Let's talk about food

That sounds lovely, jar, and different from anything I've ever had before, because of the eggs.I'll try it in three months, when we get good tomatoes in SE Michigan.LOL!

Out of curiousity, if steaks of human flesh was "infinitely better" than beef steak, would you eat them? What about steaks of golden retriever? My exact response when it comes to the idea of eating flesh. How do you know it is humanely and sustainably raised? What is your definition of humane and sustainable?I know I can buy a chunk of meat with human-certified/organic/small-farm labels all over it, but how can I know that it came from a happy animal, that lived, was transported, and was killed 'humanely'?(Truthfully, I find the entire process, regardless of how it was carried out to be inhumane by nature - I'm wondering what your own or industry standards might be.)What about health concerns? "Proper proportion" may seem reasonable, yet red meat is chock full of carcinogens. I may well as claim cigarettes are fine as long as I only smoke a pack a week - nevertheless they still are damaging. So what are the pros, other than "it feels good?"

My favorite chili recipe starts with "open three cans of beer."Two cans go into the pot, and one can goes into you. Basically you brown a pound of hamburger, a cup of chopped onion, and a little can of tomato paste (before the beer). Add those two beers, a can each of kidney beans and navy beans, and blow out your tastebuds with cumin, chipotle, ancho, and cayanne chile.Sorry, no better recipe than that. Good cooks cook from taste, not from books. Has anybody else discovered you can make one hell of a pizza with nothing more than one of those Boboli crusts from the supermarket, a drained can of diced tomatoes, a liberal sprinkling of olive oil, and a double handful of cheese? Try it out, sometime.

Hey, if we're not supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat?

I would love to find a Science VS Food forum. Another of my pet peeves is the very shoddy historical research done by cooks and cooking shows.A history and chemistry section and I’d be in hog heaven.

One of my favorites is a very simple dessert:A very nice vanilla ice-cream (one with bits of whole vanilla included).Sprinkle on top, a light coating of espresso powder.Eat.

I don't know how accurate he is but that is what I love about Alton Brown and Good Eats.Nutritionists, nutritional anthropologists, food scientists gotta love it.

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Asgara
"Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"select * from USERS where CLUE > 0http://asgarasworld.bravepages.com
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i made these the other day as inspired by something my mom made a few years ago... so yum.a can or two (depending on people to feed) of chicken breast. you can use fresh but... why?
a tablespoon of mayonaise
diced celery (about the same amount as the chicken)
chopped apples (same amount as chicken). pick a sweet one that is maybe a little tart. a firm one not grainy. gala is good.
ground mustard (a bit. maybe a 1/2teaspoon)
mccormick greek seasoning (oregano, mint, garlic, and "spices"... if i knew which, i'd list them instead.)
curry powder (just a scosh. maybe 1/4 tsp)
cumin (1/4 tsp)
cinnamon (pinch)
ginger (pinch)
nutmeg (pinch and a bit)
sea saltmix together until well coated
stuff into lightly toasted pitasnote. all spice amounts are approximations. i don't measure. i think it's a sin.omg so yum.

Ah, now we’re talking. I am a completely helpless cooking and food nerd. Love cooking, love eating, love restaurants. I even grow my own herbs, which gives great flavour to cooking. Like to do all kinds of different things when time permits.One of the things I love about living in Sydney is the variety of really good food that’s readily available. There has been a lot of immigration to Australia from different places. Post WW2 a lot of Italians and Greeks and some eastern Europeans came. Then from the 80s onwards, there have been a lot from Asian and Middle Eastern countries. This means we have a great deal of really good, authentic, inexpensive ethnic food. I’ll list some of the different types of restaurants (apart from basic western style) that I’ve tried myself:Italian, Greek, Chinese, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, Korean, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indian (yum!), Sri-Lankan, Spanish (Great stuff, has recently become one of my favourites!), Lebanese, Hungarian, Turkish (Turkish style pizza has become really popular out here, as it rightly should because it’s damn good!), Japanese (sushi is everywhere here now), Argentine, French, German, amongst many others.I’ve traveled through a fair bit of the USA and Canada, and I found some interesting local specialties in many places. My wife is American, and she never did much cooking before, but now she really gets into it and has shown me some great American specialties. I’ll tell you one thing where the USA has Australia completely beaten is with Mexican food. There is some around here, but it’s generally of pretty low standard compared to the US.And you can’t talk food without talking drink. I love a decent red wine, it goes so well with good food, and thankfully they make a lot of really good reds (and whites for that matter) here in Oz. Actually, Aussie wine is becoming quite popular in the US and Canada, and sounds like it’s readily available. Any enthusiasts out there, I recommend checking it out. My In-laws have taken to it and not looked back. And I have to say, from the experience of all my American relatives, Australian beer is hard to beat. My wife enjoys a beer, but after having Aussie beer she can’t stand American beer anymore because it doesn’t have as much flavour. But to give credit where credit is due, I will say that I do like Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in the US. They make pretty good stuff at brew-pubs too. But if you wanted to try Australian stuff, don’t bother with that Fosters that they sell over there, it’s crap. My personal theory is that we send it to other countries to get rid of it so we can keep the good stuff to ourselves. I think I’ve rambled on enough for the moment, but I can’t help it, food is one of my favourite subjects. And now I’ve made myself hungry.

