Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

If you want to avoid burning the bottoms of your buns (cookies, or anything else for that matter), next time try using a pan that isn't black. Black/dark pans absorb radiative heat...whereas plain aluminum pans reflect it, and are a standard when baking.

lCan you review a restaurant based on a one bite sampling of its offerings? Is this sufficient to convey to the reader what going there for a meal will be like? Aren't there things that a 'civilian' diner might order that don't hold up after a few more bites - that become boring or tasteless? And then, isn't this a completely different experience from the reviewer's?

Oh... and lots of veggies and fresh fruits, that always helps.

I have to agree with Wookie, you looked great on Iron Chef. and Leeapeea
is right on target, eat great food and do lots of fun things! The bread basket at a good resteraunt undoes most of us hun, there is a reason they call bread the staff of life! Enjoy your job and just eat sensibly. I'm sure as the summer progresses it will be alot easier to lose weight! If not you might think about spending it in the south where the heat and humidity conspire to make yankee's lose weight. ;)

Ed, I recently saw you on an episode of Iron Chef America (secret ingredient: langostines) and thought you looked fabulous, dahling.
So, whatever you're doing, it's working!

It sounds like you are doing great! I would add just a couple of things:
- Eat as slowly as you can, and really enjoy your food. Eating is one of life's great pleasures, and just because you're watchng your weight doesn't mean you can't still relish the experience. Plus - you'll eat less because you'll let yourself feel when you're full, instead of being led by how empty your plate is.
- You've talked about exercise before in your columns, so I assume you're keeping up with it. It's so important and if you're consistent, it will really help you keep the weight off.
- Drink lots of water.
- Don't ever let yourself get super-hungry, especially if you're on your way to a restaurant. Carry a banana or apple with you at all times, or a granola bar -- any low-cal snack to keep the hunger-grumblies at bay.

All the best to you!

People, enough about university level research on the "science" of the burger. I don't doubt the chef's skill or disrespect the adventurous pursuit of the scientific understanding of the preparation of food, but some of the overblown lectures about this are too much. A hamburger/cheeseburger is a humble American food, simple, fresh ingredients (homemade or not) prepared and arranged in a variety of pleasing ways, generally and hopefully for a reasonable price!

I have read "Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection." These books are not a recipe collections or cookbooks, nor is the television show a How-to cooking program. That is not the intent, which has already been pointed out by other posters.

If I had to describe his book(s) I would say that it is a collection of doctoral dissertations on food. As an analogy "cook's illustrate" & "America's test kitchen" is High School....Blumenthal and his colleagues are doing tenured professor work at the university level. It is not the basics, it is not necessarily practical to every layman. The exploration, however, does contribute to the universal body of culinary knowledge by deconstructing (at the ingredient level) both the science & the art of cooking.

That being said, I'd like to raise a practical issue that his exercise (and this post) illustrates:

The ingredients used & where they come from are important in any "recipe" to determine the quality of the final outcome. "Organic, Local & Homemade" are labels many food snobs throw around, but we need to ask ourselves: Do we practice what we preach?

Quite frankly, this recipe/methodology shows how difficult & time consuming being a purist with those labels can be for even a "simple" entree. It is only because all those assemblies need to be homemade all at once, that this seems like a labor intensive endeavor....and it is....but in the days before SuperTarget, Whole Foods, Wegmans or Trade Joes it is what people did.

Or actually...they didn't.

Our concept of the hamburger, much like most food in our current era, is dependent upon having full access to the modern day supply chain for our food demands. Again, food bloggers are constantly advocating for organic, homemade, fresh, authentic, local, etc...

This recipe adheres to what is advocated: The Blumenburger is a hamburger made with homemade buns, homemade cheese, home ground fresh beef & homemade ketchup. Thus, the ingredients, as well as the final product, can be organic, local or whatever other criteria we want.

e.g. Buy local, organic beef and grind your own hamburger. This would be so much better than the mystery grind that is shipped in from 1000 miles away or come in pre formed frozen patties. Isn't this what the food community is advocating?

Baking your own breadstuffs, canning your own relish & instead of making your own cheese...maybe just seeking out good, workable artisan cheeses, are all in keeping with the spirit I see in the posts on these blogs every day. Again...when it all comes at you at once, it seems over orchestrated & overwhelming. And it is! The exercise demonstrates how adhering to all those labels takes some work, but is worth it in the end.

Molecular Gastronomy, and its practitioners like Blumenthal, should serve as inspiration by making us say to ourselves: "If he can go to that length to make a hamburger pretty much 100% from scratch, then I could at least learn to bake my own buns rather than buy them."

For another person it may be to grind the meat, for another it may be to make their own ketchup...or if they prefer...homemade mustard...or maybe it will be a baby step by asking a local butcher to grind plain old chuck instead of grabbing the prepack hamburger.

The reality is that this recipe/methodolgy is not practical as a daily food stuff....but it illustrates the complexity behind the simple adages of "know where you food comes from" & "know what's in your food."

I think a trainer is a great investment. They'll best know how to give you a balance of weights, machines, isometrics and other kinds of resistance work. I like trainers because they instruct, push, and, perhaps best of all, help count reps when you're too dead tired to think.

I love to ride my bike and I think its a great form of exercise. I think the rule of thumb with any exercise is its better if you get a bit out of breath(or your 75% heart rate-measured by going as hard as you can for 10 mins then that heart rate is 90%), then you know you're burning calories.

I try to do strengthening exercises twice a week, especially those for my core. You could get a personal trainer for a short time. I use a mixture of free weights, a stability ball and sometimes machines. Whatevers available to me at the time.

If you ride your bike for longer than an hour at a hard pace you might want to take a snack.

Free weights or machines?

Exercise is everyone's best friend, but do it for the other benefits rather than the weight loss. To lose 1 extra pound you have to burn 3,500 calories exercising...that's a LOT of exercise. The food choices one makes ends up making a bigger impact when it comes to pounds. The non-weight related benefits of exercise are much more important!