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The Ten Most Recent Comments By beyondblond

From Eating Out

Chipotle Calorie Math Makes Absolutely No Sense

I generally have a burrito bol with barbacoa, rice, black beans, fajita veggies, tomato salsa, green salsa & lettuce. It's 600 calories, which is a bit much, but not the end of the world if you're eating healthy the rest of the time. I can always drop the beans or the veggies if I want to come in lower, or switch to chicken. Sometimes I just go vegetarian, which saves me calories as well.

The real calorie saver is dropping that tortilla.

I also support having calorie info available. I don't think the fuzzy math on the Chipotle menu is helpful, but I do believe that restaurants should make their calorie info available online or in a separate sheet that could be reviewed at the restaurant. It really burns me when places refuse to do so... ahem, Quiznos (whose claims to be healthy I find dubious).

beyondblond at 10:08AM on 04/23/08

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

If you like the shape of plastic bags but want to buy something reusable, there's also Baggu Bags (http://baggubag.com/SEE.html) - they are shaped more like the traditional plastic bag, but reusable and much better for the environment.

Also, the fact that Whole Foods is charging $30 is ridiculous. I bought 4 reusable bags from Harris Teeter for $1 each, and couldn't be happier.

beyondblond at 10:00AM on 04/23/08

From Required Eating

Cook the Book: 'Think Like a Chef'

Baking!

beyondblond at 9:02PM on 12/09/07

From Talk

Newly engaged and registering. What should make the list?

As a recent newlywed (7 months), I think that all of the comments above are spot-on. Just to add my 2 cents, the things we registered for that I've gotten the most use out of are:

- KitchenAid mixer
- All Clad pots & pans (a good set of cookware is essential - get both stainless steel and nonstick)
- Wusthof knife set & block (these are the most used items in my kitchen - it is amazing what a difference a good knife will make in your life; also, I'd recommend a good set of steak knives)
- Wine glasses
- Pilsner glasses
- Cast iron skillet
- Springform pans
- Silpat
- Microplane grater/zester
- Various serving dishes (I have a variety of white porcelain pieces that are great, as well as several that can go from the oven straight to the table)
- Cutting boards
- Mandoline
- Chopper

Also, I'd make sure to include lots of smaller items on the registry (peelers, spatulas, measuring spoons/cups, tongs, wooden spoons, ladles, etc.) - lots of times people have a set dollar amount in mind, so they'll often add a few of these cheaper items onto their purchase to reach that amount. It's a great way to make sure you get some good quality basics.

And I definitely second LoCo's point about the formal china.

beyondblond at 1:55PM on 12/03/07

From Required Eating

Seriously Delicious Holiday Giveaway: A Year of Chocolate

Dark, without question (though milk chocolate often makes a cameo in my kitchen when I am baking)

beyondblond at 9:56PM on 12/01/07

From Required Eating

What Five Foods Can't You Live Without?

1. My hubby's homemade meat sauce/meatballs (he's Italian, so it's a family recipe)

2. Ice cream

3. My mom's homemade biscuits

4. Cheese

5. Baked Cheetos (I have an unexplainable weakness for these)

beyondblond at 7:11PM on 11/30/07

Responses to Comments by beyondblond

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

CookiePie, on corn plastics (also called PLA) it's not as good as the propaganda. Sure, they are compostable but it requires a special process that no backyard will approximate and few towns or cities have in place. So, it's a contaminate to composting but also one to plastics as it can't be recycled and indeed ruins recycling efforts of plastic.

According to a biodegradability standard that Mojo helped develop, PLA is said to decompose into carbon dioxide and water in a “controlled composting environment” in fewer than 90 days. What’s a controlled composting environment? Not your backyard bin, pit or tumbling barrel. It’s a large facility where compost—essentially, plant scraps being digested by microbes into fertilizer—reaches 140 degrees for ten consecutive days. So, yes, as PLA advocates say, corn plastic is “biodegradable.” But in reality very few consumers have access to the sort of composting facilities that can make that happen. NatureWorks has identified 113 such facilities nationwide—some handle industrial food-processing waste or yard trimmings, others are college or prison operations—but only about a quarter of them accept residential foodscraps collected by municipalities.


Then there's the issue that more and more people are allergic to corn (which some tie to the genetically engineered strains that have appeared just in the last decade or so) and these plastics are literally deadly to them (which can be ironically unfortunate if they go to the hospital for ingesting food that wasn't supposed to contain it and end up worse because of all the corn derivitive contaminated equipment and medicines there.

The GE corn also requires intensive chemical inputs just to grow which are leaching into our groundwaters and oceans creating other issues such as dead zones which are destroying marine life (including seafood).