What do you mean "favorite" recipe. I didn't think there was any other way to do it. Though maybe sometimes I might vary the poroprtion that goes into me.

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Out of curiousity, if steaks of human flesh was "infinitely better" than beef steak, would you eat them?

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Since I have a cultural and moral aversion to cannibalism (except in cases of utter starvation), I wouldn't know.From what I know of the taste of human flesh, it tastes a lot like pork.

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What about steaks of golden retriever?

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There are several countries which consume dog, some european countries which consume horse, and some african countries which consuume monkey.I don't have a particular desire, because of cultural reasons, to consume these kinds of flesh, but I don't have a particular moral aversion to or judgement of other people doing so.Besides, I wasn't talking about the morality of eating meat, but the comparison between the flavor of imitation meat compared to the real thing.Your fake steak might taste damn good, but I seriously doubt it would fool anyone into thinking it was actually real meat.

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How do you know it is humanely and sustainably raised?

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I know the people who raised the animal personally, or I buy only from companies which I have investigated and find them to be reputable.

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What is your definition of humane and sustainable?

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"Humane" means that the animal lives a comfortable life with plenty of room to roam, outdoors, is fed wholesome food that it was meant to eat (no animal byproducts for ruminants, for example), no hormones to speed it's growth or antibiotics (unless it gets sick), and as little stress during slaughter as possible, etc."Sustainable" means that the animals are raised on small family owned and operated farms which only raise as many animals that their land will support. No huge feedlots and no giant pigbarns.

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I know I can buy a chunk of meat with human-certified/organic/small-farm labels all over it, but how can I know that it came from a happy animal, that lived, was transported, and was killed 'humanely'?

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You do the legwork until you are satisfied that you know enough and have enough of a relationship with the rancher or farmer to trust them.I trust these people who I know and this company, one of the founders of which is a friend of mine.Alternatively, you can hook up with a local farmer who feels as strongly as you do about these things and have him or her raise an animal for you.

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(Truthfully, I find the entire process, regardless of how it was carried out to be inhumane by nature - I'm wondering what your own or industry standards might be.)

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I think that it is clear that humans are omnivores. We are capable of consuming and deriving nutrition from both plants and animals. In fact, certain nutrients are difficult to get unless we consume at least some animal products.I also think that it is a sign that we live in a great overabundance of food that anyone has the incredible luxury of cutting entire categories of available food out of their diets for purely moral reasons.If you were starving to death, and all there was to eat was meat, would you die rather than eat it?You know, these food phobias we all have are funny. Once, I was working the cheese counter, helping there two women. One of them loved cheese, but the other was completely grossed out. When I began talking about the flavor of artisan, small production farmstead cheese being influenced by the type of forage the animals were eating, which in turn affested the flavor of the milk, she just about turned green. She surprised me a minute later, however, by moving on down to the salami section and wanting to taste a bunch of them. I had assumed she was a vegetarian, but she wasn't. She just thought the idea of eating a dairy product was disgusting, but not flesh.Other times, there have been people in the store who have not even recognized the what the whole prosciutto hams we have hanging up were actually meat, and when they asked and we told them, they wrinnkeled up their noses and made a "yuck" face, right before they turned around and ordered a pastrami on rye sandwich! People are so divorced from where their food actually comes from, it's frightening.

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What about health concerns? "Proper proportion" may seem reasonable, yet red meat is chock full of carcinogens.

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Like I said, in the proper proportion in the diet, meat is perfectly healthful.

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I may well as claim cigarettes are fine as long as I only smoke a pack a week - nevertheless they still are damaging.

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Come on, this is a silly comparison.Meat contains iron, complete protein, Zinc, Niacin, and Vitamin b-12, which is an important nutrient found mostly in animal products.There are absolutely zero health benefits to smoking and lots of things about smoking that are very damaging, but the same cannot be said about eating meat.

