Boing Boing: Fanta screws with your mitochondria?

Disconcerting news. Especially for someone who used to drink gallons of this stuff:

Boing Boing: Fanta screws with your mitochondria?

Even faster than fast food.

Forget about waiting in long lines at your local fast food venue or subjecting yourself to another pubescent cashier's 'tude. Next time you find yourself near St. Mark's Place, head down eighth street and treat yourself to a delicious burger in the newish Bamn! automat. Yum!

a new "must-have" in kitchen appliances

No kitchen is complete without your very own softserv maker. This model comes complete with sprinkle dispenser and a thingy that will hold your waffle cones.

To justify accomodating this both ridiculously ginormous and specific appliance, you would have to have a huge kitchen and/or an insatiable appetite for gobs of delicious soft, sweet icecream.

Or maybe you just operate an all-you-can eat buffet out of your living room.

In defense of obesity

Via the Ethicurean:

Fat and happy: New research suggests that heavy men may be less apt to commit suicide [...] Reuters

Thanks, Michael

I was home over the weekend and got a chance to visit my friend Michael (who co-authors this blog) for the first time in months. He gave me what is probably the world's finest cookbook -- Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

Apart from having received endorsements from friends whose opinions about food -- and life in general -- I hold in high regard, I really like Bittman's no-bullshit approach. A comparison of how he and Deborah Madison discuss the unintended consequences of bean consumption will show you what I mean. In a passage titled, "Making sure that beans are pleasant to eat," Madison writes [emphasis added]:

"[...] people react differently to legumes -- some with great sensitivity and others with apparently not, so in the end this is something each person has to work out."

Pleasant to eat? React differently? Deb, this isn't Victorian-era England, so just relax. No one is saying that you have to say "fart," but there are plenty of tasteful euphemisms you can use. Just listen to how Bittman, in a passage titled, "Plain talk about beans and gas," deals with this issue:

"Okay, beans give many people gas..."

Was that so hard? Are my sensibilities offended? No and no.

The first recipe I made out of this book was incidentally gas-inducing Beans and Greens -- I used navy beans and kale for this one. Bittman suggests pouring the finished product into a baking dish, covering it with bread crumbs and broiling, which is what I did, and it turned out great.

One suggestion that Bittman forgets to mention: if you plan to make a Beans and Greens gratin, go easy on the water while you're cooking the beans. If you use too much water (like I did), you can boil some of it off (but don't boil it too long or your beans will turn into mush).

Another option if you've overdone it with the water is to pour the beans and greens into a strainer, which will leave you with a thin white bean soup. (Haven't decide yet whether I'm going to eat this).