling out a tuning fork in a bar and putting it against your drink is an effective way to ensure that no one will sit near you.

The rest of the story at The Atlantic indicates that there is no objective evidence that the tuning fork alters/improves the drink.