March 2010
10 posts
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Push to Eat Local Food Is Hampered by Shortage →
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I don't knead you
This morning I tried one of the most controversial recipes in the world of artisan baking: The No Knead bread.
This recipe has polarized bread makers since Jim Lahey of Co. Pizza made the recipe famous in 2006 through a feature in the New York Times.
This bread caused a furor among white thumbs and some even went as far as hitting each other with bread sticks and flattening each other’s noses...
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Visiting Los Angeles
I’ll be in LA in the 2nd week of April and I am both excited and worried about my coming trip.
Excited because I can check out their farmers market and perhaps try traditional immigrant cuisine in their side of town. Likewise, I can see my friends and hang out with them for almost a week.
Worried because I can already feel the pull of one of the best burgers I’ve had in my past fast food life:...
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Say cheese
How could something so rotten be so good? Smells like ass but tastes like butter.
Well, needless to say, I am a cheese monster. I have written it here and have said it aloud a million times. I love cheese.
But good cheese is expensive. Unbelievably good cheese is unreachable. This realization led me to tap on my desire to once again take matters into my own hands: I will make cheese.
As you...
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The Daily Dough
If Wonder Bread and other ready-made bread companies spend billions of dollars in advertising, then they should allot several millions to advertise exclusively to me because the gap between their products and my wallet is expanding like the universe.
Yes, they totally lost my business now and only some real ‘dough’ can make me go back to their forever-fresh-chemically–enriched bread products.
...
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Another food recall. This time, due to salmonella. →
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Meet my pal, El Rocker
It was a snowy Thursday when I decided to brave the slippery roads and visit a music store to shop for an electric guitar. The electric that I had in mind was a cheap one–a no name knockoff that I intended to modify with better add-ons later.
My budget was $100.
But before I drove off, I called my friend, a local music legend named El Rocker, for any suggestions that he thought would be best...
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There goes my salad days →
February 2010
24 posts
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Let me eat cake!
I am a faithful person. Once I commit myself into doing something, I keep that commitment no matter what.
That is why after several months of committing to a lifestyle of eating only local, whole, organic, beyond organic, fresh foods, I found myself enjoying a Big Mac and an extra large order of fries.
Just kidding.
But in the two weeks that I haven’t been posting here (I was busy with guests...
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The attack of the tainted tomatoes →
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A French Revolution in our kitchen
For a wannabe cook, French cuisine is every bit like a video game’s level boss–if not, the ultimate level boss. There are many reasons for this: intimidating, uncertain, requires too many ingredients, and too much tools and techniques. But perhaps first among all these multitude of reasons why the cuisine of France makes idiots out of trying hard cooks is time.
French cooking requires a lot of...
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Culinary test
Tonight will be the first time Sheryl Mae and I will be hosting and serving dinner to guests since we became full-pledged-cooking locavores.
In the old days, hosting dinner was a breeze. All we needed to do was employ the services of Colonel Sanders and Papa John, stock the fridge with Blue Moon beer, and that was it– the kind of party that Lindsay Lohan dreams of crashing.
It’s different now.
...
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Snow day is Beatles and bread day
It is snow day today and I am working from home while listening to the complete discography of the Beatles and making Honey Oat Nut Wheat Bread.
Currently my bread still needs 35 minutes in the oven and my turntable is spinning The Magical Mystery Tour (I started this morning with The Beatles’ Decca Tapes and plans to finish with Abbey Road).
A while back I posted a link about Whole Foods...
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This is a little old but still relevant →
Whole foods selling “locally grown-organic” products that are actually from China.
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Mick Jagger Philosophy
Time does not wait, we do. We wait for everything. In fact, if we scan our lives, we can clearly see how much we spend life waiting: We wait for the alarm clock to ring and mark the beginning of the day. We wait for the morning beverage to brew. We wait for the water in the shower to reach the desired temperature. We wait for the train. We wait for lunch break. We wait for the train home. We wait...
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Wrestling with the ethics of eating animals
I have long struggled with this question ever since diseases obtained from eating animal flesh held the limelight. Scared of contracting some virus from my meatballs that will wipe my brain clean like a Shamwow, I seriously considered eating nothing but vegetables.
But growing up under the loving arms of a red-haired clown selling burgers, the thought of having only the “special...
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Ms. Silverman and a Vietnamese favorite
Just came from a Sarah Silverman event in Soho and then went straight to St. Mark’s for my favorite sandwich of all time: Vietnamese Banh Mi.
I agree that Vietnamese cuisine is the IT cuisine today. Thai is so 2000s. The Banh Mi never fails to make me happy. Actually, it made me smile more than Ms. Silverman. It is a sandwich only masters can make. The pickled veggies, the special paté, the...
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For the love of bread
The natural consequence of living a locavore’s lifestyle is cooking.
And I am very happy to be doing it. In fact, I am addicted to it now. But don’t be fooled. I am not the next Jacques Pepin or an Iron Chef contender, but somehow, I know what to do when given enough ingredients and some cooking tools.
Lately I have been considering baking my own bread. Though I love getting bread from local...
