Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

This recipe is pretty awesome. I made this using the liquid from rehydrating dried mushrooms I needed for another recipe and enough water to get to the 4 cups of stock called for. I also used shallots in place of the onion and substituted shiitake mushrooms for half the button mushrooms (ok, so I used the outline of the recipe as an excuse to clean out my freezer, pantry and fridge). I drizzled the sherry called for in the recipe over the individual servings in the bowls and added a small dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of chives. This soup is totally going into the regular rotation!

If you don't have sherry I think you could easily use dry white wine, and if you like it that way invest in sherry for the future. Or stay with the white wine. Personally I have started using shaoxing wine instead of sherry for most recipes. I like it's subtler flavor. I do have to go to an oriental grocery to get it.

Erinlovestoeat figured out the apple fries - cutting them into "fries" takes an object like an apple, which anyone can buy several of for $1.50, and turns it into a "branded" product, that people will pay $1.50 for. (Same with potatoes, by the way, we're just a lot more used to them).

Think about the potato - how hard is it to cut a bunch up and fry them at home? Not very - but no company is going to make money off of a potato, because the production and transportation costs are just barely covered by the selling price (this is why you never see coupons for produce! There's not enough of a margin). So Ore-Ida comes along, and gets a few Urshel cutting machines and a deep fryer, and they take those potatoes and cut them up, slap a brand on them, and suddenly they can sell $1 worth of potatoes for $5, and make a much bigger profit than they would selling plain potatoes.

Unfortunately, natural products don't last in that cut up, branded state, so they have to add all sorts of chemicals to make them "shelf stable" - and we eat those chemicals every single day.

Of course it's healthier and cheaper to eat whole, real foods (like apples and potatoes) but we've been convinced over the last 25 or 30 years that cooking is for experts (like the chefs on Food Network), that it's too hard and it's a chore, so we pay a premium price to have other people and machines do the work for us, at the expense of our health and our budgets.

There's nothing inherently wrong with apple fries, or french fries, as long as one realizes that they're a convenience food, and not a Real Food, and eats them only in moderation. I hope no one would choose apple fries for $1.50 over an apple for $0.30, if there were a side by side choice. But there are no apples in the Drive-Thru... So it's not a side by side choice.

Fortunately grocery stores are trying to jump on the convenience bandwagon, but they're doing it with healthier, fresher food (because they have it available in a way that BK does not). So, at many stores, you can get cut up fresh fruit in the produce section that's ready to eat, or bagged salads with dressing and everything, or even soups and salad bars. One grocery store in my small town has a chicken wing buffet (?!?!?). I haven't quite figured that one out.

Hopefully, as grocery stores get more and more into convenience health foods, we'll start getting out of the drive thru and into the stores. Maybe the next step is to add a drive thru to the grocery store!

But apple fries is simply a way of taking a commodity, like an apple, and turning it into a Product, with a trademark and everything. It has nothing to do with "tricking" kids into eating fruit, and everything to do with "tricking" parents into being parted from their money.

Amy @ http://prettybabies.blogspot.com

So how are they keeping these cut apples so white and pristine looking?

Also, since when is Macaroni and cheese healthy?

The question asked was whether "we have to entice kids to eat apples by cutting them into strips and making them look like french fries." While I have a lot of problems with the execution of this idea, I have none at all with the concept.

Since when is serving food in an unusual, interesting or amusing way, or in a way that "entices", a bad thing? We see pictures on SE every day of food made to look like something else. It's fun. Kids are more likely to want the apples if they're presented in a way that appeals to them.

The Big King gives me the heebie jeebies. The Little King is equally creepy, just in a smaller size. I can't stand these commercials.

And yes, it appears we have to start disguising healthy foods as junk foods before the majority of the public will be interested in eating them. How sad.

AARP bumper sticker:

Food has replaced sex in my life.
Now, I can't even get into my own pants.

Carolina de Witte - chefs can taste if they want to, of course. Some do, some don't. Some do sometimes but not always.

I was never taught to taste during service before sending it out to a customer but rather to be sure that I knew ahead of time by smell and look and by focus on the initial prep and even ordering/checking in of goods that when in the process of putting out anywhere from four orders to 250 orders that they would be good and correct in taste just from the building "from the ground up" so to speak.

As executive chef I worked on instilling this same way of doing things in the chefs and cooks that worked for me. It requires a lot of standardization of recipe and focus on initial ingredients, along with an intensive structure that involves detailed production schedules and a well-trained team who are willing to work together. It's not just about the food itself, its about the people who are putting it together.

This takes away from "creativity" allowed in a free-form way, yes. But the guests get consistency.

It's a beautiful thing when a kitchen of ten can trust each other to come in and together put out a range of meals where some of the plates might be finely detailed "fine dining" and the other plates are fine banquet service for 50 hitting at the exact same time.

Granted, part of this is intuition. But most of it is training, teamwork, knowledge and consistently-implemented procedures that run from step A to step Z.

But to each their own, and to taste on an ongoing basis is one way of doing it, for sure.
But what I said is true and workable also. :)

foodvox said: "No, chefs don't have to taste all the time if they are chefs for they know what they are doing and don't have to double-check." This isn't true. I've been a chef for many years, but I was taught to ALWAYS taste before sending it to a customer. There are many variables in cooking. If you aren't a good 'taster', you can not be a chef. The difference between ordinary, bad and sublime can be just a touch too little or too much salt, nevermind such ingredients as acids, etc. That being said, a 'taste' doesn't mean an entire mouthful of food, it is just enough to judge...a few drops could be sufficient.

I am not overweight, as I usually skip the 'house meals', and I go to the gym several nights a week. I eat the majority of my meals at home with my family, and we love fresh fruits and vegetables, organic and local if possible. I love preparing meals for my family even more than I do for patrons at work. Moderation is always key. I do splurge, but not everyday.

From my perspective, there is absolutely no moral triumph for being thin. You want to be thin, be thin. But when people pat themselves on the back for what they perceive to be better eating habits than someone else... I just find that, in and of itself, self aggrandizement of the grossest variety.

I despise the type pf thinklng which tells people that they look fat simply because they enjoy their food. This is a screw-up of the Puritan ethic, which told us that, if you enjoyed something, it would hurt you.

Today's foodies stand against that. We want to know more about every aspect of our food, not so we can shove rich things down our throats constantly, but so we can have a great salad or cookie or pasta dish or veggie casserole or hot dog or grilled cheese or or or...and makes sure it gives us strength and health as well as the calories.

I have been thin all my life (as is the majority of my family), the type of thin that people stare at you if God forbid you have to pee at a restaurant, and feel like making snide remarks is perfectly fine. I developed progressive, chronic illness at age 20, and a few years ago I was so ill I weighted 78 lbs. at 5'8" because my insurance wouldn't pay for the medication that allows me to eat.

That is resolved now thank goodness and thanks to medicine, food blogs, and my learning how to cook I put on 40 lbs. I'm still thin, but feel as good as I can, and love to be able to eat, because 2 years ago I couldn't, and I pray no one ever takes that for granted.

I am also glad by reading these comments that it seems most foodies know how to be healthy, the rest of the population could take some hints from here on how to eat well, with awesome tasting food, and not become overweight.