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Now "THAT" is how it should be!
simon...second you on Benton Hams. Have yet to try their hams but their bacon is wonderful. I thought I knew bacon until ordering from Benton. The fat which renders out is worth saving for flavoring. Their bacon is economical too as a little bit goes a long way and it doesn't cook up to nothing as so many bacons do.
To address the OP....the most devoted foodie I know grows peppers in the LA area. Right now he has 400 cultivars in a small garden and pots scattered around the grounds of the company he works for (nice company to encourage this). He smokes the peppers and makes rubs. His signature creation this year is a smoked white habanero/bhut jolokia mix.
Feeling frustrated with the board software
I registered, make a few replies, stop by now and then but mostly drifted off elsewhere because of the format. Just my opinion but the software doesn't lend itself to continuity and developing a large community of regular posters (and there are some very informative, funny and otherwise good posters here). RSS and email notification are fine but I often ignore those I already have. What I look for (and where I post) are forums I can slide into when I feel like it and join an on going discussion.
Gross Out Food Moment
While a HS exchange student in Peru I walked into the kitchen one day and the maid was pulling guinea pigs out of a cardboard box and clubbing them. That night at dinner, I picked out a piece of guinea pig from the dish and discovered I was about to eat part of a male guinea pig.
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Recent Comments | Response to Comments
Pizza Crust?
My mom is pushing 90 and when I make pizza for her, I substitute 1/4 to 1/2 cup potato flakes for the flour in a three cup recipe. Makes a nice easy to eat crust. When I was a kid, she and our dad took us to Pepe's Apizza in New Haven, CT (back when you didn't have to wait hours in line) so we were raised on thin chewy and charred at the edges crusts.
Now "THAT" is how it should be!
simon...second you on Benton Hams. Have yet to try their hams but their bacon is wonderful. I thought I knew bacon until ordering from Benton. The fat which renders out is worth saving for flavoring. Their bacon is economical too as a little bit goes a long way and it doesn't cook up to nothing as so many bacons do.
To address the OP....the most devoted foodie I know grows peppers in the LA area. Right now he has 400 cultivars in a small garden and pots scattered around the grounds of the company he works for (nice company to encourage this). He smokes the peppers and makes rubs. His signature creation this year is a smoked white habanero/bhut jolokia mix.
Feeling frustrated with the board software
I registered, make a few replies, stop by now and then but mostly drifted off elsewhere because of the format. Just my opinion but the software doesn't lend itself to continuity and developing a large community of regular posters (and there are some very informative, funny and otherwise good posters here). RSS and email notification are fine but I often ignore those I already have. What I look for (and where I post) are forums I can slide into when I feel like it and join an on going discussion.
Gross Out Food Moment
While a HS exchange student in Peru I walked into the kitchen one day and the maid was pulling guinea pigs out of a cardboard box and clubbing them. That night at dinner, I picked out a piece of guinea pig from the dish and discovered I was about to eat part of a male guinea pig.
Heirloom turkey -- have you cooked or eaten one?
If you want to grow your own, check out Sandhill Preservation. Glenn and Linda have an incredible assortment of heirloom turkey, duck, geese and chickens. I don't have room for their Bourbon Reds, Cuckoo Marans, Barnevelders, Jersey Buffs and Dewlap Toulouse but do grow their heirloom vegetables.
Hot Jalepeno Hands
A note on hot pepper seeds:
Seeds themselves are not hot. But because they are attached to the placenta of a pepper, where most of the capsaicinoids are, they pick up heat. Removing the white ribs (the placenta) which run from the top down the sides of a hot pepper will lower the heat level more than removing the seeds. However, when dealing with habenero/bhut jolokia levels of capsaicinoids, it doesn't really make any difference. The entire pepper is drenched in the oils.
Hot Jalepeno Hands
I grow, smoke and dry bhut jolokia peppers ( roughly 200 times hotter a jalapeno --over 1 million Scoville Heat Units) and santaka peppers (400,000 SHU). What works for me is a combination of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish washing soap.