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I find there to be very few cons to eating meat

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So what are the pros, other than "it feels good?"

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I find it rather deliciously ironic that a swinger such as yourself would have the balls to ask somebody this kind of judgemental question regarding an activity he doesn't personally approve of on moral grounds.Well, I happen to greatly value gustatory pleasure, so "it tastes good" is a pretty big reason for me to consume something.Of course, I do not eat the flesh of animals lightly, or thoughtlessly, or without the full understanding of the fact that an animal died to provide nutrition and pleasure for me.

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I would love to find a Science VS Food forum. Another of my pet peeves is the very shoddy historical research done by cooks and cooking shows.

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A history and chemistry section and I?d be in hog heaven.

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Then you should watch Alton Brown's Good Eats show on the food network.Seriously, it has everything you just asked for.Home - Alton BrownAlso, pick up a copy of "On Food and Cooking-the Science and Lore of the Kitchen" By Harold McGee. Fantastic super-nerdy science and history book about food and cooking.There's scanning electron micrograph pictures of cheese, for God's sake.The new edition just came out, too. amazon linkThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-09-2005 12:21 AM

There's a variation of that delicious desert that Italians do called "afogato", which is a shot of hot espresso poured over vanilla gelato.Heavenly.

Alton is extremely accurate and informative, although I do disagree with him on a few minor details here and there.Who I really am bothered by is Emeril; he doesn't know squat about the origins or history or even some basic food facts of what he's making most of the time; he just reads what the producers have written for him off of the teleprompter.Mario Batalli's show is very informative regarding Italian food. The man knows his stuff.(warning, name dropping ahead)Last year Sara Moulton visited my workplace and I got to spend an hour or so with her, showing her around the Deli, giving her tastes, answering questions, etc. I've done the same with Lynn Rosetto Kasper, host of The Splendid Table on NPR and pretty famous cookbook author.Both ladies were really sweet and just like they seem on their shows. Sara even told me she thought I was very knowledgeable and asked for my business card. I was pleased, to say the least. That's a good contact to have in the food world.Oh, and Mario literally bumped into me while shopping in the Deli last summer. His family has a summer home in the UP and he always stops here on his way up to shop and have lunch.

Interestingly enough while I can enjoy food, eating in general has been a miserable experience for me most of my life.At first no one was satisfied with what I ate, and then when I changed to please others, everyone moved on and is unhappy with what I eat now.That is on top of having some picky habits and an extremely bad digestive system (indeed I will likely be undergoing an operation soon because of its disfunction). In the end, if I was able to never eat, I would probably be extremely happy.But since I must I do so generally out of need, but try to make it as good as possible since I want to enjoy what is likely to be hurting me later. Thankfully I did work as a cook for a short while, as well as teaching myself how to do things in the kitchen by myself when I was younger.What has fascinated me is the increased morality regarding food, and our guilt over eating something that is pleasurable (if it may be "unhealthy"), or that it takes another life (all food is the taking of another life unless you eat ground minerals).Thus I was gratified to see your response to PS.It seems quite evident that killing animals and eating flesh is quite the human thing to do, and indeed can be done humanely. You did a great job pointing out the facts in this regard.I think the question to ask is if you knew animals were about to eat you (which they certainly can and do in the real world) how would you want to be treated... that would be humane.To me putting on airs that one can define eating meat as "bad" or "inhumane" and that we shouldn't because we can rise above it, is not only a testament to the overadundance of food, but a sort of mysanthropy and delusion that we somehow are more than and better than other animals.Not to throw this thread off topic, but since it has reached the morality of eating (and you noted his slight hypocrisy), I thought I might point out something. As I gain little pleasure from eating (so I am not really a glutton) I have generally explored what does give me pleasure and that is sex. Several of your observations regarding eating can easily be thrown back at you regarding sex.I'm not going to but you might take a look and read your commentary, only from a sexual "dietary" standpoint.The foibles and errors you see in others about food, I see in others about sex. And in the end the morality of both is just as artificial (or shall I say arbitrary). And lately everyone seems to want to take the fun and fantasy out of both (did you read that they are now going to change Cookie Monster so that he eats more healthy foods????).The final irony being I doubt I could get away starting a thread on everyone's favorite sexual pasttimes, to be described in lurid detail, no matter if it offended some. Sharing that kind of information about normal human pleasure is generally forbidden despite the fact that gourmet sex is more "natural" than gourmet food. That is it requires an overabundance of food and "culture" to allow for gourmet food recipes. The cavemen could have been engaging in everything we do today, back then. Just look at the Bonobos.I tend to think that as a culture, we have replaced sex with food.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)