Sieseye at 11:29PM on 04/27/08

From Eating Out

Chipotle Calorie Math Makes Absolutely No Sense

The law just requires that you post calorie information... I think Chipotle decided to do the "Calorie Range" as a way to post mis-leading information. Because items are not pre-made with a specific set of ingredients, and calories will vary based on your personal selections, they are well within their legal right to post a "range"- but clearly the range is total baloney.

As for the law itself, while I agree that eating by numbers is no way to live, there are clearly alot of people who think that fast food is less fattening than it is, and while we are all fairly well informed eaters- you'd be really surprised how many people are shocked to discover how incredibly fattening a Chipotle Burrito is.

As far as Chipotle being for "Serious Eaters", while their use of organic and/or fresh ingredients is commendable, it's still the lesser of two evils- and is clearly fast food made to be mass marketed and mass produced across the country in a cookie cutter way.

Zach Brooks at 10:32AM on 04/26/08

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

i have this bag! but i use it for school - books and such.

altosaxchica at 6:24PM on 04/24/08

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

Does anyone have any good info on the biodegradable plastic bags? I got all excited when I first heard about them (clearly I need to get out more), but then I read that they're no good unless you compost (not really possible in Brooklyn) and that the energy used to grow the corn that goes into making them does much worse damage than regular plastic bags. @Chisai is right - in the city we have to use plastic bags for trash, so all of mine get reused. But I'd be happy to use canvas for grocery shopping and then buy biodegradable plastic bags, if they're any good for the environment. Help!

CookiePie at 3:06PM on 04/24/08

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

@BeyondBlond, I LOVE Baggu bags. I love their little carrying pouches. They clean so easily, they're in great colors, what's not to love. I always use them when I do my marketing. That said, I order lunch a lot at work and the food inevitably comes in plastic bags. Which I use for trash. I don't know anyone who throws the bags out without using them for something else first.

And being a city dweller, what @CanadaPat is totally right. We have to use plastic bags for our trash.

chisai at 2:12PM on 04/24/08

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

Whole Foods sells non-woven fabric or recycled plastic reusable bags for $1.00, and they often have promotions where they give them away w/purchase. The canvas-and-burlap Feed 100 bag is a fundraiser for charity. That really should have been explained in this entry, link or no. The way it reads suggests Whole Foods is going to make customers buy $30 canvas bags.

For the record, I've been using the non-woven bags for three years now, and they're still in great shape.

juliec at 1:44PM on 04/24/08

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

Ugh, my apologies. The 16 billion number I first quoted was a typo I didn't fix as I was caught up in the horror of the other numbers. Obviously as indicated by the other stats I include it's more like 400 billion plastic bags manufactured in the United States per year.

Sieseye at 2:09AM on 04/24/08

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

So I'm reading this thread ironically while watching National Geographic's Strange Days special on our waterways (that everyone who eats should watch) and what should come up but plastic. Coincidence? No, only about 1% of the 16 billion plastic bags that are made each year are recycled. Even the ones that "breakdown" only turn into smaller bits of plastic that contaminate the dirt and water and become "litterally" no-nutrition filler food for birds and animals while fish and other marine life think it's plankton and all we care about is what we are going to put our pet poop in?

As Ed Norton who hosts the shows says:

“People say, ‘What’s the one thing they could do to help?’ I say you gotta do more than one thing,” he said. But, he continued, “One thing for sure is the bags. Plastic bags are turning out to be one of the worst stupidest things that we’re doing to the environment. Those little bodega-deli plastic bags we use for 30 seconds and then throw away.”

He wants them banned, a move many countries have already taken. “When China is ahead of us in banning these things, when other countries around the world are banning these things, we need to get in line with that and catch up,” he said. “That is a simple, small thing that everybody can do—forget about those silly plastic bags.

There's a giant cesspool of plastic in the Pacific twice the size of the United States about 500 west of California. There's estimated to be 46,000 pieces of plastic trash in each square mile of ocean. In some places there is six pounds of plastic for every pound of fish. Americans use 380 BILLION plastic bags each year and some cities the cost is 17 cents disposing of each one.

Really, take a look at some pictures and see if you feel the same about convenience afterwards.

Sieseye at 2:04AM on 04/24/08

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

I'm sorry - but silly it's not! I cannot fix emissions from cars OR stop large-scale polluting from factories OR personally fix any number of other environmental hazards. But I CAN change my own behavior. I CAN use a canvas bag for groceries, only buy products that come in a container that can be recycled, and otherwise reduce consumption of excessive packaging. There is nothing silly about that.

kjgibson at 8:10PM on 04/23/08

From Required Eating

Paper or Canvas? (Adios, Plastic)

It's wonderful times we live in when people can be so serious about something so silly!

srhcb at 6:34PM on 04/23/08