Serious Eats Original Video: Save the Honeybees
Tomatoes are self-pollinating. Honey bees leave them alone as the flowers have no nectar and honey bees can't get to the pollen. Bumble bees and sweat bees (Halictus ligatus) can pollinate tomatoes. The benefit of that pollination is almost nil as pollen drops with the slightest breeze anyways. The downside of insect pollination of tomatoes is heirloom tomato flowers must be bagged or plants isolated to prevent cross-pollination.
Did notice a slight drop in fruit set in CT this summer from last. Suspect the humidity and rain clumped pollen and prevented pollination. Temperature is the most common cause of poor fruit set. Pollen becomes sterile as temperature rise above 86. Night temperature above 75 and below 55 reduce pollination as well.
More honey bees here on the central CT coast than last. But I have hundreds more flowers and a heptacodium in bloom which really draws them. What is missing are Monarch Butterflies! That might be the lack of sun. I dunno....last year was wonderful for Monarchs. This year if I see one a day I'm lucky.
Starbucks Job Cuts Affect Stephen Colbert
Their used coffee grounds make good compost (but no better I suspect than any other brand):
http://www.sunset.com/sunset/garden/article/0,20633,1208232,00.html
Homemade yogurt -- my second attempt
I've used health food store probiotic capsules with a dozen or more cultures to make yogurt. Legally, the only cultures required to call something yogurt are L. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus (but many companies also use Bifidobacterium Longum). Sometimes the probiotic yogurt with over a dozen strains is great...sometimes....it is odd....(as in slimey)...have to watch the temperature too as some cultures thrive at a temp that kills others.
Rats!
So....do you like them? I bought seeds but never planted them. Nice photo...
Foodie...
Tell someone you are a foodie and people can relax when they ask you over. Be it meatloaf and gravy or Buddhist fare, they know you'll scarf it down. They'll probably leave you alone about not eating this or that too because they know you're a hopeless case.
Peter Reinhart speaking at Authors@Google
Thanks for the heads up. Purchased Reinhart's books but never heard him speak.
Farm Subsidies Q&A from an Economist
Refreshing to see it printed in the New York Times too. I'm stunned.
Dear Slice: Thanks for the Tip on New Haven
Geoff . . .Modern and Sally's in New Haven are worth trying too. But if on your next trip to the Cape you prefer not to go into the city, try Grand Apizza in Clinton--20 miles east of New Haven off exit 63. Same thin crust apizza, same Foxon brand soft drinks (birch beer is the best) and similiar menus (including clam & bacon pizzas). They also have spinach and other stuffed breads to go which are handy when on a trip. Grand used to be in New Haven (on Grand Avenue, hence the name) but moved out to Madison and then Clinton.
The Great Vegan Honey Debate
News to me too, starbreiz. Since we both pondered range free honey, there has to be a marketing niche here. How much do you think Martha or Rachael would want to use their name?
When I was 8 or 9 we had range free honey. One of my friend's parents discovered a honeycomb inside the house . Two stories worth of honey. Along side the chimmey. We got big chunks of honeycomb which was so dark it was almost black. Wonderful. I felt cheated because a wall in our house hadn't been wrecked by bees (they had to tear siding off to extract all the honey from my neighbors place).
The Great Vegan Honey Debate
Slate article says "hard-liners argue that beekeeping, like dairy farming, is cruel and exploitative. The bees are forced to construct their honeycombs . . ."
I see a market developing for a "Rachael Ray's Range Free Honey"....
Got roasted peppers. Need inspiration.
Big Jim, like Joe Parker, Conquistador and NuMex 6-4 is a New Mexico pod type pepper from New Mexico State University. When a vendor says he has "Hatch Chiles" he is playing off the name of a growing region, not telling you what chile you are buying. Or it is possible the vendor has no idea what chile he is selling or doesn't want to bother explaining. Because these varieties are similiar in taste, most consumers are content with this. But there are people who insist on one or the other.
While other chiles are grown in Hatch (jalapenos for instance), what a "Hatch chile" almost always refers to is a cultivar which is descended from New Mexico #9--a landrace chile developed by Fabian Garcia and released by NMSU in 1921. Garcia's work created the New Mexico chile boom.
Garcia is also responsible for the New Mexico paprika industry which is economically more important than the "Hatch" chile business. These peppers are not grown for their taste but for for their deep red color. Tons of powdered NuMex Garnet and Sweet are shipped worldwide to be used as natural food colorings. When you see "coloring added" on processed food labels you are probably eating New Mexico chile peppers. The problematic red dyes of 30 years ago have been largely replaced by chile peppers.