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Food Rules →
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Are You Sure You Know What "All Natural" Means?
ksswellness:
“All natural” is now teetering on the edge of becoming mainstream. Case in point? Pizza Hut. Their new “all natural” pizzas have hit the stores and marked the beginning of…well, something. I’m not entirely sure what though. It seems like a good thing, but is it? If Pizza Hut can use the term “all natural”, doesn’t it make you question how strict the requirements are for...
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Can somebody save the Nets? Trust me, this is food...
Right now, the New Jersey Nets are sagging like cougar breasts. Not to mention they suck like … never mind!
Anyway, I was at the Izod Center last night and witnessed yet another loss for the Jersey team. Man, this team loses like there’s no tomorrow! They lose like their survival is at stake. In fact, I am convinced that they are an “always say die team.”
Two minutes left in the game last night...
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With all due respect, I’m not Amish
I am halfway through Barbara Kingsolver’s book and I am convinced that, like her, I should eat only foods that are in season, which means in my region, no tomatoes in winter.
This way of life implies a lot of things. First it implies that I should only eat local stuff because different regions have different seasons. The Northeastern part of the United States does not have the eternal sunshine of...
January 2010
28 posts
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What a Hoe!
I imagine a backyard like Don Vito Corleone’s: Patches of land blossoming with tomatoes, eggplants, and asparagus. There are trees bearing lemons, apples, and oranges. Like wise a hammock made of hemp in between two big trunks of trees and a small table with homegrown nuts and a pitcher of lemonade. That is a backyard no one can refuse, but me.
Because for a guy who couldn’t even grow a beard nor...
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The delivery
I waited the whole day for the deliveryman’s call since I was informed that delivery could be anytime during the appointed day, Wednesday. From eight in the morning to nine in the evening there was nothing. Then at half past 10, my phone rang:
Caller: (In an eerie hushed tone) Your delivery is here.
Foodsearcher: (Also in an eerie hushed tone) Where are you?
Caller: Outside your building in the...
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Lady in Red got angry
So as planned, I told Lady in Red last night that I won’t need more of her Baby Ruth bars.
She didn’t like it.
She said I should have told her earlier so she didn’t have to buy truckloads of them. Well, she didn’t growl or transform into a green She-Hulk, but I could tell from her expression that she wanted her living space clear of anything resembling my face.
I did say sorry, told her what...
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Foie Gras politics: when eating well doesn’t mean...
In most of my readings about real food, I have always encountered the term French Paradox. The term refers to the unexplainable fact of how most of the French people don’t get fat despite eating fatty, sweet, and ultra-rich foods.
I have never really given that any thought at all. My guess was that the French get laid more than they eat, hence cancelling out any of the excess calories that...
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Whose got beef?
I have been introduced to this after seeing Food Inc and I am still in the process of learning more about it.
So based from what I understand as of now, I would try to share what I know about this new grass-fed buzzword that is taking the food industry by storm. But let me begin by writing what grass-fed beef is not:
• It is not meat coming from cows who satisfy themselves on a field...
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Food from the center aisle
Since reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma I have been suspicious about certain items in the supermarket, most notably the ones in the center aisle.
In this aisle, we see organic and non-organic pre-prepared food frozen and designed to last until the end of the world.
Most are preserved by something as simple as sodium, others are preserved by something as complicated as rocket fuel...
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Another beef recall! It's time to go grass-fed →
How safe is your beef?
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A movie and a snack
We’re planning to see Avatar tonight.
And since it is a three-hour mega movie, it would be nice if we have some goodies to gnaw.
However, many of the movie theater snack bars don’t offer anything real.
Luckily, I found an underground movie theater in the West Village that has this beauty of a snack bar.
Nah, just kidding. Not yet, at least.
Well, If James Cameron managed to invent his own camera,...
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A predicament about to be solved
First, I would like to thank all those who posted suggestions here on Tumblr, on Facebook, on Twitter and through my email on how I could possibly put an end to my Lady in Red situation.
I have received many of them. Some might actually work and some are just plain silly. Here are some:
“Tell Lady in Red that you have lost all your teeth in eating all those candies so you can’t chew anymore.”
...
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In a bad predicament
How do I say no to somebody who sincerely offers something that I know is bad?
No, this is not a solvent–sniffing kind of a dilemma or a kill–someone–for–me kind of a deal. This is, as you all know by now, about food.
I am aware that, in all honesty, that somebody, a woman I’m going to call Lady in Red, does not know that the item she gives out can kill me or her or the entire population in the...
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I was a fast food junkie
The place was festive as usual. Bright colored balloons hovered overhead and kids played around with reckless abandon–tumbling on trampolines, throwing light rubber balls, shrieking with unfathomable delight and gliding down a big plastic tube slide. It was a wonderland in a restaurant–Heaven on earth.
Amid the happy chaos and happy meals, there I was, all grown up, jumping for joy with a...
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I waited five hours for a bowl of soup
Last night I made French onion soup for the first time using a classic recipe. It was a lot of work but totally worth the sweat.
For two medium crock bowls, I did these:
• Roasted beef shin bones (I saved the bones from an earlier beef recipe) until it browned, which was quite a while.
• Placed the roasted bones and bits in a pot with some carrots, celery, parsley, salt, pepper. Added water...