Content tagged with "food"

Baba Ghanoush
Explanation
September 8, 2021
131

“ A Lebanese food, which is essentially hummus made with eggplant, rather than chickpeas. Common ingredients are mashed eggplant, olive oil, lemon juice, and other seasonings. It is consumed in a similar way as hummus – as a dip, or spread on bread. ”

Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America
Book Review
January 19, 2023
376

“This is a story of a metro couple from the Bay Area who move back to Iowa to take over the husband’s father’s farm. It’s…depressing, in many ways. Farming is a tough industry, and this couple endures crisis after crisis. There’s no glamour in it. It’s just a tough slog. Example: farming is not…”

Chicken Fried Steak
Stuff I Looked Up
Explanation
May 26, 2024
156

“ Not surprisingly, it’s beef. Specifically, it’s ‘cube steak,’ which is round or sirloin that’s flattened by pounding it with a meat tenderizer. So it’s not a ‘natural’ cut of beef – it’s processed a bit (and then, of course, it’s breaded…). ”

Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste
Deane’s Library
Book Review
October 26, 2024
411

“The author of this book asked herself a question: ‘Could I become one of those ‘cork dorks’ who get obsessed about wine?’ To find this out, she spent a year studying for the Certified Sommelier Examination . (Note: this not the Master Sommelier exam, of which only about 200 people have ever passed….”

Cruciferous Vegetables
Stuff I Looked Up
Explanation
January 4, 2022
112

“A family of vegetables. The most common members are: Cauliflower Cabbage Kale Broccoli Brussels sprouts Arugula These are ‘true vegetables,’ unlike other foods such as corn, potatoes, and peas which people think are vegetables but actually fall into other categories (grains, tubers, and legumes,…”

Dal
Stuff I Looked Up
Explanation
133

“ The Asian name for split legumes, or for soups made from these. Split pea soup, for example, is a form of dal. You can make a dal from any split, boiled legume. ”

Fiber Fueled: The Plant-Based Gut Health Program for Losing Weight, Restoring Your Health, and Optimizing Your Microbiome
Deane’s Library
Book Review
December 9, 2020
272

“This book could be boiled down to three words: ‘Eat more plants.’ That’s it. That’s the whole book. This is one of situations where someone has a small idea, and they just beat the hell out of it for 275 pages because they had to get to a trade hardcover length to get on the shelves at Barnes and…”

Fold (Cooking)
Stuff I Looked Up
Explanation
September 8, 2021
339

“This is the process of combing two fluid substances of different thicknesses together my inserting a spoon into the bottom of the heavier mixture, pulling some to the top and over the lighter mixture. I found an article which explained it: Folding is a very precise term in cooking and baking. It…”

Gizzard
Stuff I Looked Up
Explanation
November 21, 2021
121

“This is an organ found in birds and some other creatures. It’s a type of ‘pre-stomach’ that grinds food, since birds don’t have teeth. Some birds actually swallow stones which stay resident in their gizzards to help break food down. They are prepared as food all around the world. They are a tough,…”

Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
Deane’s Library
Book Review
December 23, 2015
220

“I read this book as the supposed successor (or maybe predecessor?) to ‘Kitchen Confidential.’ It was just okay. I had trouble with the names. The author careens back and forth between Italy and New York, and there are a lot of people to sort out. There are Marios and Darios and Marcos and Memos and…”

Hero Sandwich
Stuff I Looked Up
Explanation
May 11, 2024
111

“ This is just a submarine sandwich by another name, it turns out. This seems to be a regional New York term, dating from the 1930s (the same thing is referred to as a ‘Hoagie’ in Philadelphia). It’s not related to what’s in the sandwich, just the general concept of a long, cylindrical roll. ”

Masala
Stuff I Looked Up
Explanation
January 2, 2024
151

“ This specifically refers to the mix of spices in Indian food. However, there is also idiomatic usage meaning ‘mixture’ or ‘co-mingling.’ ”

On Local Food
Personal Blog
Blog Post
November 12, 2019
816

I try to have “authentic” culinary experiences while traveling, but it’s not that simple.

Sugar: A Bittersweet History
Deane’s Library
Book Review
January 9, 2019
235

“This is a very good book, but the title is pretty unclear. It really covers the history of sugar from one angle: slavery, or perhaps labor exploitation in general. It’s fair to say that slavery is a big part of sugar, for sure. And this book covers it up, down, and sideways. And that’s pretty much…”

The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet
Deane’s Library
Book Review
June 27, 2014
116

“This book is a meticulously researched dismantling of the commonly-held belief that dietary fat is bad, and we should try to limit it as much as possible. The author makes incendiary claims that the government and food industry, through patterns of incompetence and deception, has gotten us to…”

The Economists’ Diet: The Surprising Formula for Losing Weight and Keeping It Off
Deane’s Library
Book Review
February 21, 2018
106

“Best book I’ve ever read about food. It’s raw reality – we’re obese because we eat too much, and this book is simply about ways to eat less. The first lesson is so true, yet so hard: you cannot lose or maintain weight unless you come to grips with some level of hunger. And the book is full of…”

The Joy of Half a Cookie: Using Mindfulness to Lose Weight and End the Struggle with Food
Deane’s Library
Book Review
February 4, 2016
327

“I love the idea of this book, but I think the practical application is going to be tough. Basically, the book seeks to teach ‘mindful’ eating practices, which is the idea of eating intelligently – understanding when and why you’re eating, not eating more than you should, etc. Basically, the book…”

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Deane’s Library
Book Review
March 31, 2020
117

“It’s…okay. It’s very, very drawn out. The author attempts to trace back the origins of his food. The first chapter is on corn, but interestingly he manages to trace food back to oil – the petroleum based fertilizers that everything grows from. The chapters on beef and chicken processing are…”

Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food
Deane’s Library
Book Review
June 30, 2024
679

“This is another nutrition book that claims it has discovered ‘the secret’ to the obesity epidemic. It goes like this – We don’t eat actual food anymore. We eat what was once food, but which has been broken down almost to a molecular level, combined with a bunch of other stuff, and reconstituted in…”