Radishes
The spring radishes out now--Cherry Belle, French Breakfast, Hailstone and others-- aren't much good for cooking. For both cooking and for snacking I prefer the fall radishes--Mantanghong, Muncher Bier,Green Meat, Neckarruhn (red or white). They keep better too. Spanish Black, if you can find it, will keep for months. Ask at the market when winter radishes come in and what ones they plan on having.
Got roasted peppers. Need inspiration.
I go with that, finsbigfan. Rellenos are terrific but better if someone else does the work. Not something I would make except for a group.
But a roasted pepper cream sauce is very doable for even one.
Does Chlorine Make American Chicken Taste Funny?
The industry is moving as fast as the consumer wants to pay for it toward air-chilling chickens rather than dunking them in ice water. Chlorine is used in both processes. In the water chilled process, however, the birds can absorb up to and over 10% of their weight in water. Yuck. Those are the birds used in this taste test. Water chilling is why its difficult to get nice crispy skin on run of the mill supermarket chickens.
Got roasted peppers. Need inspiration.
What you most likely have is Numex Joe Parker--one of the many "Numex" cultivars devoloped at New Mexico State University's Chile Institute--or Anaheim chiles. Both are excellent roasted and stuffed (chile rellenos), in salsa or chile con queso. Joe Parker has a Scoville heat rating of under 1000 while Anaheim is from under 1000 to 1500 (for comparison, Tabasco is 30,000 to 50,000). Warm enough to give a nice glow.
Search around to see if your chiles match a photo of the cultivars above, then look for a chile picadillo recipe. The variations are endless. Ingredients may include aside from Poblano, Numex or Anaheim chiles, ground beef, raisins, capers, olives (the Cuban variety), onion, cloves, garlic, cinnamon and even bay leaf.
How Important is Organic Food to You?
Organic farms use insecticides. Rotenone and Pyrethrin are two common ones and they are not innocuous.
L.A. considering ban on fast food in low income communities
No hint in the article if the motivation is what those on the city council say it is--looking after the well being of the poor-- or is something else. Often in politics it is something else.
Bhut Jolokia peppers
we got our bhut jolokia at the Gainesville, FL hot pepper festival '09. we transplanted it into one of those giant dog-washing-tubs from Lowe's with a few bags of potting soil and manure. fertilized it every few weeks and eventually (when it the heat got below 95 degrees) it flowered like hell, and soon after i had between 60 and 70 peppers on the plant. the peppers are just now starting to ripen; a beautiful display of orange, red, and lime green. the plant is a monster. i am 6'4'' and i can look at the bhut jolokia face to face when im watering it. it's def. the king of our garden.
anyways, im sure you figured out what to do with your chiles since you started this post a few years ago, but my recommendation would be to just experiment the hell out of it. make hot sauce, cook with it, preserve some, dry some, make insecticide, pin one on the wall (a sacrifice to the chile gods), so on and so forth. here's a little recipe i "cooked" up over halloween weekend this year:
"tabasco burgers with caramelized ghost chile and onion"
- 1.5 pounds lean ground beef
- 6 oz package of goat cheese
- 10 fresh tabasco peppers (red and orange for sweetness)
- 2 green SEEDED bhut jolokias (unripened for the tang)
- one whole sweet onion
- four cloves of garlic
1. chop up the tabascos and throw into the goat cheese package. shake and mix it up. put in the fridge.
2. chop up your bhut jolokias, the onion, and garlic and put in a pan with some olive oil. let that cook at a medium heat. it will take a while
3. combine all of the goat cheese/tabasco with all of the beef. yes, all of it. make into two or three patties -- or one big one if you're a t-rex
4. grill it!
5. go check on your bhuts and onions. the onion should be completely browned when caramelized, and super sweet.
6. put the burger (cooked to your liking) and the caramelized bhut-onion-garlic mix on the bun of your choice.
7. eat it.
OPTIONAL: we also made this blue cheese spread that i put on the burger -- and it was super awesome.
- a 6 oz container of blue cheese
- jar of sour cream
- fresh minced garlic to taste
- a few oz of lime juice
--- mix all that stuff. that's it. spread it on the burger. eat it. the spread also work as a great chip dip.
side note: prepare to gain 34 pounds after eating.
side note 2: prepare to take a very painful dump at an interstate rest stop the next day.
Serious Eats Original Video: Save the Honeybees
Just wanted to echo the comments of several others in this post. Thanks for a video that is very well done! We help small honey producers and bottlers bring their honey to market via the Internet, so we have a vested interest in resolving CCD and obviously they do.
We are fortunate in that so far, CCD has not affected honey bees in the Florida panhandle where the rare Tupelo honey is produced (according to an article from USA today - http://www.armadillopeppers.com/about-honey-bees.html).
The bees and beekeepers play a vital role for us. Thanks to them and again, the team that put this video together.
Bhut Jolokia peppers
For anyone that would like to share their peppers and receive a full email review of heat/flavor/taste ratings, please contact me at paul (at) blackactiongaming.com. I will cover all postage costs plus a stipend for your bhut jolokias I am located in New Hampshire USA but travel quite a bit...could possibly pick up. Thanks!!!!!
Serious Eats Original Video: Save the Honeybees
Way to go guys!!!
It amazes me that the public doesn't yet realize the grave seriousness of this issue. No bees = no food!
I have been keeping bees for about 7 years now and have seen CCD first hand. I have also seen insecticide poisioning and unfortunately seen bees die of starvation.
In 2002 it was my dream to one day keep bees for a living. CCD is a major factor in that dream not becoming a reality. I currently make honey based hot sauces, among other spicy things. When we figure out how to control this epidemic I still hope to one day produce all of the honey (which we currently buy from other beekeepers) that we use in our products.
Once again thank you to Serious Eats, The Foodnetwork, Haagen Daz, and all others involved in keeping this in the public eye!
Take Care,
Sam McCanless
Director of Culinary Development
Zane & Zack's World Famous Honey Co.
Bhut Jolokia peppers
I admit I know next to nothing about peppers...and I've never even heard of this variety so I don't know how large they are...but could you 'pickle' them (for lack of a better term) like those bottles of "Pick-a-Peppa"? I think they just put them in a bottle,and pour the vinegar over them...then you use the vinegar to flavor your foods (keep it replenished over the tops of the peppers - and keep it refrigerated). You could cut them and take the seeds out (to grow, sell, trade) and keep the rest in the vinegar...makes one pepper go a long way!
Bhut Jolokia peppers
Dry some and then share the love. I could use some heat here in CNY. Send some here?!
Bhut Jolokia peppers
Eat the peppers raw, I did and lost my hearing for 20 minutes. But that minty flavor draws you back in. You can make a bhut jolokia and cayenne infused vodka. Yummy, but sure is spicy. I dry the peppers to survive the winter when peppers are producing. other ideas: salsa, potato topper instead of chives, hand warmers. I use them in my BBQ sauce to give it some flavor and heat. Cheese cake.
Serious Eats Original Video: Save the Honeybees
I would just like to add my thanks for producing such a beautifully done piece on the honeybee plight. My husband and I started beekeeping last year and unfortunately had a disaster. In June we had a swarm and it neccessitated requeening the hive. Initially it seemed to be going well, but we soon determined that it didn't take and we were heartbroken. We will be getting more bees this spring and are determined to not give up. We feel that it is our ever so tiny part in a crucial humanitarian effort.
Again, congratulations on the intelligent, educational effort put forth by SE and Haagen-Dazs in the form of this wonderful video. It puts a very serious issue in terms all can grasp, even those who feel as long as they are able to purchase the honey bears with the yellow lids in the grocery, all is well with the universe.
Serious Eats Original Video: Save the Honeybees
Hi Ed...I think you all did great on this video and explaining to everyone about CCD and why it's so important for all of us to help protect the honeybee. I myself didn't realize that CCD was going on with the honeybees and what it was. I buy a lot of honey myself in large quanities at a time at my local grocery store (12#8oz.container;which is a 1 gallon 8oz. container) that I use for tea.
So as you see honey is very important to me. I also love to garden and love photography and write. So I take a lot of photos every year of not just of my flowers & garden but also I love to follow all the bees around and take several photos of them on the flowers pollinating the flowers. I have a number of close-up shots of all kinds of bees with the pollen on their legs as they pollinate the flowers.
Sorry for getting carried away here, I just think that it's amazing how bees work and people don't seem to realize how important a bees job really is. Without them like you all mentioned in your video...we would be without a lot of things. Well your video tells all!
Thanks Ed & Everyone Else for putting such a great video together and let me know what I can do to help out.
Peace & Love,
Sunshine
P.S. Keep Smiling Everyone!!! Because God doesn't make Loosers...He makes Winners in All of Us!!!
Serious Eats Original Video: Save the Honeybees
Help, this video is autoplaying!
Serious Eats Original Video: Save the Honeybees
I live in So Cal and have noticed that in my area, we seem to have more and more dead bees in our yard. I don't know what the cause is and if they are honey bees or what but it is terribly sad. I hope we can resolve this problem in my lifetime.
Pizza Crust?
Even on Thanksgiving morning as Clay Gordon transports me back to PePe's and an amazing clam pie - I drool and long for one.
Hot Jalepeno Hands
Believe it or not I used Carmex (for chapped lips.) I chopped some jalepenos for pico I tried everyone of the suggestions on this board nothing worked, even the bleach water the nurse had suggested, nothing worked! I had remembered I had gotten some on my lips and I had put carmex on my lips and it had stopped burning, so I put the carmex on and under my finger nails. ( under finger nails was the worst!) The burn felt a little worse at first, but then eased up. by morning the burning was completely gone!
Now "THAT" is how it should be!
Around the Seattle area, Skagit River Ranch. I've picked up their meats direct from them at local weekend farmer's markets, from Madison Market [the local organic co-op], and also ordered directly in bulk.
They raise their own grass and offer organic free range grass-fed beef, pork, eggs, and turkeys. You pay a bit more than for the commercial crap you get from Safeway, but the meat is so much higher quality, healthier, and better tasting that it's worth it.
Highly recommended.
Now "THAT" is how it should be!
My friend Dan bakes for a local high-end country club as well as for several restaurants. I have NEVER had a cake that is better than anything he has ever made. Every year for our July 4th party, he pops in with two cakes. This year it was a strawberry whipped cream layer cake and a Bailey's Irish Cream torte. I still salivate when I think of that torte. I would love to buy it for my Christmas dinner, but I know he won't charge me. I have to come up with a sneaky way to compensate him.
Feeling frustrated with the board software
I am in the dark. What newly added feature? Also, as possibly previously mentioned, are we talking about the ability to contact posters via e-mail as not to clog the threads with more personal information?
Feeling frustrated with the board software
This is very neat! Thanks!!!
Feeling frustrated with the board software
Oh yeah, thanks for the tabs, guys. This is a great improvement.
Feeling frustrated with the board software
WOW!
Very cool...
:-)
Feeling frustrated with the board software
Holy crap. This is new, right? Right?!
Oh my goodness, I love the newly added feature. It's gawjus, dawlin, I tell ya. Thanks SE!!!!!
Gross Out Food Moment
first off that drinking someone else's moucas made me gag. Growing up we had two refrigerators the "front" for food and leftovers and the "back" for drinks. If by some mistake or necessity food was put in the "back" refrigerator it wouldn't be touched for months. When i was fifteen and about to leave to go out with my friends my mother made me clean out the "back" fridge. Someone had made American Chop Suey roughly 3 months earlier. When I opened it the elbow macaroni had turned purple and there were several varieties of mold growing. However, the most disturbing part was that it was moving. I wabted to throw the whole thing out but my mom made me empty it and then clean out the pan it was in. I threw up for five minutes and everytime I smelled it I threw up again. And thinking about it, I may throw up again.
Gross Out Food Moment
When I was a child, I ate prunes that had been infested with tiny wriggling insects. To this day I cannot eat prunes or raisins. Just thinking about the wrinkly texture disgusts me.
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My mom is pushing 90 and when I make pizza for her, I substitute 1/4 to 1/2 cup potato flakes for the flour in a three cup recipe. Makes a nice easy to eat crust. When I was a kid, she and our dad took us to Pepe's Apizza in New Haven, CT (back when you didn't have to wait hours in line) so we were raised on thin chewy and charred at the edges crusts.